THE GUILTY MIND SYNDROME (GMS)

 Yes, ‘Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder’ ".

For years I have heard conservatives call liberalism a mental disease and have generally viewed this as hyperbole. Recently, however, it has occurred to me that people like Michael Savage, the talk show host, are right. For if the essence of liberalism is self-hatred – hatred of one’s race, of one’s sex, of one’s ‘sexual orientation’, of one’s religion, of one’s ethnicity, of one’s nation(ality), indeed, even of one’s species (vis a vis ‘animal rights’) – and if the essence of such self-hatred is taking the enemy’s side and being against one’s own interests – then what better measure of mental illness could there be than acting in furtherance of one’s own destruction? Think about it. If suicidal impulses makes an individual ‘sick’, then surely it makes a society, a people and a race just as sick – and just as certainly, doomed.

Feminism and the Homosexual Lobby: Truly A Sickness Unto Death

Notice how this self-destructive self-hatred, which lies at the heart of liberalism, fits seamlessly with feminism and the promotion of homosexuality. While feminism is inherently destructive because it leads to negative population growth, it has become increasingly – and openly – anti-family, anti-marriage and anti-child-bearing. When a friend, teaching at a junior college in Los Angeles, played a video about the dangers of women not having children, his female students were outraged. They were going to have good jobs – and that was that!! Reasoning with them, he assured me, was out of the question. This is bedrock feminism.

Moreover, it is clear that this assault on marriage and child-rearing is part and parcel of the agenda to legitimize homosexuality – and, preposterous as it might seem, to de-legitimize heterosexuality. Precisely because they are so aware of the abhorrent nature of their own behaviour sodomists will savagely insist on precisely the opposite; hence, e.g., the campaign to institutionalize homosexual marriage.

Thus, two of the dominant ‘liberation’ movements of our time – feminism (with its pro-abortion zealotry) and the promotion of homosexuality – have identical goals and consequences: a suicidally reduced birth rate. Add to this their penchant for taking the side of an enemy sworn to their destruction (...).and what you have, are people whose goal seems to be the destruction of their own society: discouraging marriage and child-rearing is anti-life, as of course is abortion, as is the active encouragement of homosexuality.

Ergo, to the extent these ideas become dominant, they point in only one direction: death. A people who refuse to reproduce obviously has no future. Whites may bury their heads in the sand, but hispanic groups like La Raza, advocating the reconquista of the American southwest, know better.

"Go back to Boston! Go back to Plymouth Rock, Pilgrims! Get out! We are the future. You are old and tired. Go on. We have beaten you. Leave like beaten rats. You old white people. It is your duty to die. Through love of having children, we are going to take over.” [My emphasis.] Truly, a sickness unto death.

Explaining The Rise of the Homosexual Movement

It may seem that the rapid acceptance of homosexuality (since the 1960s) was somehow inevitable. Nevertheless, specific circumstances are relevant. The New York Times has an enormous influence on public opinion in America, far out of proportion to its circulation (in November 2008 only about one million). This is apparently due to the fact that what appears on the Times’ front page largely determines the lead stories on network TV news – which, for the vast majority of Americans, is their only source of news. And who determines what is on that front page? Frequently, says Richard Berke, the Times’ National Political Correspondent and himself a homosexual, ‘literally three-quarters of the people deciding what’s on the front page are not-so-closeted homosexuals’.

It is disturbing, to say the least, that such a relative handful of people, completely hidden from public view, could have such a profoundly insidious impact on the very survival of the Western world. And make no mistake about it, homosexual advocacy groups are often genuinely evil. ...

THE GUILTY MIND SYNDROME (GMS)

Over the past several years an idea has been gestating in the back of my mind, which I have dubbed The Guilty Mind Syndrome (GMS).

Examples (1) In the early 1980s I heard an item on the BBC about a high-ranking Soviet defector who had said that many of the top Communist leaders lived in constant dread of an nuclear attack from America, almost, he said, as if they were looking over their shoulders expecting it at any moment.

(2) In 1973 homosexual activists stormed a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) ‘demanding’ that homosexuality be removed from their compendium of illnesses. Though successful in their intimidation, a small group resisted and formed a subgroup within the APA offering their services to anyone wishing to become straight, claiming a small but significant success rate. The ‘activists’ were incensed by this, insisting that such therapy, though strictly voluntary, must be prohibited and the group disbanded.

3) In The Mail & Guardian, a leftwing weekly in South Africa, there are these paragraphs about Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa (“Mbeki in bizarre Aids outburst”, by Drew Forrest and Barry Streek, week of 26 Oct – 1 November 2001, p.4; all emphases added):

… after referring to medical schools where black people were “reminded of their role as germ carriers”, [Mbeki] says: “Thus does it happen that others who consider themselves to be our leaders take to the streets carrying their placards, to demand that because we are germ carriers, and human beings of a lower order that cannot subject its passions to reason, we must perforce adopt strange opinions, to save a depraved and diseased people from perishing from self-inflicted disease”.
… “Convinced that we are but natural-born, promiscuous carriers of germs, unique in the world, they proclaim that our continent is doomed to an inevitable moral end because of our unconquerable devotion to the sin of lust”.

(4) In late 1999, during a visit to the US, my recently divorced brother had acquired a much younger girlfriend whom his teenage son Clark despised. Approaching the living room, through which he had to pass to exit, my brother says in a conspiratorial whisper, “Is Clark there?”. No, I said, but why are you whispering? Oh, he said, he was carrying a bag with some shoes for his girlfriend. And so? “I don’t want him to see!” Satisfied that the room was ‘clear’, he left.

(5) In Johannesburg, a lesbian couple were convicted of murdering a four year old child. The headline says it all: “SLAIN because he refused to call his mother’s lesbian lover ‘Daddy’” (The Star, 23 March 2006, p.1). (For a frighteningly similar example from the U.S., involving black lesbians, see here.)

Examples Analyzed

(i) Let us assume that Soviet leaders did in fact expect to be attacked by America. The question is, How can one explain this, given that it was totally at odds with reality?

The defector had said that most of these leaders were guilty of terrible crimes, and let us assume that that is also true. I would claim that, with few exceptions, people who do wicked and evil things know that they are wicked and evil – and that they deserve to be punished.

These beliefs – that they were evil and deserved to be punished – were basically true. But they also believed things which were flagrantly false, specifically, that American leaders knew, as the Soviet leaders did, that these Soviets were criminals who deserved to be punished. In fact, nothing could have been further from the truth. 

The Glaring Light Phenomenon (GLP)

So why did the Soviet leaders believe these things? First – and what is typical of someone who’s aware that he’s doing wrong – he assumes that his behaviour and its wrongness are glaringly apparent to everyone and anyone, like a flashing neon light, even when this is not remotely the case (The Glaring Light Phenomenon [GLP]). And secondly, they believed that American leaders not only knew this but would act upon it.

Note, therefore, that what these communists were assuming with regards to what the Americans believed – that they (the Soviet leaders) were evil and deserved to be punished – is nothing more nor less than what these Soviets themselves believed, viz., that they deserved to be and would be punished. And what could be less surprising and more natural than that they should think that others would believe about them precisely what they believed about themselves?

Hence, we get exactly what the defector said: the Soviet leadership living in dread of a nuclear attack from America. GMS.

(ii) Why did homosexual activists demand that psychiatrists offering to help homosexuals wishing to become straight be stopped? First, I would assert that they feel shame and revulsion about their lifestyle and assume that everyone else feels the same way. Anything, therefore, which could even remotely be interpreted as casting aspersions on their behaviour will immediately be seen as a neon light broadcasting their disgusting behaviour for all to see (GLP). ‘What could these psychiatrists be saying other than that our lifestyle is filthy and disgusting?’ (After all, that’s what we think!) And that will not be tolerated! Once again, they are merely assuming that others feel towards them precisely what they feel towards themselves. GMS.

iii) Thabo Mbeki’s accusations against whites are remarkable on several counts. First, the idea of whites ‘carrying placards’ with such allegations is not only false but absurdly so.

Even in America, where whites are still a large majority, this is unimaginable; how much more so in South Africa where they are a small minority recently stripped of political power?

How does one explain Mkebi making such a charge? Well, virtually everything Mbeki accuses whites of saying about blacks is true – and uncannily accurate: they are promiscuous; black men do have higher levels of testosterone and hence are more ‘lustful’; they are more impulsive and have less self-control; and they are ‘disease-carriers’ – besides AIDS and TB, the rate of other sexually transmitted diseases amongst blacks is astronomical; and whether or not Africa is ‘doomed’, it is clear that Mbeki, for one, thinks it is.

But why does he make these ‘bizarre’ charges? Well, once again, he is assuming, first, that blacks’ numerous moral malfeasances are glaringly obvious to everyone (GLP) and hence he is merely assuming that others believe about his group what he himself believes. And so he expects them to say such things because that’s what he thinks they ought to say. In other words, the GMS.

(iv) Though really doing nothing wrong, my brother nevertheless felt like a child-with-his-hand-in-the-cookie-jar. He therefore assumed that everyone somehow ‘knew’ what he was doing (GLP), and that his son Clark, like his namesake Clark Kent, would use his x-ray vision to see through the bag and know immediately who these shoes were for and would (of course!) ‘challenge’ him. Hence, his need to ‘sneak out’. Once again, a clear case of the GMS.

(v) When I saw the photographs of the lesbian couple I thought it was a mistake, because one of them was clearly a man. But no, this was the ‘male’ partner and, as I guessed, the one who beat the child to death.

Inner Turmoil

Why would the child’s refusing to call her ‘daddy’ provoke her so? First of all, and like most homosexuals, she feels (genuine and warranted) self-loathing. Combine this with the unrelenting drumbeat promoting homosexuality as healthy, normal, even desirable, and you get an inner turmoil resulting from the clash between the fantasies she hears and the reality she knows. And once again, she assumes that others regard her with the same disgust with which she regards herself; consequently she expects to be treated with the contempt which she feels towards herself, and, which she thinks she deserves.

Thus, extraordinary as it might seem, when this four year old boy refused to call her ‘daddy’ – which would have been an affirmation of her normality – she can only ‘see’ this as an accusation of what she herself believes and expects to hear: that she is abnormal and disgusting. And so she lashes out. GMS.

How ‘’Liberation’ Has Made Things Worse for Homosexuals

I believe it is precisely this inner turmoil which causes the numerous pathologies so common amongst (male) homosexuals – promiscuity, drug abuse, pedophilia, et. al. – all of which are attempts to reaffirm their sexuality, something which is only necessary because of the self-loathing intrinsic to their lifestyle.

I would further conjecture that this self-loathing has been greatly exacerbated by homosexual ‘liberation’, as a result of which they are constantly having to confront the reality of their behaviour vs. the ‘normality’ they are supposed to believe in, making it much more difficult to ‘ignore’ this reality than before, when the ethos was pretty much: ‘you keep to yourselves and we’ll keep to ourselves’. They were, indeed, living ‘in the shadows’; but that, after all, is pretty much where this behaviour should be. Not in jail, certainly; but not ‘parading’ down main street either.
This murder underscores the very real consequences of Sickness-Unto-Death

Political Correctness: this little boy had a father who wanted to take care of him; instead, he was – of course! – given to this ‘perfectly healthy and normal’ lesbian couple!

Gedaliah Braun
From: Racism Guilt Self-Hatred and Self-Deceid

BLACK DEFICIENCY IN ABSTRACT THINKING, AS SUPPORTED BY THE ENGLISH-ZULU DICTIONARY

 

‘Why Do You Need a Dictionary?’ Written vs. Oral Languages

My first inklings regarding African languages arose from a conversation with students in Nigeria about a coconut in a tree. How would you say where the coconut was – e.g., that it was about halfway up the tree? You couldn’t say that; all you could say is that it was ‘up!’. Right at the top? Nope; just ‘up!’. In other words, no gradations.

A few years later in Nairobi, two women expressed surprise that I had an English dictionary. Isn’t English your language? Yes, I said; it’s my only language. Then why do you need a dictionary? They were puzzled that I needed an English dictionary and I was puzzled by their puzzlement. There are always times, I said, when you come across a word you’re not sure about and so you look it up. But if English is your language, they said, how can there be words you don’t know? What? I said. No one knows all the words of his language.

But we know all the words of Kikuyu; every Kikuyu does. What? (even more surprised).Eventually it dawned on me: being entirely oral, their language existed only in the minds of its speakers. But given blacks’ lack of curiosity and the absence of any external input, the overall size of such a language will remain more or less constant – and, pretty much stagnant. And since such a language exists only in the minds of its speakers, they must know all its words, because if they don’t know them, where else could they be? A written language, on the other hand, existing as it does partly in the written word, can grow beyond the capacity of anyone to know it in its entirety.

Important Consequences

But if the size of a language is limited, it follows that the number of concepts will also be limited and hence that both the language and the thinking will be impoverished. African languages were, of necessity, sufficient in their pre-colonial context, and are impoverished only in contrast to Western languages and in an Africa wanting to live like the West – which, for better or worse, they certainly do. While numerous dictionaries have been compiled between European and African languages there are few intra-African dictionaries, precisely because native speakers have no need for them. (I once had a Zulu-Zulu dictionary – more like a lexicon, really; it was a small format paperback 252 pages long.)

The Concept of Precision

My queries into Zulu began when I rang the African Language Dept at the University of Witwatersrand and spoke to a white guy. I asked him whether ‘precision’ existed in Zulu prior to European contact. “Oh” he said, “that’s a very Eurocentric question!” and refused to answer. I rang again, spoke to another white, with the identical result.

So I called the University of South Africa (UNISA), the large correspondence university in Pretoria, and spoke to a young black man. What was the Zulu entry for ‘precision’. ‘To make like a straight line’, he said. Was this part of indigenous Zulu? No; this was added.

As has been my experience in Africa, we got along like a house afire. I explained my interest in Zulu. He understood and found my questions of great interest.

The Nature of Abstract Entities

Before going any further, let us consider the nature of abstract entities. First, they are usually intangible and can’t be perceived by the senses. The number seven is prime; this primeness, however, cannot be seen, felt or heard; it can only be perceived by the mind. Further, abstract entities are often things which do not exist. ‘What would happen if everyone threw rubbish everywhere?’ refers to something that could happen but hopefully will not happen. Nevertheless, we can think about it.

Everything we observe occurs in time and everything we see exists in space; yet we perceive neither with our senses, but only with the mind. Precision is also abstract; while we can see and touch things made with precision, precision itself can only be grasped by the mind.

Acquiring Abstract Concepts Requires Self-Consciousness

How do we acquire abstract concepts? Is it enough, e.g., to make things with precision to have the concept of it? Africans make excellent carvings, made with precision. So why isn’t the word in their language? Well, to have the concept of precision we must not only deal with precision but must become aware that there is such a thing and then give it a name.

How, e.g., do we acquire such concepts as belief and doubt? We all have beliefs; even animals do. When a dog wags its tail on hearing his master’s footsteps, it believes that he is coming. But it has no concept of belief because it has no awareness that it has this belief and so has no awareness of belief per se; in short, it has no self-consciousness.

A rat conditioned to expect food after pressing a bar but who then finds that sometimes it doesn’t come, will begin doubting whether the bar will bring food; but it does not have the concept because it lacks the self-consciousness needed to become aware of the state of mind we call doubt.

The Concept of Promising In Zulu: ‘I’ll try’

After discussing ‘precision’ (with the black guy at UNISA), he assured me it was otherwise for ‘promise’. Hmmm? How about ‘obligation’? We looked it up. The Zulu entry means ‘as if to bind one’s feet’. No, he said; that was added. But if Zulu didn’t contain the concept of obligation, how could it contain the concept of a promise, since a promise is simply the oral undertaking of an obligation? For him this was a ‘light-bulb’ experience. I was interested in this, I said, because Africans so often failed to keep promises, and, never apologized – as if it didn’t warrant one.

Yes, he said; in fact, the Zulu word for promise – isithembiso – is not the correct word. When a black person ‘promises’ he means ‘maybe I will and maybe I won’t’. But, I said, this makes nonsense of promising, whose very raison d’être is to bind one to a course of action. When one is not sure he can do something he will say, ‘I will try, but I can’t promise’. He said he’d heard whites say that and had never understood it till now. In other words, as a young Roumanian friend so aptly summed it up, when a black person ‘promises’ he means ‘I’ll try’!

The problem here is clearly not linguistic. If it was, blacks would long since have learned the correct meaning; nor can it be a coincidence that the exact same ‘problem’ happens to occur in Nigeria, Kenya and Papua New Guinea. Much more likely is that they lack the very concept and hence cannot give the word its correct meaning. And that almost certainly reflects an intellectual incapacity.

FW de Klerk Addresses This Very Issue

In his decidedly milquetoast-quality book The Last Trek (1998), the last white president of South Africa, FW de Klerk, pointedly mentions the ANC’s consistent failure to keep solemn commitments and agreements. Referring to a speech during the pre-1994 negotiations, he says:

… Mandela was coldly furious about my sharp attack on the ANC and its failure to honour its agreements, and insisted on a second turn to speak. His speech, labeled a tirade by the press, was one of the most vicious personal attacks on a political opponent that most of those present … had ever heard. He accused me of being the head of an illegitimate, discredited minority regime and of being incapable of upholding moral standards … [a]s he piled insult on insult [p.233; emphasis added].

Mandela Responds In Typical African Fashion: BDO and Arrogance

Note how this illustrates an apparent failure to understand the very concept of a commitment and its attendant obligations. Mandela acts as if he doesn’t realize he’s even made agreements and shows no indication of understanding their significance. He never, however, denies that such agreements were made nor does he claim they were (somehow) kept; all of that’s irrelevant. Nor – of course – does he admit not having kept them. Instead, he attacks, demonstrating that the best defense is an offence (BDO).

Mandela’s intemperate outburst illustrates the arrogance of a black elite: I am an important person and am not to be criticized! If this is the attitude of tin-pot academic tyrants in backwater-African-universities, what can you expect from a man, said to be of royal lineage, about to become president of the most powerful country in Africa? Finally – and true to form (and as a corollary of the-BDO) – Mandela accuses De Klerk precisely of which he himself appears guilty, viz., ‘being incapable of upholding moral standards’!

‘Good-Cop-Bad-Cop’: Black Psychological Shrewdness

The next day Mandela acts as if all this never happened. Instead, like children with their mercurial temperaments and short memories, Mandela [began], once again, to adopt a reconciliatory tone. He played down his attack on me as something which had to be said, but was now over and done with. The following morning he and Ramaphosa made a special point of walking across the hall to shake my hand (p.224) illustrating, I believe, not magnanimity but the absence of any genuine anger in the first place and instead, typically shrewd black psychological manipulation through sham anger. I suspect that this ‘hot-and-cold’ routine is (instinctively) meant to wrong-foot one’s opponent, a bit like the good-cop-bad-cop technique, making the ‘victim’ pathetically grateful for any behaviour even remotely reasonable.

Making the Abstract Concrete

Note the huge significance of the Zulu definition of ‘obligation’ — as if to bind one’s feet. An obligation binds you, but it does so morally, not physically. It is abstract: you can’t see it, hear it, or touch it – which of course is precisely why there is no such word in Zulu. So what have the dictionary’s authors done? They have taken an abstract concept and made it concrete: feet, rope and tying are all tangible and observable – and therefore things that (all) blacks will (fully) understand, precisely as they will not (all) understand what an obligation is. The fact that they had to define it in this way is, therefore, all by itself, compelling evidence for my thesis that Zulu thought lacks abstract concepts and, indirectly, for my claim that blacks are deficient in abstract thinking.

A woman working with severely retarded children, mentioned, without any prompting, that these children’s thinking was extremely ‘tangible’: to understand something they had to see it and touch it – in other words, it had to be present to their senses – meaning that they were incapable of thinking of things which did not exist.

But if these children with IQs of 50 are less capable of abstract thought than those with IQs of (say) 70, it follows that the latter would be less capable than those with IQs of 100; etc.. And since the concepts of time and the future are amongst the most abstract, people of lower IQ will have less grasp of the future than those with a higher IQ, and that there must be a significant correlation between IQ and the ability to understand time and the future. Hence, if blacks have a lower average IQ than whites, it would follow that they have less of an understanding of time and the future.

Blacks and Time

My thinking about this began in 1998. As I pulled into my garage (behind my apartment building), several Francophone Africans drove up and stopped right in front of my garage. ‘Hey’, I said, ‘you can’t park here!’ Perfectly friendly and respectful, they asked ‘Oh, are you leaving [now]?’ ‘No’, I said, ‘but’ (stating what one would think was the utterly obvious) ‘I might later.’ ‘Park over there’ – and they did.

The point is, their thinking seemed to encompass only the here and now: if you’re leaving [now], we understand; but otherwise, what’s the problem? I had further such encounters and the key question was always ‘Are you leaving [now]?’

Future, Time and Space All the Same Word in Zulu

The future doesn’t exist; it will exist but doesn’t exist now. People who have difficulty in thinking of things which do not exist, will ipso facto have difficulty thinking of the future.

It appears that the Zulu entry for future – isikhati – is the same word as the word for time, as well as the word for space. In other words, none of these concepts exist in Zulu thought, period. It also appears that there is no word for the past – meaning, the time preceding the present. This should not be surprising since the past no longer exists, just as the future does not yet exist. Hence, people who have difficulty in thinking of things which do not exist will have difficulty in thinking of the past as well as the future. This has an obvious bearing on things like gratitude and loyalty – both of which are noticeably uncommon in blacks.

The reader may wonder why it took me more than twenty years to notice these things. Briefly, I think it is because our assumptions about time are so bed-rock that we’re not even aware of having them and so are equally unaware that anyone might not have them. Consequently this possibility is simply not on our radar – and so of course we don’t see it even when it stares us in the face.

A Metaphysical Argument Regarding Time

Imagine the universe as an absolute void containing not a single particle of matter and in which, therefore, nothing ever happened and in which there was hence no change (since there was nothing to change). In such a universe (the reasoning goes) there would be no time, since time requires change.

Now consider traditional African society as it existed for millennia before any outside contact. It was essentially static: On a macro level, little if anything happened and there was little if any change. A visitor returning after hundreds of years would hardly notice a difference: the habits, the customs, the food, the dress, the medicines, the language, the (absence of) technology, science and literature would be the same. In terms of human development there would be a void.

But if the absence of change means the absence of time passing, then to the extent that African society remained static it would be fair to say that in fact there was indeed neither past nor future. With no real history, and no reason to anticipate the future, such concepts would have had little if any purchase, and hence would have been unlikely to have arisen in their mental repertoire. As is still largely the case, there would only be the here and now.

Where Blacks Do Pay Attention To Time

Interestingly, there are areas where blacks do notice time. They see crops planted, growing and then harvested; they see children born, grow old and die; and, they plan for their funerals, because death is a certainty, while ill health is only a risk. (The Zulu entries for ‘risk’ mean ‘danger’ and ‘a slippery surface’.) Furthermore, death is concrete and observable. In short, blacks tend to be aware of time when it is manifested in concrete, observable objects and events.

Math and Geometry: A Problem for South African and American Blacks

A quote from an article noting the problems South African blacks have with mathematics (“Finding New Languages for Maths and Science”, The Star [Johannesburg]; 24-Jul-02, p.8): 

[Xhosa] is a language where polygon and plane have the same definition; … where concepts like triangle, quadrilateral, pentagon, hexagon are defined by only one word.

In other words, it is a language in which these concepts simply do not exist. In America blacks are said to have a ’tendency to approximate space, numbers and time instead of aiming for complete accuracy’. In other words, they are also poor at math. Notice the identical triumvirate of abstract concepts – space, numbers and time – none of which can be seen, heard or touched. Is it just a coincidence that these are the concepts with which blacks – everywhere – seem to have such difficulties? 

The Zulu entry for ‘number’, by the way – ningi – means numerous, which is not the same as the concept of number. It is clear, therefore, that there is no concept of number in Zulu.

Maintenance

White rule in South Africa ended in 1994. It was about ten years later that power outages began, which have now (2007) reached crisis proportions. Part of the problem is the government’s failure to build more power plants, in spite of being specifically warned about this in 1999. More generally, it is the breakdown of existing power plants due to lack of maintenance. Maintenance is future-oriented, the Zulu entry for which is ondla, which means: ‘1. Nourish, rear; bring up; 2. Keep an eye on; watch (your crop)’.

In short, there is no such thing as maintenance in Zulu thought, and it would be hard to argue that the absence of this concept has nothing to do with the fact that throughout Africa, the phrase ‘nothing works’ is only an exaggeration.

Motivation and Ambition

An article in The New York Times (“Schools Plan to Pay Cash for Marks”, by Jennifer Medina, 19 June 2007) reveals that New York City is considering a plan (since implemented) aimed at getting blacks to do ‘well on standardized tests and to show up for class’, which could ‘earn [them] as much as $500 a year’. Adults would be rewarded for ‘keeping a full-time job ... having health insurance ... and attending parent-teacher conferences’. Students would be paid for doing well on tests and sometimes just for taking them, as well as for regular attendance and for each book they read.

The clear implication is that blacks are not very motivated. Motivation involves thinking about the future and hence about things which do not exist. Given black deficiencies in this regard, it is not surprising that they would be thus lacking, and having to prod them is further evidence for this. 

The Zulu entry for ‘motivate’ is banga, under which I find ‘1. Make, cause, produce something unpleasant; … to cause trouble ... . 2. Contend over a claim; … fight over inheritance; … 3. Make for, aim at, journey towards …:’. But when I ask blacks what banga means, they have no idea, which tells me that whatever it means it does not mean motivation. Clearly this is a substitute definition – choosing the ‘closest’ Zulu word – as opposed to a constructed definition (‘as if to bind one’s feet’).

In fact, no word in Zulu could refer to motivation for the simple reason that there is no such concept in Zulu; and if there is no such concept there cannot be a word for ‘it’ – precisely because in Zulu there is no ‘it’. Hence the need to entice blacks into behaving as if they were motivated.

The entry for ‘ambition’ is langazela, which simply means ‘desire’ or ‘longing’. Compare this to the Encarta Dictionary: ‘desire for success: a strong feeling of wanting to be successful in life and achieve great things’ [in the future], which is a good description of precisely what blacks tend to lack.

An Evolutionary Explanation

One explanation for this lack of abstract thinking, including the diminished understanding of time, is that blacks evolved in a climate where they were able to live day to day without having to think ahead; they never developed the ability to think of things which didn’t exist because there was no need to. Whites, on the other hand, evolved in circumstances where they did have to develop this ability – like thinking about what would happen if they didn’t build stout houses and store enough fuel and food for the winter – since otherwise they simply would not have survived.

Moral Shamelessness

The same New York Times article mentions a Darwin Davis of ‘the Urban League’ as ‘caution[ing] that the … money being offered [remember, this is for attending class] was relatively paltry … wondering … how many tests students would need to pass to buy the latest video game’!

Instead of being shamed by the need for such a plan, he bitches that it’s not enough! If he is unaware of how gross his remark is, he is morally obtuse. Even so, you would still expect him to know that most people would find it offensive. In fact, however, this is precisely how blacks often do ‘understand’ morality – as what others tell them or expect them to do. Yet for many blacks even this externally-based morality has failed to take hold – which makes sense, because this ‘morality’ is dependent on enforcers, and since these have disappeared, there is nothing left, neither internalized morality (the ‘real thing’) nor the external. One result is moral opacity.

GRUESOME CRUELTY EVIDENCE OF BLACK MORAL OPACITY

Jeering, Mocking and Laughing at Agony and Death

In a book review of Driving South (David Robbins [Johannesburg: Southern Books], 1993), ‘A Cape social worker sees elements that revel in violence ...

“It’s like a cult which has embraced a lot of people who otherwise appear normal. Young people in particular. At the slightest provocation [NB re the volatility of black emotions], their blood-lust is aroused. And then they want to see death, and they jeer and mock at the suffering involved, especially the suffering of a slow and agonising death.” [The review is in The Citizen, July 12, 1993, p.6.] A letter-writer describes ‘necklacing’ (The Citizen; “SA’s New Nazis”, August 10, 1993, p.18):

‘The petrol-filled tyre is jammed on your shoulders and a lighter is placed within reach of your hand. Your fingers are broken, needles are pushed up your nose and you are tortured until you put the lighter to the petrol yourself.’ In May 2008 Johannesburg’s black townships erupted in mayhem and murder. A headline read “FLAMES OF HATE: Reiger Park local laughs after ‘necklacing’”:

One plump woman in a knitted cap and overall couldn’t contain her laughter as she pointed to the barbarous scene and related the events to locals. [The Star, 19 May 2008, p.1.] This is all so unspeakably vile and repulsive, so beyond depravity, the human brain recoils. This is not merely the absence of human empathy, but the positive enjoyment of human suffering, enjoying it all the more when it’s ‘slow and agonising’. Can you believe – jeering, mocking and laughing at this?

Rwanda: ‘Ecstasy of Killing Beyond My Reach’

From the Chicago Tribune (“Hutu killers danced in blood of victims, videotapes show”, 14 September 1995, p.8, Sec 1) this from UN investigator Alain Siggs regarding the 1994 massacre of Tutsis in Rwanda: “The ecstasy of killing, the lust for blood; this is the most horrible thought. It’s beyond my reach” (emphasis added); and there is no reason to think these were ‘abnormal’ Africans. As further evidence of their lack of moral consciousness, the murderers videotaped their crimes, ‘apparently want[ing] to record their actions for posterity’. It truly beggars belief. Unlike (e.g.) Nazi war criminals, who tried to hide their deeds, indicating that at least they realized what others would think, even that was lacking in these blacks.

Amy Biehl Trial: ‘Laughing At Woman Groaning In Pain Impossible To Explain To Rational Minds’

The following, from a book by a retired senior South African jurist, Rex van Schalkwyk, reports remarkably congruent behaviour (One Miracle Is Not Enough [Johannesburg: Bellwether Publishers], 1998 (pp.188-89):

… Amy Biehl, the American Fulbright scholar brutally murdered in Guguletu [near Cape Town] – for being white, when she had wanted only to assist in the transition to democracy – will be remembered for the tragic irony of her death. … it is impossible to explain in terms accessible to rational minds this extract from a report of the trial … : ‘Supporters of the three men accused of murdering … [her] burst out laughing in the public gallery of the Supreme Court today when a witness told how the battered woman groaned in pain’ [The Star, 25 November 1993; my emphasis]. 

These incidents – and the responses they evoke (‘the human brain recoils’; ‘beyond my reach’; ‘impossible to explain … to rational minds’) – point to traits that cannot be wished away and further confirm my claim that blacks are deficient in moral consciousness.

from the book Gedaliah Braun Racism Guilt Self-Hatred and Self-Deceit

Homosexuality in Africa

When the AIDS pandemic started in Africa there was much speculation about its source, from infected needles to homosexual transmission etc. I knew that neither was true. Hypodermic needles are not generally available in black Africa, and homosexual behaviour is, to understate the matter, highly frowned upon. When I had mentioned to students in Nigeria (in the late 70s) that in America there were men who have sex with other men, they flatly refused to believe it, the very idea filling them with disgust and revulsion. 

There are naturally effeminate men in Africa, but since the idea of engaging in sex with men never occurs to them – much as, a few hundred years ago, no one ‘missed’ electricity – they mostly live ordinary lives, marrying and having children. Their lack of sexual ‘freedom’ is a small price to pay compared to the increasingly hysterical promotion of homosexuality in the West. 

Peter Akinola Note these remarks by Peter Akinola, head of the Anglican Church in Nigeria (whose 18 million members dwarf the four million in all of North America): “I cannot think of how a man in his senses would be having a sexual relationship with another man. Even in the world of animals, dogs, cows, lions, we don’t hear of such things” (“Defender of the Faith”, The Atlantic Monthly, November 2003). That such a prominent public figure would speak thus indicates that political correctness continues to have little impact on black Africa – and on American blacks as well. 

Homosexual Marriage: Black Instincts Rule In the 2008 U.S. elections, California voted on whether to amend the state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman. It passed by a 52-48 margin, with a majority of whites voting against it (and hence for same sex marriage). The only reason it passed (and homosexual marriage ruled unconstitutional) is that 70% of blacks voted for it (and against homosexual marriage)! Blacks tend to vote en masse, and the vast majority voted for the far-left Barack Obama, but when it came endorsing homosexual marriage, they voted against everything they were supposed to believe in. I can only attribute this to the same instinctive revulsion I found in my students in Nigeria, illustrating another remarkable congruence between American and African blacks.

Unfortunately, this ‘last-gasp’ attempt to stem the decline of America – a decline manifested by this frantic promotion of sexual perversion – is almost certainly doomed to failure.

Gedaliah Braun

from: RACISM, GUILT, SELF-HATRED AND SELF-DECEIT

Fearing Blacks Is ‘Realistic’ but ‘Racist’, Meaning: We Should Not Be Realistic!

In December 1984, a young white man, Bernard Goetz, was approached on a New York underground train by four black youths ‘asking’ for $5. Having been a previous victim of black muggers, and certain that they were about to rob him, Goetz pulled out a gun and shot all four (all of whom had criminal records). Due to pressure from white liberals and black ‘activists’, he was charged with attempted murder and assault but was acquitted (though spending eight months in jail on a lesser charge). 

In the International Herald Tribune (19 June 1987, p.3; all emphases added) Joseph Berger writes about the case. 

Underlying the issue of crime … was the issue of race. Scholars such as Dr. Kenneth B. Clark [black], … have expressed doubt that Mr. Goetz would have shot four white youths asking him for money. 

However, Marvin E. Wolfgang, a criminologist …, said that perceptions about who is more likely to commit a crime have some statistical basis. For four violent offenses – homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault – the crime rates for blacks are at least 10 times as high as they are by whites, he said. 

“The expectation that four young blacks are going to do you harm is indeed greater than four young whites”, he said. “I can understand the black position that this is a racist attitude, but it is not unrealistic”.

Legal scholars such as Graham Hughes … said it would be “intolerable to adopt a social norm or legal concept that you can reinforce your argument of reasonable fear just because the person happens to be a young black person”. The courts, for example, have generally ruled that police cannot take race into account as a factor in leading to an arrest. 

My response to Kenneth Clark would be, “Of course he wouldn’t have shot four whites. First of all, it’s hard to imagine four ordinary, middle-class whites asking someone for five dollars. But if they did, then no, Goetz probably wouldn’t have shot them because he wouldn’t have feared being robbed. Whereas with the blacks he was – justifiably – so worried”. We can imagine circumstances in which four whites would be threatening and four blacks not, but the point is, their being black by itself is seen as menacing – and on the evidence adduced, quite rightly so. 

Which leads to Marvin Wolfgang’s observation that ‘perceptions about who is more likely to commit a crime have some statistical basis’. Some? Given the facts he asserts, they have a very good basis and create a presumption that, other things being equal, the chances of blacks harming you are much greater than whites. 

Yet, according to him, this attitude is ‘racist’ – though ‘not unrealistic’. But why is it racist – i.e., bad? He’s already said that the rate of violent crime is ten times higher for blacks and hence that the greater ‘expectation’ of harm is warranted – and given these facts we don’t need a criminologist to tell us this! – which means that the belief that blacks are a threat is true, end of story. Since racism is bad, what Mr Wolfgang is telling us, in a nutshell, is that we ought not to be realistic! 

Prelude To a Continuing Discussion: Can A Fact Be Racist? 

Question: can such a true belief – a fact – be racist? The very idea seems absurd. A fact is merely something that is the case, and such a thing cannot, in and of itself, be racist. To call something racist is to say it is morally bad and it would seem absurd to call a fact morally bad. 

But if a fact cannot be racist, neither can a proposition, for a proposition is simply what is made true (or false) by facts. A proposition, therefore, is like a ‘picture’ of a fact: to every fact there corresponds the proposition which would assert that fact, while, conversely, to every proposition there corresponds either a fact (which makes it true) or the absence of that fact (whose absence makes it false). So propositions and facts are intimately related, and if facts cannot be racist neither can propositions. 

Can ‘Truth Itself’ Be Wrong? 

Similar thoughts are expressed by two Harvard professors, James Q Wilson and Richard J Herrnstein, in their book Crime and Human Nature (1985, p.468; emphases added; 

Herrnstein was later to co-author The Bell Curve):

There is no way to discuss the evidence, such as it is, on constitutional factors un-derlying the association between race and crime without giving offense. Even to allude to the possibility that races may differ in the distribution of those constitutional factors that are associated with criminality will strike some persons as factually, ethically, or prudentially wrong. We disagree. One cannot dismiss such possible connections as factually wrong without first investigating them. Honest, open scientific inquiry that results in carefully stated findings cannot be ethically wrong, unless one believes that truth itself is wrong. 

What then can be racist? How about beliefs? If by ‘beliefs’ we mean the content(s) of beliefs, then that is the same as a proposition, which we’ve said cannot be racist. What is racist is not the content of a belief but rather the manner in which it is held. Similarly, while facts per se cannot be racist, one’s attitudes towards them can be. If, e.g., one ‘enjoys’ discovering (e.g.) that blacks’ have a higher crime rate, that might indicate racism; but it still wouldn’t be the facts which were racist but how we deal with them. 

No One Can Be Blamed for Acting on Reasonable and Justified Presumptions In calling fear of blacks ‘racist’, Mr Wolfgang is saying it is bad. But is it bad? He agrees that it’s ‘not unrealistic’ – meaning that it’s reasonable and justified; moreover, it is self-pre-servative: one defends oneself against dangers and he agrees that blacks are a danger. But if it’s not bad, how can it be racist, since to say it is racist is to say it is bad? 

And why would it be ‘intolerable to reinforce your argument just because the person … [is] black’? If Mr. Hughes wishes to deny the facts asserted by Mr. Wolfgang he should say so; but if he means that even given these, it would still be ‘intolerable’, I’d like to know why. We’re not saying that because a person is black he is a criminal; we are only speaking, as he is, of ‘reasonable fear’ and of what one is thereby morally entitled to do: specifically, that when four blacks ‘ask’ for $5, you are entitled to conclude with a moral certainty that they are about to rob you and to act accordingly. 

True, innocent blacks will suffer, being effected by similar presumptions when looking for housing, jobs, etc. But whose fault is that? No one can be blamed for acting on reasonable and justified presumptions. If there is fault to be found here it is with black criminals and liberals, who have created a climate where these realities simply cannot be discussed. 

Racial Profiling Supported by Jesse Jackson The latest incarnation of these ideas (circa June 1998) is ‘racial profiling’. State police in New Jersey (U.S.) have used the facts about black criminality to both prevent and detect it with considerable success. But rather than defend their eminently sensible procedure, the police found it necessary to deny they were taking race into account – even when it was evident that they were. And so we have another instance where the fear of confronting racial realities has deadly consequences. 

If It’s Good Enough for Jesse, It’s Good Enough for Me! 

I note with some satisfaction that that arch-radical black American apologist, Jesse Jackson, has recently been quoted thus (by Clarence Page, himself black, in the Chicago Tribune, 5 January 1994, Section 1, p.13): 

“There is nothing more painful to me ... than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved” [emphasis added]. 

Meanwhile, taxi drivers in Washington, D.C. face a $500 fine for nothing more than acting on precisely this reasoning*. Such thoughts – as obvious as the nose on one’s face – have long been banished as ‘incorrect’ and almost everyone has danced to the Emperor’s Tune. Jesse Jackson’s remarks make short shrift of black ‘complaints’ regarding different treatment by store detectives and the like, and one could henceforth reply to such accusations of racism simply by saying, “Well, if it’s good enough for Jesse Jackson, it’s good enough for me!”.

*

BLACK TAXI DRIVERS PUNISHED DUE TO THIS SAME PHILOSOPHICAL ERROR 

What Is Discrimination? 

‘Not Blacks. Niggers.’

In Washington, D.C., taxi drivers (mostly nonwhite) face a fine of $500 fine ‘for discrimination’ if they fail to pick up black passengers (Paved With Good Intentions, p.58.) Such a law rests on a presumed understanding of the nature of discrimination. The question of whether or not this is the correct understanding – and hence whether these taxi drivers, acting on reasonable and justified presumptions, ought to be punished – is yet another instance where a compelling practical issue rests on an essentially philosophical one, viz., 194  Exactly what is discrimination (aka racism)? 

To quote from The End of Racism (p.251): 

“This racism stuff is bullshit” one African student who was driving to put himself through school told me. “I’m not going to pass up a fare, which is money in my pocket. But I don’t want to get robbed. You know what the black crime rate is in New York? Do you want me to risk a gun to my head, man? What’s wrong with you?” A white driver in Chicago told me, “No exceptions, pal. I never pick up niggers”. 

“You don’t like blacks?” I asked. 

“Not blacks. Niggers.” “That sounds like racism to me.” “Hey, that’s crap. I pick up older blacks all the time. I have no problem with giving black women a ride. My black buddies won’t pick up no niggers. I ain’t no more racist than they are.” 

Self-Preservation Requires Policy-Decisions 

Note that the decision these drivers must make is not simply whether to pick up this customer, but rather whether to adopt a certain policy, i.e., of regularly picking up this type of person in this type of situation; in other words, regularly making certain kinds of decisions in certain kinds of circumstances – because of course they don’t pick up just one passenger; they pick up thousands. 

There are, roughly, three choices: one, pick up anyone looking for a taxi; two, try to discern, in the case of young black males, whether they ‘look safe’; three, don’t pick up young black males at all (except, perhaps, in exceptional cases). The first is clearly fraught with great danger, which is why few adopt it. The second may look better, but experience tells us that it will eventually lead to the same result as the first, since, over the long haul, you are bound to make mistakes. This leaves the third policy, which most drivers adopt out of common sense self-preservation – and yet for which they risk a harsh penalty.

From: RACISM, GUILT, SELF-HATRED AND SELF-DECEITby Gedaliah Braun

RACIAL SENSITIVITY: ‘DIFFICULTIES’ WITH THE CONCEPT OF AVERAGES

  ‘But Some Blacks Are Extremely Intelligent!’ 

On a visit to America in 1986, a well-educated friend responded to my view that blacks were on average less intelligent by saying, ‘But some of the blacks working in my office are extremely intelligent!’. But of course I wasn’t saying that no blacks are smart but only that fewer were, indicating how people can act as if they don’t understand the concept of averages. 

As applied to individuals this creates presumptions: if I had to guess who was smarter, this random white or this random black, it would be rational to pick the white; but in any given case I could well be wrong. Most people understand this , but when it comes to ‘sensitive’ issues common sense flies out the window. 

Furthermore, whatever the average difference, there must be an overlap, i.e., blacks who are more intelligent than many (or even most) whites. That this (random) white is probably more intelligent than this (random) black is one thing; but that he must be is something for which I cannot imagine any possible grounds. 

Philosopher Talks Sense, Journalist Nonsense I came across this from a well-known British philosopher, Anthony Flew: 

... the fact that I belong to some set which is on average less this or more that than another set, to which you belong, carries no implication that I, as an individual, am less this or more that than you. … [As for] the correspondent who told [Arthur] Jensen that “If the group is to be labelled intellectually inferior, I, as a member of that group, am also inevitably and automatically labelled”, his argument was … fallacious. [The reference is from Arthur Jensen’s Genetics and Education (1972, p.15). The entire quote is from “‘Education against Racism’: three comments”, by Anthony Flew, Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol. 21, no. 1, 1987, p.136.] In The Race Gallery (1996), Marek Kohn, discussing The Bell Curve, writes (p.115): 

... what counts [Herrnstein and Murray say] is an individual’s capabilities, and an individual of any ethnic group may have a high IQ. Many critics did not feel that this was an adequate solution to the racial intelligence question. ‘What’s the difference between thinking that the black male next to me is dumb and thinking there’s a 25 per cent chance that he’s dumb?’ [meaning that there’s a 75% chance that he’s not dumb] asked Alan Wolfe, one of twenty commentators given space in The New Republic after Andrew Sullivan’s decision to publish a piece by Herrnstein and Murray caused almost his entire editorial staff to revolt. 

While I might not expect an uneducated African adolescent to understand probability (which is what this amounts to), I certainly would of someone writing in The New Republic. If this man Wolfe is really such an imbecile that he cannot understand this simple statement of probability, then he should look for a new line of work, because he would truly be a disgrace to his profession – indeed, to almost any profession.

Gedaliah Braun

RACISM, GUILT, SELF-HATRED AND SELF-DECEIT - PREFACE

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