A GNA Feature by Boakye-Dankwa Boadi

Accra, 19 Oct. GNA - One does not know how to thank the Nobel Prize winning DNA pioneer, James Watson for that great interview he granted Sunday Times, a British newspaper, in which he was quoted as saying Africans were less intelligent than Europeans.

Our Elders say "se biribi a nko ka papa a papa nngye grede!" to wit "there is always a trigger" and that is exactly what Watson has done for Africans. Indeed some Africans had given up the fight against the inferiority complex war with Europeans.

One dares any person to go onto the streets of Accra to ask the simple question. Are Europeans superior to Africans? One would be surprised about the type of answers one would get. Some would tell you that if you were going to church and you met a European you must go back home because you had already met God.

This mentality has translated into the situation where so called high class Ghanaian women do not feel ashamed to buy second hand braziers and panties imported from Europe to wear and feel proud in them. Highly educated Ghanaians buy and wear second hand coats that might have been discarded by toilet cleaners in Europe.

Just as the war against European superiority seemed to be coming to an end, this thunderbolt is heard and everything changes in favour of Africans. A pile of scientific knowledge that had been available to only a few is now awash for everybody's benefit. Thanks to Watson.
According to BBC website, Dr Craig Venter, the scientist/businessman who led the private effort to decode the human genome, was quoted as saying: "Skin colour as surrogate for race is a social concept not a scientific one. There is no basis in scientific fact as in the human genetic code for the notion that skin colour will be predictive of intelligence."

Another important fact that has been made available is that the structure of DNA, the molecule that lies at the heart of heredity in living organism, showed that there was no scientific basis for the concept of race. "People from different racial groups can be more genetically similar than individuals within the same group. Genetic studies indicate that there is more variability in the gene pool in Africa than outside."

Watson was quoted in the original interview as 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". He was further quoted as saying that his hope was that everyone was equal but that "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true". Watson has since said that the way the words were presented did not reflect properly his position. "I can certainly understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways they have. To all those, who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly.

That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief".

Now that this knowledge has been made available, Africans should walk this planet with their chests out that they are equal to any other human being.

The Ministry of Information and National Orientation has a huge responsibility to instil in Ghanaians self-worth so that they would stop turning the country into the refuse dump for second hand clothes; second hand cars; second hand tyres; second hand refrigerators; second television sets; second hand cooking utensils and second hand everything.