Updated repost of one of my favorites. Thanks to Sister Anna for bringing it to my attention again after 3 years.
I remember watching a couple of the Sherlock Holmes movies when I was a kid. I never thought much of them as the story lines didn’t really hold my interest, plus they were shown in “black and white”…lol! I do remember though the line Sherlock Holmes gave his sidekick, Dr. Watson when he was ready to solve the case and explain how he came to his conclusions. He made it all seem so obvious after he proclaimed: “elementary my dear Watson, elementary,” and then broke it all down. I would wonder why Watson, being a learn-ed “Doctor”, hadn’t figured it out also and would ask the detective dumb questions. hmmmmm
This week another Dr. Watson garnered media attention, not for asking dumb questions, but for making “dumb” comments. Dr. James Watson, biologist, geneticist, Chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and 1962 Nobel laureate in science, made some controversial statements regarding “Race” in an interview he gave to The Sunday Times. The interviewer shared these beliefs of Dr. Watson’s in the article:
“He says that he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”, and I know that this “hot potato” is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level”. He writes that “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so”.
This is not the first or only time the “good doctor” has made controversial statements, especially regarding race. During a lecture tour in 2000 he hypothesized that there were scientific links between skin colour and sexual prowess, specifically that “dark-skinned people have stronger libidos”. He has also hypothesized that if you could detect babies with “gay genes” pre-natally, women should then have the right to abort the baby “because women want to have grandchildren, period.” He also agreed with what he refers to as the “unpopular but by no means unfounded” theory of ex-Harvard president Larry Summers (recently President Obama’s director of the National Economic Council and chief economic policy co-ordinator), who lectured that the low representation of tenured female scientists at universities might be due to, among other things, “the innate differences between the sexes”. Due to the furor caused by his latest comments, he has had to cancel a book tour, scheduled lectures and he has also been suspended from his administrative duties at the Laboratory.
So here’s the deal. I believe the issue isn’t so much with the statements he made…. but that he made them publicly! He simply stated what is the widely held belief among those in the dominant “white” society. It is not the first time (nor the last) that science has been utilized to assert the inferiority of the so-called “Black Race”. Scientists are forever coming up with hypotheses and theories either contending that “whites” and/or “Europeans” and their culture is superior to everyone elses, or that “Blacks” and/or “Africans” and their culture are inferior to all others. However, because it is no longer “socially acceptable” nor “politically correct” to make such assertions publicly, “the rule” now is to do it within private (i.e. where Black people aren’t allowed) confines of the backrooms, the social clubs, the boardrooms, the executive offices… hell even in the bathroom…. but never, never out in the open and certainly not to the media! If you break this rule…. you are on your own!
Dr. Watson has made the usual apologies, claimed the statements don’t reflect what he meant, “and there is no scientific basis for such a belief.” Interestingly he also stated: “I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said.”
“Elementary my dear Watson, elementary…. you’re a racist.”
afrospear.wordpress.com 
This guy is scary and dangerous.
Exactly, Asa. Watson’s only “crime” was not speaking in “code.” White folks are allowed to say what Watson said, for example, by simply highlighting the ills of individual black people – black athletes, for example. The key is to weave a quilt that will speak for itself. “I’m only reporting the news, I’m coming to no conclusions mind you.”
It is by emphasizing the negative while claiming only to report and ignoring all else, ignoring positives in our community, ignoring real ills and highlighting trivia and never contextualizing what we do versus what they do. Slick, baby, slick.
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All I have to say is: No wonder people don’t trust whites. Overall, we’re not trustworthy.
I don’t tend to hear much overt racism, but I’ll admit to being really ignorant of the subtle ways of saying racist things outside of the ones endemic to my religion (metagenetics boo!!!). I’ll never forget the time a friend used “ghetto” in plce of “black” and it took me several minutes to figure out what she meant, and then only by looking around and realizing (I haven’t noticed – I’m used to it) that there were very few white people around.
I never confronted her about it directly. I still wonder if I should have, or if my violent disagreement did the trick.
There’s a real social current against calling the lest blatant stuff out. We’ve got all kinds of dismissive language (political correctness accusations) to use to brush off bigotry, as well as the sense of racists as extreme, violent thugs that are not like us.
I’m not trying to make excuses here, but rather explaining what I perceive as a white person who does try to call out racism when I see it. We’re not supposed to acknowledge that when Imus or Richards or Watson says these things that they’re not just individual events with no relation to each other. We’re not supposed to say “When they say these things, they’re tapping into what many white people think and say every day, a vast reservoir of privilege and assumed superiority.” We’re supposed to pretend that racism is something that burns crosses, wears white hoods, segregates, or even enslaves. Not something that promotes one person over another, or quietly refuses to rent to one family instead of another, or looks the other way when someone says or does something that is obviously bigoted.
And, of course, most white people happily go along with that. It seems to me that Richards, Imus, and Watson get in trouble as much for inadverdantly revealing that racism is alive and well as they do for saying the objectionable things they choose to say.
Trudat Phaedyme!
How do you pronounce your name and what does it mean or signify!?
[;o)
I pronounce it “Fay-Demi” but I’m almost certainly wrong. It’s a Persian name, historically the daughter of Otanes:
http://messagenet.com/myths/ppt/Otanes_1.html
An Arab man told me once he thought it might be an ancestor of the name “Fatima,” but I’ve never really been able to track anything down. When I first came across the name (and used it online), I didn’t know about Otanes.
And I forgot to add:
I created a character named Phaedyme for a book I contributed to (for the Vampire roleplaying game). She was a soldier (disguised as a man) in Alexander’s army, who had been turned into a vampire in India. She was a tribute to the women who have had to pose as men to accomplish what they wanted in society, or serve in the military, or anything else denied them as women.
Phaedyme: COOL!!!!
I heard this fool on News & Notes the other day & he also made mention that intelligence was also associated with penis size. The larger the penis the less intelligent. The host (Ferai Chideya) almost lost it when he stated that.
The sad fact is, so idiots will but into it.
Related Story: Nobel Winner Issues Apology for Comments About Blacks
Bygbaby
Im 3 years late to this thread but it’s still relevant.
We black folks have to STOP!! Cease and Desist with profiling the white racists fools!!
I could be wrong but IMO it doesn’t promote anything for us, to know each and every stupid racist!! Especially being so ignorant and uniformed, spouting stuff from 1902!
We are simply promoting their agenda when we do, even though we vehemently denounce what they are saying. There are too many who will agree or want to agree, and we are just informing them of another fool for them to agree with.
These ignorant ones never cease with showcasing their ignorance and IMHO there’s no point in we black folks helping them to profile their stupidity.
Im just saying.