grief," Pinker (right) exclaimed. "Shouldn't everything be within the pale of legitimate academic discourse, as long as it is presented with some degree of rigour? That's the difference between a university and a madrassa."

The irony is that racial talk today is as likely to come out of the mouths of liberal anti-racists as of reactionary racial scientists. The affirmation of difference, which once was at the heart of racial science, has become a key plank of the anti-racist outlook. The celebration of difference, respect for pluralism, avowal of identity politics - these have come to be regarded as the hallmarks of a progressive, anti-racist outlook.

The paradoxical result is that old arguments about race have become recycled through new ideas about culture and identity.

It is often difficult these days to distinguish between racists and anti-racists. One of James Watson's fiercest critics was the Ghanaian writer and broadcaster Cameron Duodu. After condemning the media for giving space to Watson's "malignant racism", Duodu dismissed the claim that Africans are less intelligent on the grounds that for life

in Africa "you do not need a high IQ - such as found in tests devised by Westerners".

"Africa may look dismal today to the likes of Professor James Watson," Duodu suggested, but only because "the Western way of life has been imposed on Africans". According to Duodu, "It is quite stupid to expect total efficiency from a people who are being torn in two directions at the same time - between an inherited, ancient culture, and a modern, imported one."

Africans are different... Modernity is alien to them... They don't need a high IQ for the kind of lives they lead... Even Watson might have blanched at describing Africans in this fashion ­ and had he done so, he would have faced an even greater firestorm of protest.

Race is not a rational, scientific category. But anti-racism has become an irrational, anti-scientific philosophy that paradoxically keeps the racial pot bubbling. We need to confront both.
Kenan Malik will be speaking about Race and Intelligence at the Science Museum, 7pm, July 3. Free tickets at sciencemuseum.org.uk