Independent newspaper criticised for validating scientist’s racist views

The African community were given a sharp reminder of the dangers of those who claim a liberal front but ultimately retain racist ideology when the Independent newspaper lent its front page to the promotion of the anti-African racism of a prominent figure in the scientific community.

On 17 October 2007, the Independent’s front page headline declared "Africans are less intelligent than Westerners says DNA pioneer” aligned with a page sized portrait of the Nobel Peace Prize winner, James Watson. The front page coincided with the professors UK tour to promote his new book.

The quote had been lifted from an interview that featured in the arts and entertainment supplement of a Sunday paper three days earlier where Watson said the prospects for Africa were “gloomy” because the social policies for progress were based on the idea that Africans and europeans are intellectual equals.

The radio phone-ins and articles across the national papers that followed allowed europeans to revel in the implication that they, the polar opposite of the African, are innately superior apparently legitimised by the intellectual authority of Watson who had formed part of the team awarded the Nobel prize for discovering DNA. Watson’s standing as a renowned scientist allowed the media and public to assume his baseless prejudice to actually be scientific fact.

Whilst some people sought to engage in the debate about whether Africans were intelligent or not, many realised that there was no need to engage in a discussion to ‘prove’ intelligence to a racist. The actions of the Independent, who routinely assume the moral and ethical high ground over their peers, revealed that the so-called left-wing liberal media have the potential to be far more damaging because they are in denial of their own prejudice where in comparison, their overtly right-wing colleagues display them proudly. The papers opportunist and irresponsible editorial position was criticised for giving exposure to the personal, baseless opinion of Watson whilst simultaneously ignoring the arrival of African American scholars Anthony Browder and Runoko Rashidi who were also touring the UK presenting fact based seminars on African history and the African contribution to the evolution of the human race that challenged the pseudo science they had collaborated in resurrecting.