Well, Crocodile Dundee was white, and he did very well surviving in
the bush!

I'm not being entirely silly, in fact.

The venerable Mr. Watson (who is by no means a 'disgrace' to science,
he's in fact on of the most distinguished living scientists) perhaps
suffers from the old 'when all you have is a hammer, everything
starts to look like a nail' syndrome. In fact, Watson may be confusing
'nature' with 'nurture' with respect to most of his remarks.

He is, after all, referring to 'social policies.' Well, if we look at
Africa we see a rather sad recent history of pretty lousy rulers and
regimes, who were on top of that difficult to deal with. I submit
that isn't because the guys in charge weren't intelligent, but rather
because they either lacked the training to carry out progressive
agendas, or the means, or the will (read 'corruption').

But those sorts of problems have everything to do with how societies
are structured and the context in which they operate. And the context,
interestingly enough, is really the aftermath of European colonialism.
The the colonial days are over, the mess and the broken governmental
and social structures which the colonial powers left still remain.
If there's a degree of social and political chaos on the continent
of Africa, that isn't the invention of the Africans, it's the legacy
of the colonizers who turned African society upside-down, subjugated
the people, did NOTHING to develop any sort of effective leadership,
and then deserted the place (or got tossed out) while looking over
their shoulders and in many cases bragging about the 'independent and
democratic state' which the Great White Fathers had bestowed upon
their former colonies.

So one finds oneself asking "now which racial/ethnic group
is lacking in intelligence?" once we put the situation of the African
continent into historical context.