In a dramatic turn of events last October, one of the world’s most eminent scientists, James D. Watson, pressed the self-destruct button when he allegedly declared to the media that black people are less intelligent than white people. The Nobel laureate, who helped decipher the double-helix structure of DNA, was suspended from his position as chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research institution he helped found. He then retracted the comments, issued a formal apology, and has since retired from his position. But the world had already condemned him as a racist bigot.

My initial reaction to hearing the news was the same condemnation that I saw everywhere around me. But I was quickly drawn to Watson’s quotes in the newspaper because he was talking about a subject—Africa—that is very close to my heart. Watson said that he feels “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.” I read the quote a few times before I realized that he didn’t in fact say that blacks are less intelligent than whites. What he actually said is that their intelligence isn’t the same. This is quite an odd thing to say. And it made me wonder if he was pointing to something else—something not related to intelligence at all.

I have worked on social and related policy issues over the years in a number of African countries, and I know the gloominess that Watson referred to very well. It sets in after a number of years because the policies we develop, and Africans adopt, don’t work. And we don’t seem to have alternatives.

In my own research, I found that our policymaking is fueled by a whole set of assumptions about how African social and economic life works and about the speed and direction in which change can happen. There is an enormous mismatch between these ideas and the actual realities on the ground. This mismatch explains why policies rarely produce the expected benefits. Though I stand by that conclusion, it is not a particularly satisfying one for anyone who is really interested in making change in Africa.

Recently, I have become familiar with the new and emerging field of consciousness development, and have begun to think in a very different way about why policies developed in the West are so unsuccessful in Africa. Human consciousness—our capacity for awareness and the way that we think about ourselves in relation to other human beings—has developed largely in response to physical life conditions, which are evolving over time. And just as there are enormous differences in life conditions around the world, there are also different stages of consciousness development. Developmental differences in consciousness provide a compelling explanation for why policies are not working in Africa.

The global campaign for poverty reduction illustrates these differences very clearly. Poverty reduction strategies are being implemented by African governments with the support of donors in many sub-Saharan countries, with limited success in most of them. My experience has generally been, however, that African governments are not very interested in reducing poverty, and they are not much interested in the poor. When I started to ask questions about this in the villages and offices where I worked, I discovered that most Africans think about poverty very differently from the way that we do in more developed countries.

What I found was that the very poor are considered a troublesome burden. Most African societies are organized on the basis of mutual self-help, where there is always support from “your own” when times get bad. This is a survival mechanism that depends on people being able to give as well as receive help. However, those who are very poor and are always asking for help put enormous strain on the system. This strain, when there is so little to go around, threatens everyone’s survival.

The campaign for poverty reduction is built on a very different way of thinking about poverty. From a Western vantage point, the poorest in the world, including many Africans, are not viewed as burdens but as victims of circumstance who need our help. Unlike the majority of Africans, we can consider helping the poor without compromising our own survival or the functioning of our entire economic system.

This way of thinking about poverty has emerged in a set of life conditions that couldn’t be more different from those found across much of Africa. Many of us have achieved levels of wealth and education that are simply inaccessible to most Africans. Quite a few of us have traveled to poor countries. We have been directly exposed to different cultures and to the huge gap between our own level of wealth and education and that of the poorest people on this planet. For some of us, this exposure has generated an awareness of the interconnectedness of all human beings. Because of this, we feel that we should (though we often do not) support those less fortunate than ourselves.

Our level of consciousness—the sphere of our awareness and concern—has the capacity to be global, extending to all corners of the planet. It is very different from the level of consciousness predominant across Africa, which is primarily concerned with physical survival, and where the sphere of awareness and concern tends to be limited to those on whom one’s own and one’s family’s survival depends. This is clearly not the case for all Africans, but even those who have acquired considerable material wealth still appear to operate from the desperation and assumptions rooted in survival consciousness.

What do these differences in consciousness development have to do with intelligence? Nothing. Globalcentric consciousness creates the capacity in human beings for a broader perspective that simply isn’t possible at a survival level of consciousness. And this is why culturally we might think we are more intelligent than people from poor countries. (It is also why we seem to feel completely entitled to boss them around and tell them how to run their countries.) But it doesn’t mean we are more intelligent. Nor does it mean that we have all the answers. In fact, it is quite clear that we do not.

Watson’s comments about differences in intelligence between ourselves and Africans have deeply offended many people. But if we take out the word “intelligence” and replace it with the word “consciousness,” it makes a lot more sense. Watson may well be a racist. But it is possible, as he claimed at the time, that he genuinely did not mean to say that blacks were less intelligent than whites. Maybe he was actually referring to differences that have more to do with consciousness development, and he just didn’t know how to express this.

Moreover, the media outrage at his comments also warrants a closer look. These responses may be justified, but they also, I believe, represent a blanket refusal in our culture to acknowledge and address difference in the face of evidence and experience that we are indeed different and that we need to understand these differences. While the media were quick to condemn Watson, they have been and remain remarkably silent about what he was actually pointing to—the undeniable fact that Western policies in Africa are failing.

Africa is reaching a critical phase in its development. Life conditions appear to be declining for a majority of the poor. Climate change, HIV and AIDS, and recurrent conflicts are major factors contributing to this decline. We have to start being interested in what is really going on in Africa because, if we are not seeing things as they are, we will be incapable of finding the right kind of response. We are responsible because our level of consciousness development makes us so. And Africa’s very survival may depend on it.

Ingrid Yngstrom, PhD, is a researcher and consultant who has been working for fifteen years on social policy and related issues in Africa.