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http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/14/channel-4-stoke-race-debate

Channel 4 to stoke race debate

Science's Last Taboo, fronted by Rageh Omaar, will talk to scientists who believe in race-intelligence link

As controversy builds around British National Party leader Nick Griffin's imminent appearance on BBC1's Question Time, Channel 4 is set to stoke the race debate by giving airtime to two professors who believe black people are less intelligent than white people.

The documentary, fronted by former BBC reporter Rageh Omaar, will explore what the broadcaster describes as "science's last taboo".

In the documentary, Race and Intelligence: Science's Last Taboo, Psychology professor Richard Lynn will say there is a global "league table", using evidence from IQ tests, to claim that intelligence is based on race, with north-east Asians in the top tier and Australian aborigines at the bottom.

Fellow psychology professor John Philippe Rushton, who has claimed that Europeans are more intelligent than Africans – and that men are cleverer than women – will also appear in the programme, due to be broadcast later this month .

"The differences between men and women's brains are due to spatial ability, but the differences between black and white and east Asian brains is due to general intelligence," Rushton tells Omaar. "That's what we think is the situation."

The academics appear as part of Omaar's investigation into controversial claims made by Nobel Prize winner and DNA pioneer James Watson two years ago that black people are less intelligent than other races.

Channel 4's head of specialist factual, Ralph Lee, said Omaar, now a presenter on Arabic language news channel Al-Jazeera International, also spoke to scientists who drew "radically different conclusions" to the views held by Lynn and Rushton.

"Does genetic science back up the idea that race and intelligence are linked? It is absolutely clear that it does not support the link. Rageh is able to challenge and present the absolute opposite arguments," added Lee.

"He didn't start with a fixed position – he started with an open mind – and he discovers that there are inequalities in society that are leading people with different backgrounds to perform differently and succeed differently in society and that is nothing to be comforted by.”

"He thinks there are important things that need to be addressed but he thinks the idea of a link between race and intelligence or the idea that skin colour is an indicator of intelligence is complete nonsense."

Another Channel 4 documentary in the season of programmes, Race: Science's Last Taboo, will ask whether there are biological advantages to being mixed race. The season is being supported by a marketing campaign showing a mixed-race Margaret Thatcher and a white Usain Bolt.

Oona King, the Channel 4 head of diversity and former Labour MP, said: "With race we will always have a heated debate. The point about this season is that I think it will change the terms of the debate. There is no point sweeping it under the carpet."

BBC1's celebrity dance show Strictly Come Dancing was at the centre of a race row earlier this month when it emerged that dancer Anton Du Beke had made a racially tinged remark about his dance partner Laila Rouass.

The show's veteran presenter Bruce Forsyth later said the nation should get a "sense of humour" about the incident and compared it to Americans calling English people "limeys".

But King said Forsyth had missed the point. "I have a lot of sympathy for people who are not sure what is or isn't acceptable to say. My view is we need to open up the terms of the debate, not close it down," she added.

"The key point for me is that when people say you don't have a sense of humour, they are not taking the context into account. The context for a black child who is being bullied day in, day out and called racist names is entirely different from an off-the-cuff remark as Bruce was saying about limeys."

Griffin is due to appear on Question Time next week, with fellow confirmed panellists including the justice secretary, Jack Straw, and the black writer and critic Bonnie Greer.

King said it was important that viewpoints such as those held by the BNP were challenged in the mainstream. "My personal view is that if you don't confront people with counter arguments you allow them to move into a vacuum, especially when there is disillusionment with mainstream parties," she added. "I think it is incumbent upon the mainstream to challenge views that are reprehensible and off the wall."