Channel 4 to screen controversial documentary that asks whether IQ is linked to race By Paul Revoir and Niall FirthChannel 4 is facing a race controversy after deciding to give a platform to scientists who claim that white people are more intelligent than those who are black.
A documentary, fronted by former BBC News correspondent Rageh Omaar, will interview professors who claim brain power is linked to racial grouping.
It will include claims that the most intelligent people in the world are North-East Asians from parts of China, Japan and North and South Korea.
Taboo: TV presenter Rageh Omaar will discuss James Watson's infamous assertion that black people are less intelligent than other races
The Australian Aborigines will be said to have the lowest average IQ.
The broadcaster has decided to air the comments, which will be abhorrent to many of its viewers, as part of a series of programmes about race and science, aimed at busting 'science's last taboo'.
Bosses at the channel claim the season will strongly challenge these opinions and 'explode' the myth that science can support ideas of racial superiority.
But the decision to air the issue at all could prove incendiary and is in danger of throwing the channel into another race row.
The broadcaster was inundated with complaints in 2007 after it aired the alleged racist bullying of Shilpa Shetty on Celebrity Big Brother.
To promote the series, Channel 4 has altered photos of Baroness Thatcher, The Beatles, England's 1966 World Cup winning football team and U.S. President Barack Obama to change their racial appearances.
In Race and Intelligence: Science's Last Taboo, Omaar talks to academics who believe that aspects of the human brain are linked to race.
