It’s easy to discard Watson as a racist, but his position on race and evolution is multifaceted.
In the same controversial interview, Watson also said that you should not discriminate “on the basis of color”. More importantly, he then said:
“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”
You can take this out of the black vs. white context by examining the fact that East Asian IQ test scores trend higher than whites. There could be many reasons for the disparity in test scores, and of course there’s no one reliable universal measure of intelligence, but there’s no reason not to explore the possibility that certain races, ethnicities, or geographical groupings may have superior abilities (intellectual, artistic, athletic, etc.). Part of a scientist’s job is to ignore current societal taboos. Watson may have run his mouth insensitively, but he shouldn’t be dismissed.
