Round-up

1. Four Indian cricket fans have been charged for allegedly racially abusing Australian cricketer Andrew Symonds by making monkey gestures, police say.

2. The Science Museum last night cancelled a talk by Nobel Prize winning scientist Dr James Watson after he was accused of making “racist” comments implying Africans were not as intelligent as whites. DNA pioneer Dr Watson, who discovered the double helix with Briton Francis Crick, has been roundly condemned for saying he was “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”.

Now then - I have said this for some time now. I am not a geneticist, but I have always claimed that it is entirely feasible that Africans - being essentially more primitive forms of humanity which white people evolved from - could be on average less intelligent than other races. I do not know this to be the case, and in truth I do not really care. But if this is indeed the truth - and of course, PC bigots don't want to listen to the view of a Nobel-winning DNA expert - why not accept it instead of moaning about it? Dr Watson says later in the article that African people should not be discriminated against because of this. That is the difference. It is one thing to say that black Africans may be less intelligent than other races. That is not racist - that is a statement based on scientific evidence. If you then go on to say that Africans should be treated differently by discrimination (not the simple change in policy espoused by Dr Watson here), THEN it becomes racist.

Professor Steven Rose said of Watson's statements that "no evidence that claimed to find people of African descent were less intelligent than Europeans or other racial groups had stood up to scientific scrutiny". Well, of course they haven't. Not when the scientific community is dedicated to proving them wrong because they don't want them to be true.

Once again here: I am NOT saying that Watson's views on the matter are necessarily correct. I'm simply saying that it is not racist and, if he has a case to make, we should listen to it.

3. Yesterday I reported in my round-up that Chelsea stars Didier Drogba and Michael Essien were trying to get England players in Russia to write "skin" on their hands to protest against racism. Today I read that they are releasing a song called "Skins", during which Drogba raps.

I take it all back. Yesterday, I said somewhat sarcastically: "Yep, that'll do it." But now they're releasing a song, that's surely going to bring success in ending racism, right? Of course it is; what are you, a bigot or something?