Prejudice: The Watson Case

In the recent flap over public comments by James Watson, one of the things that strikes me is the odd misuse, in attacks on him, of the term "prejudice."

A prejudice is a belief held in advance of the evidence. Watson's biological claim--that human populations that have spent a long time separated from each other in different environments can be expected to differ in heritable characteristics--is so obviously true that I find it hard to imagine anyone honestly denying it. His application, his conclusion from his own observation that sub-saharan Africans are on average less intelligent than Europeans, may or may not be correct, but without knowing what his observations have been it is hard to see how one can know that it is due to prejudice.

Unless, of course, one knows in advance that Watson's conclusion is false. So far as I can tell, there is literally no evidence to support that position. At least, in all of the arguments on the subject that I have observed, those arguing for racial equality of intelligence do so not by producing evidence that it is true but by arguing that the evidence that it is false is inadequate or mistaken. Even if all of their arguments are correct, the conclusion is not that we know that racial groups don't differ in intelligence but only that we don't know if they do, or if so how.

Watson's comment was surely tactless as well as imprudent; his conclusion may, for all I know, be mistaken. But all of the prejudice so far exhibited in the case is on the other side.