It's a lot of stuff and I have a lot of work and a limited amount of energy which I would rather not spend debating something that I anticipate to be false. It can definitely be too early to think long and hard, but if you want to save time, you could unbury what the rulers and intellectuals of the eras in which racism was the paradigm, and analyze them from an ethical point of view. I'll be waiting.
I dunno about the placing-in-charge part, but I would assume it would be "whoever finds out first". Remember the matter with publicizing research on self-modifying AI? Remember when Einstein sent that one letter about a hypothetical city-flattening bomb? Why the concept of the Bayesian Conspiracy could seem like a remotely good idea? "What can be destroyed by the truth, should be" is a very nice motto as a self-discipline, but don't be a stupid Principles Zealot about it. There are times when it is good and wise to shut up and keep the truth to yourself.
I would go even further and say that, if you want to discuss the implications of assuming racism is right, you would do well to do it in a place other than the public website of Lesswrong, if you care at all about not hindering MIRI and the the Future of Humanity Institute from saving humanity from being paperclip-maximized.
As you know, racism is extremely unpopular for reasons ranging from the blindingly simple (the "lesser" races these studies suggest would constitute the larger part of humanity, who aren't keen on being categorized as, by and large, the stupider groups, for instance). to more convoluted causes, such as being associated with very monstrous assholes, who, from these assumptions, did monstrous things.
In the case of the USA, for instance, there was a concerted effort to breed an entire group of people into human cattle. In the case of Germany, there was an effort of extermination: the Nazi was a populist party, and Jews were assumed to be a "smarter and richer elite" (there is still talk today about Jewish people having inherently higher IQs). Now imagine what a populist movement would do with the widespread knowledge (assuming, of course, that it is true) that a racial minority is smarter and richer than the rest, and that they will keep getting smarter and richer than the rest, like a Real Life version of the pigs from Animal Farm. Do you think they would grudgingly accept this inevitable fate, or do you think they would go Khmer Rouge on the "smartasses"?
The Khmer Rouge enjoyed broad popular support of the poor, uneducated peasant masses of village Khmers, who were envious towards "those city guys", which wasn't helped by the fact that a lot of city-dwellers were ethnically Chinese, and were overrepresented in the rich classes. But soon it turned out that Khmer Rouge in general, and the dictator Pol Pot in particular, didn't make any distinction between two populations. Their motto was "To keep you is no benefit; to destroy you is no loss," and they cheerfully applied it to anyone. Pol Pot's regime led to the death of around 2 million people [≈ population of Kosovo, nation] out of a population of 8 million. It's estimated that as many as 4 million died as a whole.
Of course, in the same way that we could hope that our current "rich and bright" would be enlightened enough not to repeat the monstrosities of their racist predecessors, were they to become racist again, we could also hope that our current "poor and stupid" would not be stupid enough (it's just fifteen miserly IQ points after all) to repeat some of their predecessors' horrible acts. We could hope. Are you ready for the consequences, if your hopes are misplaced?
Remember when Einstein sent that one letter about a hypothetical city-flattening bomb?
You mean the Einstein–Szilárd letter? That was a rather unique situation, historically; the experiments laying the groundwork had been performed only a year previously, a world war was imminent, and enormous weapons potential was there to be taken by any government with the requisite technical and scientific resources. It's also worth mentioning that the physics behind nuclear weapons is rather simple, undergraduate-level stuff by modern standards; the real challenge...
Now, it is said we all here pride ourselves on our intelligence, rationality, and moral sense. It is also said, however, that we are a fiercely independent bunch, and that we can let this pride of ours get the better of us. There have also been comments that the live communities that appear at meetups provide much more positive interactions than what goes on on this site's discussions; this might merit further investigation.
My point is; we've done a lot of research on how to do proper ethical and metaethical calculations, and on how to achieve self-empowerment and deal with our own akrasia, which is awesome. We've also done some work on matters of gender equality, which is very positive as well. But I haven't seen us do anything about the basic details of human interaction, what one would call "politeness" and "basic human decency". And I think it might be useful if we started tackling these, for our own sakes, that of those who surround us, and that of easing our mission along, which is, as I understand it so far, to save the world (from existential risk (at the hands of (unfriendly and self-modifying) artificial intelligence))).
What inspired me to propose this post was a video I just saw from Hank Green of the famed and fabled vlogbrothers. I hold these two individuals in very high esteem, and I would expect many here to share my feelings about them, on account of their values and sensibilities largely overlapping with ours; namely the sense that intelligence, knowledge and curiosity are awesome, and that intellectuals ought to use their power to help improve themselves and the world around them.
Here it is; I hope you enjoy it