HOW THIS BOOK CAME TO BE WRITTEN
A Tabula Rasa
In August when I left America to teach Philosophy at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, I did so somewhat reluctantly. On the subject of blacks and Africa, I was a tabula rasa [a ‘blank slate’]. I grew up in a typical ‘liberal’ environment where one was taught never to use the word ‘nigger’ (the American equivalent of the South African term ‘kaffir’) – and until 1969, in New Orleans, I don’t think I’d ever heard the word actually used. I was not involved in the Civil rights movement but was certainly not opposed to it. My hometown in upstate New York had few blacks, though in the mid-fifties our high school did have a black cheerleader. While I had no black friends as a youth, this was not by design, and when, in 1968, I met a black man (a fireman), I had no difficulty in forming a friendship – a friendship which has remained to this day.
Important Discoveries
Blacks Accept White Superiority as a Commonplace Fact
So when I went to Nigeria I was neither anti-black nor an afrophile (a ‘lover’ of things black). Nevertheless, I immediately felt ‘at home’ there and because I went without prejudices, I was able to observe things with an unjaundiced eye; and I made some remarkable discoveries.
First, African blacks were not at all uptight about race; second, it was obvious to them that the white man was ‘cleverer’ – and, they were not the least bit uptight about this
Whites' Unquestioned Assumptions Notwithstanding, Blacks Are Not Uptight About Racial Differences.
Only later did I realize that racial ‘sensitivity’ was essentially a Western phenomenon with its roots in white guilt.
Few things I’ve learned in Africa are more important than this lack of racial sensitivity. Much of our 'Western' perspective is based on the ingrained assumption that blacks are deeply offended by any suggestion of racial differences; this in turn is based on the equally unquestioned belief – never examined – that the idea of such differences is morally offensive. To acknowledge that throughout Africa people are not uptight about race must have a profound impact on one's thinking.
I spent the next five years at the University of Nairobi, where I began to observe things more care-fully and eventually to formulate certain ideas. Everything I had noticed in Nigeria (about the lack of racial sensitivity, etc.) was confirmed, but it was in Kenya that I learned (e.g.) how Africans distrust each other, how little they confide in each other and how rarely they form real friendships.
Marked Physical Differences Within Africa
In 1985 I took a position at the University of Papua New Guinea. The people are called Melanesians but are Negroid, and though there are noticeable physical differences between different groups there, just as there are between West, East and North Africans, they are identifiably black.
West Africans, e.g., tend to be mesomorphic, with large bulging muscles, East and North Africans to be more ectomorphic – thinner, with longer, striated muscles. The former lends itself to short bursts of energy, the latter to more sustained efforts. And since American blacks mainly originated from West Africa, you find amongst them and West Africans great sprinters, whilst from East and North Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Somalia) you find the great distance runners; and rarely – if ever – is it the other way round.
Major Insight: Blacks Don’t Believe Races Equal But Learn to Manipulate White Guilt
In 1986 I found myself in South Africa for a month; the contrast with black Africa was phenomenal. It was on this visit that I had a major insight, viz., that westernized blacks, having cottoned on to white racial ‘guilt’, had learned to take advantage of this and use it for the purpose of psychological blackmail. They didn’t believe in racial egalitarianism – the idea that there were no differences between the races, couldn’t be and that it was bad to say there was – any more than ‘ordinary’, non-westernized blacks, but they knew a good thing when they saw it.
In 1986 I began writing down my thoughts about race and racism. In 1987 I took a job in Lesotho (a small country completely surrounded by South Africa) and since late 1988 I have lived in South Africa. I began keeping a journal, which eventually became this book. Thus there are things at which I express amazement – such as the liberalism of South African whites – which later became manifest as my thinking underwent a slow but inexorable evolution. Hence, many ideas in the earlier parts of this book represent my perceptions at that time, and as much as possible I have left this as is. The result, as one reader has said (wishing to remain anonymous), is that the book ‘exhibits a gradual or-ganic growth in complexity, subtlety, detail, completeness and acuity that much increases its overall impact’.
WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK
Making Race Discussable
From the very beginning, my experience in Africa has been at odds with ‘accepted wisdom’, which I gradually came to see as a hoax. One of my principal claims is that until racial issues are made discussable, the problems surrounding race can never be addressed. Hence, I felt that what I had to say needed to be said – and to be heard
Claims, Conclusions and ‘Opinions’
Several people, on reading this book, conclude that my clearly stated belief that whites are, on average and in certain respects, superior to blacks, is the ‘thesis’ of the book. In fact, not only is this not the thesis, it is not a thesis at all.
There is a difference between a claim (‘thesis’) and a conclusion (‘opinion’). A claim is something which I think I could prove. A conclusion (or opinion), on the other hand, is something which I would assert, and might even think I know to be so, but would not say I could prove.
Thus, one of my (‘empirical’) claims is that indigenous blacks are not sensitive about race; and, I think I could prove that. ‘Let us walk on the streets of any city in black Africa and ask people why it is the blacks never make airplanes or computers. You will see for yourself that they will say something like “Because he doesn’t have the brain for it” – and, will be quite unfazed by this.’ But the issue of racial superiority itself – as opposed to what is believed about it – is a different mat-ter. If it can be ‘settled’, it will be by scientists doing ‘hard’ research. As a philosopher, I have no such expertise – though that doesn’t preclude me from coming to certain conclusions, for which I may in fact have compelling evidence.
While it seems obvious to me that there are fundamental racial differences, this is far from being a novel idea, and I think it would be ludicrous for me to write a book attempting to establish such a thesis. I have an opinion – which I think is well-founded – but I am in no position to make claims.
What is worth writing a book about – and about which I do make claims – is (inter alia): this lack of racial sensitivity; the fact that whites, almost universally, assume precisely the opposite; that they make this assumption because they also assume that the idea of racial superiority is wicked and evil; that this assumption is at the root of virtually all racial problems in the West – and, that it is simply false. The latter – along with my analysis of racism – is a philosophical (as opposed to ‘empirical’) claim, which I would defend it in that light.
The Folly of Trying To Make the Unpalatable ‘Palatable’
Trying To Make Views ‘Palatable’
Gives Weapon to Racial Bullies Many who agree with my views feel that I somehow ought to put them in a ‘nicer’ way.
The problem with trying to make these ideas more ‘palatable’ is precisely that you are giving in to the psychological warfare by which whites are being intimidated, bamboozled, browbeaten and blackmailed. Camouflaged ideas will still be deciphered – otherwise the whole exercise would be otiose. But the psychologically astute ‘angry’ black will immediately pick up on the fact that I felt the need to ‘cloak’ my ideas and will – instinctively – ask himself why is he doing this? Answer? Because this whitey thinks that what he’s saying is bad. And I know how to fix his ass! You racist mother, here I come!!
Trying to somehow ‘sweeten’ the truth in order to ‘sneak it by’ the reader is playing into the enemy’s hands and ‘giving the game away’, because by doing so you are, by implication, granting the crucial premise – that any talk of racial superiority is bad (which is why it must be disguised), and believe such things I should be ashamed of myself and hence that the black man has a moral claim against me and so has a right to be ‘angry’ – etc.
In short, anyone likely to be ‘outraged’ by a discussion of racial differences is much more likely to be so precisely if he thinks others expect him to be; and trying to disguise your intent will itself increase that expectation. In the absence of such expectations the response is likely to be very different. The psychology of the bully, after all, is to pick on someone who’s afraid; dissembling here signals to these psychological gangsters exactly that, thereby precipitating the very attack one is trying to avoid by such ‘sanitizing’.
Appeasement Is Self-Fulfilling and Self-Defeating
Appeasement is typically based on fear, which is often self-fulfilling. If you are frightened of blacks, and they pick up on this -- which is just the sort of thing at which they excel – they are more likely to target you specifically because of this fear. In short, precisely because you fear them you will have reason to fear them; and conversely, someone who does not fear them will, for that very reason, have less to fear. It is obvious, therefore, that appeasement, based as it usually is on fear, is inherently self-defeating. We not only need truth here; we need it openly and unadorned.
ON SUPERIORITY/INFERIORITY
It has become fashionable to eschew all talk of superiority and inferiority. Even Michael Levin, e.g., in his book Why Race Matters (1997), insists that he is not saying that blacks are inferior but merely that they are less intelligent, less honest, more violent, more criminal, etc.
Some Things Are Simply Better Than Others
But does anyone really doubt that some things are simply better than others? – that order, e.g., is better than disorder and chaos, that cleanliness is better than filth, that health is better than sickness, that honesty is better than dishonesty and that a peaceful, law-abiding society is better than anarchy? Yet ‘better’ here just means ‘superior’. If whites are more intelligent, more honest (etc.) then – at least in these respects and to this extent – they are better and therefore are superior, end of story. Refusing to use a word when it is apposite is, once again, merely giving in to black psychological blackmail, and rather than gain the appeaser respite, is likely to achieve precisely the opposite.
Aside
I have recently had to query the statement that no one doubts the value of cleanliness. A friend, after firing her maid, went into her quarters to find it filthy beyond belief. This was the person cleaning her house! It struck me that the maid never really understood the virtue of cleanliness, but was mindlessly ‘cleaning’ the house because that’s what she was paid to do. But knowing that cleanliness and order are better than filth and disorder – as, e.g., knowing it is wrong to take what doesn’t belong to you – is part of our moral sense, and such examples provide evidence that many blacks are deficient in this respect
Philosophical Insincerity
While denying the existence of moral facts, Levin ends up admitting (elsewhere) that everyone, including himself, does believe they exist and of necessity must do so. What he seems to ignore is the fact that if he indeed believes moral truths exist then, from his point of view, the existence of such truths is a fact, plain and simple, so that he cannot, without contradicting himself, assert, in his ‘philosophical mode’, that such truths do not exist. This philosophical insincerity – in which one asserts things which one’s actions and words constantly belie – is one of the things which gives academic philosophy such a bad name.
BLACKS AND THE CONCEPT OF TIME
Promising
It was only after living amongst blacks for nearly twenty-five years that I discovered a most important fact. Put simply: blacks lack a full-blooded concept of time. It seems evident that if any African language contains a concept of time it will be in an extremely diminished form, and similarly with respect to the future. I discuss this at some length and would here simply emphasize that many things we find mystifying become clear once we realize this. Thus, I claim, blacks lack a proper concept of promising, because a promise is always an undertaking to do something in the future. Hence, without a clear sense of the future, there will, practically speaking, be no such thing as promising.
Littering
It is obvious why the inability to think ahead contributes to anti-social behaviour: deterrence requires thinking of consequences. Throwing rubbish everywhere? Well, aside from involving generalization-type reasoning (What would happen if everyone did this?), abstaining from such behaviour requires thinking of the future (it will make a mess). Spread of STD and AIDS, as well as the poorer health of black Americans? Obviously, people who don’t think ahead will tend not to take good care of themselves. All planning – personal, business and government – involves thinking of the future. The scourge of malaria in Africa? Ditto. People educate their children, build up savings, get insurance, because they are thinking of the future.
THE SCANDAL OF 20TH CENTURY WESTERN PHILOSOPHY
What Has 20th-Century Western Philosophy ‘Produced’?
Philosophy, as practiced in the West, is written for ‘professionals’, who have tried to turn it into a ‘technical’ subject. But that won’t wash. The ‘hard’ disciplines – math, physics, chemistry – are inherently technical, and so it is inevitable that they are often incomprehensible to the layman. But we know that science is not nonsense because it is responsible for modern technology.
If philosophy does not ‘produce’ in this way, just what does it do? Without suggesting it must show ‘results’, it is reasonable to ask what, of any lasting value, Western academic philosophy has pro-duced. And I think the answer is: precious little.
If philosophers wrote things which ordinary people found interesting, stimulating thought and argu-ment, that alone would justify their existence. But that is seldom the case: no one, except a small coterie, reads a word they write, because often it is incomprehensible even to many of them.
Deliberate Obfuscation Hides Emptiness of Thought
Yet much of philosophy – such as the nature of racism and self-deception – is not inherently techni-cal, but concerns things with which virtually everyone is familiar and in which many are capable of becoming interested. Philosophy should be accessible and interesting to such people, though this is rarely the case, one reason being, I suspect, that philosophers (like other ‘soft’ academics) frequently have very little to say of any real consequence; if they spoke plainly and forthrightly, this would be evident; so they cloak themselves in convoluted jargon and the average joe is impressed. ‘I don’t understand a word he’s talking about, but it must be profound, because it’s way beyond me!’
Calculated Incoherence
Vis a vis calculated incoherence, Anatomy of Racism (1990), edited by David Theo Goldberg, a South African who's apparently 'made it' in American academia, no doubt helped by his virulently anti-South African posturing ('Oh, he's a good South African!'), is a prime exhibit. Almost any sentence from his Introduction will illustrate the deliberate obfuscation and obscurantism of which I speak. The following is typical (p. viii):
Thus, the presumption of a single monolithic racism is being displaced by a mapping of mul-tifarious historical formulations of racisms. The shift here is from a synchronic description of surface expressions reflecting “race relations” to critical anatomies of diachronic transformations between successive racist standpoints assumed and discarded since the sixteenth century.
If you can make any sense out of that you're a better man than I am!
As an exception to philosophers’ lack of interest in mundane affairs, there is Michael Levin’s contra-feminist book, Feminism and Freedom (1987). Levin has since written another excellent book, Why Race Matters. Though my name is not mentioned, many of the ideas and arguments in his book are to be found in the present work. Indeed, in personal communication (4 December 1990), and speaking of the book he was about to undertake and of my book as it existed at that time, Levin wrote: ‘I have to say all the major points that need to be made are made in your book, and made clearly’.
Philosophy Can Be of Practical Value
It is a scandal that Western academic philosophy has so little impact on the everyday world; govern-ments and industry frequently consult sociologists, political scientists and even anthropologists, but almost never philosophers! That should not be so, and I hope it is a virtue of this book that demonstrates, by example, that philosophy can be of great practical value and interesting to the proverbial man-in-the-street.
Gedaliah Braun Johannesburg, South Africa Novemberg 2008
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