Racism, Guilt, Self-Hatred and Self Deceipt:
A Philosophers Hard Headed Look at the Dark Continent
A Philosophers Hard Headed Look at the Dark Continent
by Gedaliah Braun
Excerpts
 Racism, Guilt, Self-Hatred and Self-Deceit: A Philosophers Hard-Headed Look at the Dark Continent, by Gedahlia Braun [AmRen] |
Defining a Liberal: a conservative is someone who dislikes blacks as a group but likes them as individuals, and a liberal is someone who likes blacks as a group (i.e. vote-fodder for the welfare state) but dislikes them as individuals.
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Horror At ‘Whites Only’ Sign
In 1987 I spoke with a Canadian academic (in Papua New Guinea) who had excoriated the govern-ment for doing business with South Africa. He mentioned how ‘horrified’ he had been to see a ‘Whites Only’ sign in a South African train station. (I had seen the same signs and confess that I was not hor-rified.)
He was more ‘savvy’ than your typical liberal and agreed that if blacks took power in South Africa they would sooner or later create ‘a fascist’ regime. Nevertheless there must be black rule because ‘even-tually’ they would progress in the way whites have.
But Africa cannot go through the same historical process of development as Europe, because the cul-ture Europe de¬veloped into already exists; and you cannot reinvent the wheel – especially when you know it’s already been invented! Western technology has, it is true, been copied by Orientals, but that is not happening in Africa and there’s not a scin¬tilla of evidence that it ever will.
This guy seemed to be asserting that no matter what South Africa must be ruled by blacks, end of story. But this presented a dilemma, for we both agreed that universal franchise eventually meant zero franchise. Given this, would he still insist blacks must run the country? Yes. Even if blacks them¬selves don’t want it? Well, if that were true it might make a difference; but he didn’t think it was.
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‘Blacks Must Have Black Rule Even If They Don’t Want It!’
A few minutes later, however, he changed his mind. Even if they didn’t want it they must have it. In other words, for whites to deny blacks the vote is absolutely wrong, but for blacks to do the same is all right. Why does something become acceptable just because perpetrators and victims are of the same race?
Given the premise that black rule means oppression, such an absolute prin¬ciple of democracy means it is perfectly all right for blacks to oppress blacks yet profoundly wrong for whites to treat them de-cently –but with¬out suffrage. The idea that a ‘democracy’ guaranteed to become repressive must be supported at all costs, strikes me as paradoxical in the extreme.
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Apartheid Is Not ‘One Single Thing’
Ben is a Zulu, about 60, and works at a garage where I bought a used car; he’s been working there for 26 years and is a South African citizen. Ladybrand is in South Africa, across the border from Mas-eru, the capital of Lesotho (pronounced ‘Lesoothoo’), a small mountainous country completely sur-rounded by South Africa and where I taught from 1987-88.
As we drove to the border I asked what he thought about the trouble in South Africa. Did he want to see blacks take over? His an¬swer was straightforward: No, he did not. ‘Our nation [i.e., blacks] is bad’. Why were they bad? I asked. Because they kill anyone who disagrees with them. Blacks could not run things; if they were in charge, nothing would work.
Does he ever go to Soweto. Often, he says; his family lives there. What do people there think about the ANC and black rule? Well, while many used to be for the ANC, this has changed because of ‘necklacings’ and suchlike. ‘If they are trying to help the black man, why are they killing so many blacks?’ he asked several times.
But then he began talking about how blacks were ‘oppressed’. I asked for exam¬ples; he said if a white man were to beat up a black employee, the police would do nothing. Suppose the boss was black and this happened under a black government? Would the police do anything then? No, he said; but at least you could fight back.
In South Africa a black man would be in big trouble if he hit his white boss.
He said that apartheid was bad, though it was changing. Before, blacks had always been separated from whites – separate toilets, en¬trances, queues, etc.. Everything should be the same for everyone, he said, since doing things separately meant whites didn’t like blacks.
Did that mean going to the same schools? Yes, he said. But since blacks were 80% of the popula-tion, whites would have to attend schools that were 80% black. Would such schools be very good? No, he quickly agreed. But how can you expect whites, who pay for the education of whites and blacks, to send their children to bad schools? He agreed you couldn’t. If everything should be the same, shouldn’t blacks be allowed to vote? Here he agreed with what he had said earlier: he was happy with whites running things and would not want to live in a country run by blacks.
By this time we were at the border post. He expressed great pleasure at our conversation and said he wished we could talk for two hours. I asked if he’d ever had such a conversation with a white man before and he said emphat¬ically he had not, though he’d worked with them for years.
The upshot was that while against apartheid, he was not in favour of blacks voting and controlling the government, nor did he necessar¬ily think everyone should all go to the same schools. He agreed that apartheid was not ‘one single thing’; some parts might be good and others bad. It is clear that many blacks who’ve been ‘persuaded’ that apartheid is bad and that they are ‘oppressed’ would also say they do not want black rule.
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‘Blacks Know Difference Between Right and Wrong But Will Usually Do the Wrong Thing’
During the month I spent in South Africa in January 1986, I took every opportunity to ask blacks what they thought about black vs. white rule (etc.). Almost without exception they said they did not want black rule and for the same reasons: the white man was cleverer and more honest.
The most memorable conversation was with a young woman taking a computer course in central Jo¬hannes¬burg.
At first she expressed a noted hostility towards whites, saying she hated white peo¬ple. All whites? I asked. No, just the Boers (Afrikaners). All Boers? No, just those who hated blacks. So what appeared an extreme view turned out to be quite reasonable: hating those you think hate you.
Nevertheless, there was this antagonism towards whites and so I said to her, ‘You must be anx¬ious to see an end to white rule’. Her answer? ‘No way!’ She didn’t want black rule? Not at all. Why not? Her answer, al¬most word for word: ‘The white man knows the difference between right and wrong and will usually do the right thing. The black man also knows the difference but will usually do the wrong thing!’. And as I heard these words I knew I would not soon for¬get them.
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Light on the Dark Continent
Fascinating observations of an American who has lived in Africa for nearly 30 years.
Fascinating observations of an American who has lived in Africa for nearly 30 years.
Reviewed by Jared Taylor
American Renaissance
Racism, Guilt, Self-Hatred and Self-Deceit: A Philosophers Hard-Headed Look at the Dark Continent, by Gedahlia Braun [AmRen] |
“Almost no one, black or white, left or right, ever says anything but rubbish about race.” So writes Gedahlia Braun in a remarkable book that is anything but rubbish. Racism, Guilt and Self-Deceit is one of those rare books so full of insight and good sense that they are a pleasure to write about. Since the subject is race, this book has not found a commercial publisher, but it can be ordered directly from the author.
Dr. Braun has lived in Africa with only brief interruptions since 1976 and in South Africa since 1988. This book, in the form of a chronological journal, describes how contact with the dark continent quickly dispelled his liberal views and led to startling but plausible conclusions that most Americans—even readers of AR—are likely to find surprising.
Two Theses
Dr. Braun draws on his years of intimacy with Africans to support two main conclusions. The first is that virtually all Africans take it for granted that whites are smarter than blacks. They haven’t the slightest illusion that they could have invented computers or built airplanes, and they recognize that blacks and whites differ in moral and psychological characteristics as well.
What is more, Africans are not the least offended by these realizations. Unlike whites, they do not see any inherent immorality in acknowledging racial differences. Some clever, westernized Africans have discovered—just as American blacks have—that whites are terrified at the thought of racial differences, and have learned to manipulate this terror to their own advantage. But they, too, Dr. Braun finds, can almost always be persuaded to acknowledge the inherent limitations of Africans.
Dr. Braun’s second thesis follows from the first: The vast majority of South African blacks do not want black rule. They know from their own experiences with black policemen and black bureaucrats that when Africans are in positions of power they are corrupt, despotic, and oppressive. Many blacks mouth the slogans of “liberation” but have unrealistic, often ludicrous notions of what “liberation” is likely to mean. Some, when pressed, will even admit that although they know black rule would be a catastrophe for South Africa they pretend to support it because they know that is what whites expect them to do.
Ultimately, as Dr. Braun recognizes, his observations illuminate the terrible flaws in the white man. Without constant urging from liberal whites, virtually all Africans would be content to put their fate in the hands of a race that they recognize as smarter and more fair-minded than their own. Dr. Braun puts it this way:“(1) Blacks cannot manage a modern industrial democratic society; (2) blacks know this and would never think of denying it were it not for white liberals insisting otherwise; (3) except for those black elites who hope to take power, black rule is in no one’s interest, especially not blacks; (4) blacks know this better than anyone and are terrified of black rule.”
On what does Dr. Braun base these heretical conclusions? After several years in Africa, he began to realize that many blacks do not think the way white liberals keep telling us they do. He then systematically started asking Africans—even virtual strangers—what they thought about racial differences and whether they were in favor of black rule.
Unlike most whites, who would be ashamed to ask such questions, Dr. Braun is utterly uninhibited. He discovered that most blacks are eager to talk frankly; most have never had an honest conversation with a white about race and are charmed to find one who is not blinded by the usual cliches. Just as interestingly, he quickly learned that even whites who have lived all their lives in Africa—including journalists and other liberals who claim to speak for Africans—have never had an honest conversation with a black about race.
For the most part, blacks fear majority rule because they know they are much more likely to be cheated, robbed or brutalized by other blacks than by whites. Many Africans believe, in so many words, that “Whites respect one another but we don’t.” One woman put it this way: “The white man knows the difference between right and wrong and will usually do the right thing. The black man also knows the difference but will usually do the wrong thing.” It is their own experiences that confirm many blacks in their preference that their country be governed by whites.
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Morality and Abstract Thinking
How Africans may differ from Westerners
How Africans may differ from Westerners
by Gedaliah Braun
American Renaissance
 A public service billboard in South Africa. Note old tire and gas can. |
I am an American who taught philosophy in several African universities from 1976 to 1988, and have lived since that time in South Africa. When I first came to Africa, I knew virtually nothing about the continent or its people, but I began learning quickly. I noticed, for example, that Africans rarely kept promises and saw no need to apologize when they broke them. It was as if they were unaware they had done anything that called for an apology.
It took many years for me to understand why Africans behaved this way but I think I can now explain this and other behavior that characterizes Africa. I believe that morality requires abstract thinking—as does planning for the future—and that a relative deficiency in abstract thinking may explain many things that are typically African.
What follow are not scientific findings. There could be alternative explanations for what I have observed, but my conclusions are drawn from more than 30 years of living among Africans.
My first inklings about what may be a deficiency in abstract thinking came from what I began to learn about African languages. In a conversation with students in Nigeria I asked how you would say that a coconut is about halfway up the tree in their local language. “You can’t say that,” they explained. “All you can say is that it is ‘up’.” “How about right at the top?” “Nope; just ‘up’.” In other words, there appeared to be no way to express gradations.
A few years later, in Nairobi, I learned something else about African languages when two women expressed surprise at my English dictionary. “Isn’t English your language?” they asked. “Yes,” I said. “It’s my only language.” “Then why do you need a dictionary?”
They were puzzled that I needed a dictionary, and I was puzzled by their puzzlement. I explained that there are times when you hear a word you’re not sure about and so you look it up. “But if English is your language,” they asked, “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,” they replied. I was even more surprised, but gradually it dawned on me that since their language is entirely oral, it exists only in the minds of Kikuyu speakers. Since there is a limit to what the human brain can retain, the overall size of the language remains more or less constant. A written language, on the other hand, existing as it does partly in the millions of pages of the written word, grows far beyond the capacity of anyone to know it in its entirety. But if the size of a language is limited, it follows that the number of concepts it contains will also be limited and hence that both language and thinking will be impoverished.
African languages were, of necessity, sufficient in their pre-colonial context. They are impoverished only by contrast to Western languages and in an Africa trying to emulate the West. While numerous dictionaries have been compiled between European and African languages, there are few dictionaries within a single African language, precisely because native speakers have no need for them. I did find a Zulu-Zulu dictionary, but it was a small-format paperback of 252 pages.
My queries into Zulu began when I rang the African Language Department at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and spoke to a white guy. Did “precision” exist in the Zulu language prior to European contact? “Oh,” he said, “that’s a very Eurocentric question!” and simply wouldn’t answer. I rang again, spoke to another white guy, and got a virtually identical response.
 Kikuyu women do not need dictionaries. |
So I called the University of South Africa, a large correspondence university in Pretoria, and spoke to a young black guy. As has so often been my experience in Africa, we hit it off from the start. He understood my interest in Zulu and found my questions of great interest. He explained that the Zulu word for “precision” means “to make like a straight line.” Was this part of indigenous Zulu? No; this was added by the compilers of the dictionary.
But, he assured me, it was otherwise for “promise.” I was skeptical. How about “obligation?” We both had the same dictionary (English-Zulu, Zulu-English Dictionary, published by Witwatersrand University Press in 1958), and looked it up. The Zulu entry means “as if to bind one’s feet.” He said that was not indigenous but was added by the compilers. But if Zulu didn’t have the concept of obligation, how could it have the concept of a promise, since a promise is simply the oral undertaking of an obligation? I was interested in this, I said, because Africans often failed to keep promises and never apologized—as if this didn’t warrant an apology.
A light bulb seemed to go on in his mind. 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, the very purpose of which is to bind one to a course of action. When one is not sure he can do something he may say, “I will try but I can’t promise.” He said he’d heard whites say that and had never understood it till now. As a young Romanian friend so aptly summed it up, when a black person “promises” he means “I’ll try.”
The failure to keep promises is therefore not a language problem. It is hard to believe that after living with whites for so long they would not learn the correct meaning, and it is too much of a coincidence that the same phenomenon is found in Nigeria, Kenya and Papua New Guinea, where I have also lived. It is much more likely that Africans generally lack the very concept and hence cannot give the word its correct meaning. This would seem to indicate some difference in intellectual capacity.
Note the Zulu entry for obligation: “as if to bind one’s feet.” An obligation binds you, but it does so morally, not physically. It is an abstract concept, which is why there is no word for it in Zulu. So what did the authors of the dictionary do? They took this abstract concept and made it concrete. Feet, rope, and tying are all tangible and observable, and therefore things all blacks will understand, whereas many will not understand what an obligation is. The fact that they had to define it in this way is, by itself, compelling evidence for my conclusion that Zulu thought has few abstract concepts and indirect evidence for the view that Africans may be deficient in abstract thinking.
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