But none of those controversies could begin to prepare him for the intensity of the firestorm ignited by the Sunday Times article, which quoted him as saying that "he was inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa," since "all of our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really"; that "people who have to deal with black employees find that [the belief that everyone is equal] is not true"; and that "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." Five days after the article was published, he profusely apologized in a statement to the press; on Oct. 25, he abruptly retired from his position at Cold Spring Harbor, after 40 years of service there.

When I read about Watson's remarks, I was astonished, not to mention angered and saddened. I was also determined to ask him about these comments directly. Though The Root was still in its nascent form and we wouldn't launch until January 2008, I sent him a letter, offering him a platform in the black world through which he could explain, defend and perhaps clarify the remarks attributed to him. He accepted my invitation to give The Root his first major interview since the Hunt-Grubbe article appeared.

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

I had read, with the admiring avidity of a high school senior hellbent on medical school, his best-selling book, "The Double Helix," back in 1968. It never occurred to me that I would one day be making documentaries for public television about the uses of DNA for ancestry tracing among African Americans. But it was not until December 2006 that I met the scientist I had so admired. I was in New York, delivering a lecture for alumni of Clare College at the University of Cambridge. I had earned my M.A. and Ph.D. in English language and literature from Clare in February 1979, and Watson was living there and working at the Cavendish Laboratory when he and Crick identified the structure of DNA. As I rose to deliver my lecture at the podium, the Master of Clare College whispered to me that James Watson was in the audience. I was astonished; I had no idea that he was still alive. Following the lecture, I was seated next to Dr. Watson at dinner. He was indeed still alive; he was a sprightly and mentally acute 78 at the time. I found him friendly, but a bit awkward in conversation; generous and thoughtful, funny, but quirky-funny. A week later, unsolicited, a signed copy of "The Double Helix" arrived at my home.

I thought of that slightly awkward dinner conversation and his gracious gift as I arrived at his offices at Cold Spring Harbor on March 17 for our interview. We talked for well over an hour, with no holds barred.

"Well?" one of my friends asked later. "Is he a racist?"

I don't think James Watson is a racist. But I do think that he is a racialist—that is, he believes that certain observable traits or forms of behavior among groups of human beings might, indeed, have a biological basis in the code that scientists, eventually, may be able to ascertain, that the "gene" is some mythically neutral space and what it purportedly "measures" or "determines" is independent of environmental factors, variables and influences. The difference, the distinction, between being a racist and a racialist is crucial. James Watson is not the garden-variety racist as he has been caricatured by the press and bloggers, the sort epitomized by David Duke and his ilk, and he seemed genuinely chagrined, embarrassed and remorseful that Duke and other racists had claimed him as their champion, as one of their own, because of his remarks as quoted in the London Sunday Times. And, as we might expect, he apologized profusely for those remarks, contending that he had been misquoted, at worst, and his remarks taken out of context, at best. (I have not been able to determine if the writer who reported the remarks taped them or reconstructed them from notes or memory.)

But I did leave Cold Spring Harbor convinced  that Dr. Watson believes that many forms of behavior—such as "Jewish intelligence" (his phrase) and the basketball prowess of black men in the NBA (his example)—could, possibly, be traced to genetic differences among human beings, although no such connection has been made, and will probably never be made on any firm scientific basis, it seems to me. And I have to say that it was ultimately chilling to me when he remarked, with what seemed to me to be monumental naivete, that "if they find genes for all kinds of Jewish intelligence, I don't think it's going to affect me in the slightest," especially when we couple that sort of remark with his passionate belief that "everyone should be judged as individuals. No one should be judged by a term like 'black.'"

Yet precisely because of the misuses of science and pseudoscience since the 18th century, which put into place fixed categories of  four or five "races" to justify an economic order dependent upon the exploitation of blacks (and other people of color) as cheap sources of labor, starting with slavery and continuing through Jim Crow and beyond, it has never been possible for a person of African descent to function in American society simply and purely as an "individual." And if the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama has taught him, and us, anything at all, it is that this perhaps ideal state of affairs—to function as an individual and to be judged on your individual merits—still remains a most elusive and somewhat naïve dream.

Watson's error is that he associates individual genetic differences (which, of course, do in fact exist) with ethnic variation (which is sociocultural and highly malleable). Character traits—abilities and behaviors, such as intelligence or basketball skills, that are popularly attributed to groups and are defined as "genetic"—will, in fact, continue to delimit the freedom of choice and expression of individuals who fall into those "racial" categories, regardless of our individual attainments and achievements. In the end, visions that are racialist may end up doing the same work of those that are racist.  This is a lesson Watson has lived, and it is one from which we all might learn.