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Why black Africans struggle
This landed in my inbox a few weeks ago. Caused a great uproar too.
Enjoy!
Why African Blacks Struggle
Jan Lamprecht - 6/9/2005
Everyday I see life here in Johannesburg carrying on a lot like it did under
Apartheid. In spite of racial quotas and preferences, African blacks
struggle forward. Black Empowerment businesses hit the wall one after the
other. African Blacks who get jobs thanks to Affirmative Action, almost
never carry out their duties with the same level of competence as the whites
who came before them. I see this day after day, repeating itself thousands
of times over - and not just in South Africa today. This has been going on
in lots of other African countries. And it is clear that the problem is not
with white people - the problem is with Africans themselves. But how many
black people are willing to admit it?
What people refer to as "Racial Discrimination", is nothing more than logic
in action. You can legislate against it all you want and even throw people
in jail but you will never kill it. You will never kill it because it is the
truth, and even if people don't know it exists they will sooner or later
realize it for themselves. It will never die until the root cause of it is
addressed. Any white or Asian person who remains in contact with black
people for any length of time (years, or more likely decades), stands a very
good chance of becoming a racist. I have seen this happen, and it is a fact
of life. It often occurs that people from Europe or America come to Africa
and stay here for a long time, and the process will cause them to become
"racist". Even Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who devoted his life to helping black
people in his little hospital, made statements which would be regarded as
extremely racist.
Why do I say that people will become racist? Well, its because when you live
among blacks for any length of time you start to realize that they are often
their own worst enemies. You begin to realize that they are often the cause
of their own disasters, and it also happens that many of them refuse to
listen to reason. You can tell them the problem, but they won't listen until
it's too late. Black people rule more than 50 countries on this planet, and
every one is a virtual disaster area. In the very few which have not become
a disaster zone, you will discover that there are either white people or
Asian people who are the backbone of the economy, or you will find the
country receiving tons of foreign aid from Western nations. What causes
racism is the simple logic that people eventually wake up to the fact that
most of the disasters and suffering which befall blacks are of their own
making. When one is distant from lots of black people, or one lives in a
society dominated by whites you do not spot this fact that easily. What
happens is that when people get involved with black people and get to know
them well that they then begin to realize their shortcomings and this is how
racism comes into being. That is why Police in the USA for example, are
among the first to become racist.
The USA and Europe are getting a good share of illegal black immigrants, and
one can already see the rise of racism in reaction to this. Indeed, in
Europe, one sees this situation is already far more advanced and one can see
the resultant growth in the Far Right as a result. It seems to me that
racism is going to be on the rise worldwide as black refugees, from failed
black countries continue running away from messes which they created. The
rest of the Western world is slowly, very slowly, starting to wake up to
facts about blacks which we in Africa have known for a very long time.
Black people, as individuals are very amiable, funny, musical, etc. As
individuals they can be fun to have around. But, as soon as they organize
themselves into groups and nations, something goes wrong. They end up taking
courses of action which can be very self-destructive.
Exactly what causes this? It is two fold. On the one hand, it has to do with
their attitude and values. On the other hand, it has to do with
intelligence. Let's discuss attitude for a moment. Black people are
extremely gregarious, more so than whites, and they place little value on
the individual, and much more on the group. One of the key elements in the
rise of European and American dominance in the world has been the value
accorded to individual accomplishment. Native black African society
suppresses the individual and forces a conformism upon people. This makes
them very susceptible to being herded like sheep. There will be very few
individuals who are willing to stand up as leaders and who will be prepared
to go against the grain. The other fault is a tolerance of the wrong things.
For example, they have a very easy-going attitude to life - an attitude of
Que Sera Sera, what will be will be. Instead of seeing a problem, and
wanting to deal with it at its root, they instead ignore it and hope it will
go away - which most of the time it does not. So they leave small problems
to grow and to ferment and to then become big problems! (You will see this
all over Africa). This very "black" attitude is reflected in the popular,
and funny song (which I like), called "Don't Worry, Be Happy". It is
precisely that sort of viewpoint towards life which causes so many problems
for them.
Today, in Zimbabwe, we see dictator Robert Mugabe murdering his own people
and otherwise doing as he pleases. We see a lack of leadership and
opposition to him. But this story has played itself out in lesser forms
across Africa. Who voted him in? Whites certainly did not. Time and again,
black people have voted for the very people who went on to slaughter them.
All across Africa one finds black people running from countries which they
own, and have complete control over - and yet, just a few decades earlier,
these countries were very successful.
There is a very real tendency for black people to live for today without a
thought for tomorrow. It is something we are very used to in Africa, and we
take it for granted. Whites and Asians in Africa often feel that they have
to think for the blacks and to anticipate the problems because if left to
the blacks, the problems will become very real. What causes us to act like
this is because daily life and experience has taught us that most of the
problems which affect blacks are actually preventable.
I'm not a slave to science, nor to the pronouncements of scientists, but
there are some scientific concepts which may have a lot more validity than
we give them credence for. One idea which I have kicked against a lot is
"Survival of the Fittest". One of the problems is that it is a vague term.
But I must admit that practical experience has taught me that this concept,
or a derivative of it, may make a lot of sense. I will explain more about
that later.
These days one never stops hearing the "political version" of Darwin's
theory of evolution. The political version, as I think of it, is that Africa
was the cradle of all human life and therefore, everyone, everywhere, across
the world, owe something to Africa and to black people, in particular. We
are inundated with a lot of this here in South Africa. They can't stop
reminding us that Africa is the cradle of humanity - or so they say. I'm not
going to argue the scientific logic of this issue. Instead, I will approach
it from another angle.
I recently had an interesting conversation with a Jewish friend of mine,
Dave, who is, in keeping with many Jews in South Africa (the few that are
left), very liberal. I should say that of all the people who could not
stomach the New South Africa, the Jews fared the worst. In percentage terms
more Jews have fled South Africa in the last 8 years than any other group of
people. Exact figures are not available, but it could be as much as half the
Jews who have left this country in the last eight years - and yet, many of
these Jews believed the African National Congress would be an improvement
over Apartheid. It was these people who had their businesses destroyed by
the resultant socialism and who bailed out faster than anyone else. I am
normally a supporter of Jewish people, especially Israelis, but I have to
say that the majority of South African Jews definitely read the political
situation wrong with regard to the ANC. I must emphasize however, that there
were exceptions. There were those who fought staunchly against them.
Dave and I were chatting about Africa. Dave remarked that even at his age,
he just can't understand why blacks just can't get their act together. They
have their "freedom" and they're stuffing it up. "What's wrong with blacks?"
asked Dave. I looked at him and said, "Its simple really - intelligence". At
the heart of all the problems which blacks have - across the world - is one
thing, and one thing alone - intelligence or the lack of it.
Then Dave launched into the theory that if only the blacks get a chance,
then they will do well. I have had similar discussions with lots of other
people here in South Africa about this same issue. Many white people here in
Africa have indeed tried to adopt liberal values - very hard - but then they
say "There is something that doesn't make sense... All people really are not
equal, and they do not behave the same way". They are all mystified by the
lack of black performance. They become frustrated because they see golden
opportunities thrown away. They see waste, they see corruption - and
megalomania. They just don't understand the black psyche.
A good friend of mine, Bernadette, fights with me about this racial issue a
lot. She is a devoted Christian of the Roman Catholic faith, and she wants,
with all her heart everyone to be equal. She tells me that in 15 years time
South Africa will be a strong country again. I have to smile at her
optimism. I know what Bernadette wants. She wants what everyone in the world
wants. She wants peace, she wants love and she wants everyone to love one
another and to be happy. She believes, in her heart, that love can overcome
all the problems of the world. But I tell her that she is dreaming a dream,
which if she would look around her she will see that this is not how the
real world is. Bernadette, is of course a "native" white South African and
many people here still hope that somehow, in spite of all the indications to
the contrary, South Africa will once again be a First World country. There
was a time when South Africa was the 18th biggest trading nation in the
world, and most of us want South Africa to be a country to be proud of. But
I doubt it will happen.
So I fight with my friends. I tell them that they are all dreaming. It is
all wishful thinking. The writing is on the wall. South Africa is not going
to be an exception to the trend in Africa. In fact, South Africa's apparent
"successes" of the last 8 years are no different to Mugabe's early
"successes" of the 1980's. The whole thing could come undone very quickly.
Dave remarked to me that all humans came from Africa. So then I asked him:
"If the first humans were black, then how come they aren't the Master Race
of the Earth?" If blacks had a head start (by millions of years) on whites,
Asians and everyone else, then why aren't they running the world? So Dave
defends it by saying that the hot climate was not as conducive to
development as the cold climates. So what causes development? Is it when
people struggle to live? Is it when people have to fight for their lives
against others? Did Europe and Asia have a monopoly on this situation? I
think not. Anyway, what about the Aztecs - they also lived in a hot climate
and look at what they did. Africa might not be cold but life was hard enough
for blacks. Blacks also fought a lot with each other. The blacks did not
live here in some mythical peace. That is why, to this day, there is so much
tribal hatred in Africa. In this sense, Africa is no different to Europe.
Life in Africa was not a bowl of cherries so why is it that blacks did not
progress to the extent that Asians or Europeans did?
The Chinese were, in many areas, about 1,000 years ahead of Europe. I once
saw a list of inventions which the Chinese had before the Europeans, and
they were hundreds of years ahead of them. In fact, in Chinese history, so
Dave tells me, the Chinese once had a huge fleet which was destroyed by a
certain Emperor. It has been announced recently that they might have
evidence that the Chinese visited southern Africa before the Europeans and
the Indians. Note that recent studies have shown that the Great Zimbabwe
ruins might be an Indian temple. There is much evidence of Indian
colonization of Zimbabwe and South Africa hundreds of years before whites
came here. They even built irrigation canals in Zimbabwe and stone walls
miles long.
Dave and I have both read Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars. One day I pointed out
to him that if he looked at Caesar's description of Europe, 2,000 years ago,
then he would see that even the Barbaric Europeans (the non-Romans), were
more advanced than the blacks of Africa - of modern or colonial times. Dave
was quite stunned by my remark and asked me to explain it. Note that there
are those who will say Caesar's writings are something of a propaganda
exercise aimed at painting the Roman conquest of Gaul in a good light. It is
clear that Caesar does not think much of the Barbarians - as he refers to
the other Europeans. Even so, if you read what the Barbarians got up to it
becomes evident that they had a well-structured capitalist society which was
functioning very well. The Barbarian tribes had governments, and they made
laws which were enforced. They negotiated deals, and could engage in some
impressive feats of engineering. If one reads of their exploits and the
things they got up to - including their cunning and deceit one sees people
who are capable of a high level of organization. And yet, these people were
backward by Roman standards. The Roman organization was even more
impressive. I then told Dave to show me anything in African history which
comes even close to this. Africans never invented the wheel. Most Africans
were not even settled in cities. They could not because their primitive
agriculture could not sustain them for long and so they were migratory. The
ownership of land, as defined in modern Western society had little meaning
to the blacks of those days because they were always migrating to places
where they could settle for a while.
As far as I'm concerned, if you believe that Africa is the cradle of
humanity (which I don't), you should immediately ask yourself why it is that
blacks, having supposedly got a head-start of millions of years on the rest
of us, never developed further.
I am aware of the mythological fantasies of certain Afro-centrist black
Americans about the days of a super black civilization, but those are
mythical dreams in their minds. Such a thing never existed - and there isn't
a single excavation to support their theory. Yet, we can dig up cities in
Europe, Asia, and even the Americas showing development from ancient times.
Dave had to agree that the Greeks were doing some pretty amazing things.
Consider that they had developed some advanced mathematics and that an
ancient called Erastosthenes was able to estimate the size of the Earth
using a pole in the ground. The Europeans did some marvelous and incredible
things. Some time ago, a black radio announcer in South Africa said that we
whites should "get back on to your rotting wooden ships" and leave Africa.
Well, those "rotting wooden ships" were the space ships of their day. These
were energy-free vehicles which white people used to travel the entire globe
from north to south, east to west. These energy-free,
environmentally-friendly vehicles traveled to every continent and even into
the Antarctic. The mathematics and engineering which went into the
development of navigation and mapping was incredible.
Look at the Asians and one will see among them the same ability to progress.
Then Dave had to admit that maybe I have a point in supposing that blacks
just aren't equipped to the same degree as the other races. Dave remarked
that de-colonization had actually been a good thing everywhere - except in
Africa! He pointed out that the Pacific and Asian countries, and even South
America, had fared much better after de-colonization than Africa had. What
many people don't realize is that in economic terms, the African countries
have gone backwards in proportion to what they were in colonial times.
Africa has gone backwards for more than 40 years while Asian and other
countries moved forward.
Dave admitted that all countries run by black people are backward - even
those which do not have a history of colonialism, such as Ethiopia and
Liberia. Liberia is interesting because it is inhabited in part by former
black Americans. That it descended to the same level as the rest of Africa
is telling. It shows that there is a deeper problem, and it lies within
blacks as a race.
Time and again, when blacks, especially as groups and nations, have to
compete with others, they fall short. As you can see, in Zimbabwe, even in
something as basic as food production, they struggle. This is where we
whites (and Asians) in Africa have a head start on whites and Asians in the
rest of the world. We understand blacks and their shortcomings better than
anyone else. Note that Asians in Africa have an even more negative view of
black abilities than whites, and Asians have been run out of several black
African countries. Even now, in South Africa, when they want to show the
"capitalist exploitation of blacks", the best examples they come up with are
not white businesses, but Indian businesses. For example, there have been
cases where Indian business owners lock their black employees in the factory
for the night shift. Why? Probably because they believe if the blacks are
let out they will steal. So they physically lock them in the buildings and
even force them to sleep there. This came to light because of an occasion
where some blacks burned to death in a factory which caught fire. It then
came to light that many Indian businessmen do not trust their black
employees.
There is always the old excuse of "discrimination". Now let's be honest -
yes, there was discrimination and yes, discrimination can hold back even a
talented person. But it is here that the issue becomes interesting, and it
is this point which I want to make to the readers. You've heard about
Apartheid, and how whites maltreated blacks. So the theory goes: "Give
everyone an equal chance and the blacks will rise." But that is not true.
Among the blacks, there are talented individuals - make no mistake - but to
assume that the majority of blacks are similarly talented is clearly false.
It is this aspect which I see in South African society almost every day of
my life. I go to work, and I notice how white and Asian people are still the
driving force of the country. Blacks get work, but they get it on the basis
that whites once got work - the color of their skin. But the difference is
that the color of one's skin - or, more accurately, historical forces over
the course of many thousands of years that caused some people to acquire
certain qualities regarding their looks, intelligence, etc. - did make a
difference in terms of one's IQ. It was not skin color that was the issue,
it was IQ.
I've noticed this in Zimbabwe too. A mere handful of white people still
manage to survive, even in very hostile conditions. Even in these African
countries, when these Affirmative Action laws are enacted, you find that
blacks still do not dominate those societies. This is the kind of
frustration which someone like Mugabe has. He is discovering what many have
known all along - that to get rid of whites will mean you have to kill the
blacks as well. The same will hold true in South Africa.
Giving blacks an equal chance is clearly the morally correct thing to do,
and something I agree with. But you will find, even then, that blacks will
never be represented in proportion to their numbers. Here in South Africa,
there is an insistence on job quotas. People will hold jobs in proportion to
their portion of the population, therefore 80% of all jobs are supposed to
go to blacks. But what do you do in the computer industry, for example,
which is a virtual monopoly of whites and Asians?
You cannot legislate talent. You cannot legislate intelligence or technical
skill. It's either there or it isn't. It is often argued that blacks do not
make headway because they are discriminated against. But this argument holds
no water because Indians were treated in exactly the same way in Apartheid
South Africa and even then, Indians became extremely wealthy. Some Indians
say they would rather go back to Apartheid because they would live with the
discrimination as long as they can make as much money now as they did then!
Indians in South Africa are extremely wealthy, and one only has to see the
cars they drive or watch them gamble or do other things to see how flush
they really are with cash. Yet, they were considered no different from
blacks and all the rules which applied to the blacks applied to them to.
Even in the USA, where Asians have a hard time as immigrants coming to a new
country, time and again they prove themselves and become extremely
successful.
So now we have outcome-based education and job quotas, as well as
Affirmative Action because, giving blacks more than an equal chance and it
still isn't achieving the desired results. I believe that giving them an
equal chance is the only morally correct thing to do, but one must not go
further. To go further is immoral and unfair to everyone else.
The problem I have in discussing things even with my friends and associates
in South Africa is that nobody discusses the horrible genetic facts.
Biologists know that everything you have comes from your DNA and this in
turn comes from your parents. Your skin color is hereditary. If all your
ancestors were white, you too will be white. So is your hair and eye color,
so too the shape of your nose, lips, etc. While you may not look like your
mother or father, you did get each of these characteristics from some
ancestor, either one or many generations preceding you. In fact, everything
is hereditary, including, to a large degree, your intelligence.
They have been trying to disprove this for decades because this flies in the
face of the concept that "all men are equal". But like it or not, the
biological facts are there - as horribly unpopular as they are. I read
reports some months ago where scientists, using their latest knowledge of
DNA are confirming what European scientists knew a century ago: that most
intelligence is hereditary. They are discovering that, yes, given a chance,
all people will perform better. But most - though not all - intelligence is
hereditary, and unless science can figure out how to meddle with the DNA to
increase a person's IQ, there is nothing you can do about it.
Further proof of the hereditary nature of intelligence is that if a black
person marries a white person and they have kids, then those kids will have
an IQ (on average), half way between that of blacks and whites. In other
words, "brown" people (or Colored people, as we call them in Africa), are
more intelligent than blacks but less intelligent than whites. According to
various studies done over many decades, Asian people are very bright, and
are cleverer than whites. But blacks always fall short in these studies.
One can see too, in the real world, how intelligence affects countries.
Asian countries are very active and are moving forward at a great pace.
Japan, with no natural resources has the second strongest economy in the
world, while Africa, which is up to its eyeballs in natural resources, and
is potentially the richest continent in the world is actually the poorest.
Interestingly, in South Africa, the "colored" people like to identify with
whites. They regard themselves as superior to the blacks. It is actually
probable that almost all black Americans are more "colored" than black -
which may explain why they do better than native black Africans.
I've heard all the excuses about why blacks don't perform to the same degree
as others, and they all do not make sense in the greater scheme of history.
For example, if blacks are as clever as they now say they were, then how
come they did not have cities and cultures like that which existed
elsewhere? The few cities that might have existed in ancient Africa were in
West Africa, which participated in slave trade, including the sale of
Africans to slave-owners in the Americas.
You won't find any cities in the rest of Africa. If blacks were so
intelligent and united at the time, then how could be conquered by so very
few whites?
Why didn't blacks import the knowledge and science of others? They had
contact with Arabs, Europeans and Asians. So why didn't they acquire
scientific knowledge from others? Why did Indians and even Chinese come to
Africa and leave their mark here, but you see no marks left by blacks? You
can see that Asians were here, even centuries later - yet you see no such
buildings left by blacks. Why didn't blacks build fleets of ships and sail
the world?
As I explained to Dave and Bernadette, the molly-coddling of blacks today
around the world by giving them special privileges and special chances is
something that never took place in history. The whites were never molly
coddled. The Asians were never molly coddled. It was kill or be killed. It
was live by your own abilities or die. If you could do something you didn't
talk about how great you were, you went and did it. History was written by
people who could do as opposed to those who could talk. On the battle field,
or in science, it was a case of winner takes all. Nobody ever asked for or
got special treatment.
This brings me to my final point. When the Romans conquered other white
people, was that good or bad? These days, people say all war is bad. But I
beg to differ. The Romans could not have waged war if they did not have a
properly structured society which was properly run. It is clearly evident
that even in those times, capitalism ruled. People traded. An army cost
money. Running a society properly required money, intelligence and planning.
Was the conquest of the world by Europeans really such an evil thing? Was
the conquest of Europe by the Mongols all bad? It is a fact of life that
those who are better organized, who had the right values, and who worked
hard became strong. Since everyone has to defend himself, all societies
throughout history formed armies. Some of these armies, for whatever reason,
went and fought others. Often, the reasons were complex and not always just
a case of outright conquest.
Which brings me back to the beginning - survival of the fittest. Is there
anything wrong when a group of people are able to conquer another group of
people and are then able to determine the structure which the resultant
society will take?
If the fittest are strong enough to conquer, surely they are in the best
position to decide how things will work from then onwards? Remember, they
would not have been strong if they were not able to run their own society
properly.
Military power is but a reflection of something much deeper. You cannot have
military power if you do not have economic power. You cannot have military
power if you do not have intelligent people in your country. There are many
prerequisites before you can have military power. Military power is a
reflection of many deeper things in one's society. It is a reflection of
economic power and also of science, discipline, etc. So when the strong
conquer the weak and then bring to the weak, a better system, which enables
the weak to progress and live better than they were able to by themselves,
is that not good?
I sometimes have a black American telling me that they "don't need charity
from whites". If that's their attitude, then so be it. But, evidently, they
can't do better by themselves. I notice, too, a tendency for blacks to flee
countries which they control, and have made a mess of, and to then go and
live in white countries. Once in the white countries, they complain about
discrimination.
In short, they run to their new homeland because it is better than where
they came from. Once there, they want to start transforming it - but if you
let them have their way, then they will turn their new homeland into a
mirror image of their old country and their new homeland will also fail.
Ironically, this is what is happening to the USA these days, as it is
flooded with all kinds of Third World immigrants. Strangely, many Americans
do not seem to realize that by letting in Third World failures they are
actually helping to set themselves up for the failure of their own country.
I have been surrounded by black people all my life, and I have some
observations to make about their strengths and weaknesses over and above
intelligence. Note that statistically, not all blacks are dumber than
whites. There is a portion of their population which is bright. These people
normally rise and go to the top (which is the way it should be). Even in
Apartheid South Africa you found black millionaires and multi-millionaires.
But, just because a small portion of the black population can match the
intelligence of whites and Asians, does not mean they all can. And
experience shows that the majority of blacks cannot.
At the end of the day, the crux of "the black problem" is determined not by
hate and oppression, but by DNA and things over which we currently have no
power. Black Americans may find it difficult to understand that in Colonial
times there was a highly paternal relationship between blacks and whites in
Africa. Whites often regarded blacks as children and treated them as such.
There were many blacks in decades past who understood this and who believed
that white rule was better than black rule.
History is proving us right, and will continue doing so. History will show
that white people could rule over black people better than black people
could rule over themselves. It will be no different in South Africa. Most
people outside South Africa think that under Apartheid, it was a vile,
Nazi-like country. The reality is that South Africa was not much different
from the rest of Colonial Africa. I have long said that in 20 years time,
non-white South Africans, including blacks, will look back to the days of
Apartheid and will say, "In spite of the bad things, those were the best
days of our lives."
Another friend of mine, Steven, has another argument he always puts forward.
He says, "I have no problem admitting that black people are physically
stronger than white people, so why can't they accept that I am more
intelligent than them?"
Evidently, Steven, many cannot.
Jan Lamprecht was born and raised in Zimbabwe, then called Rhodesia, during
the "Bush War", which resulted in Robert Mugabe coming to power. He was
educated in Harare, the capital of the country, before leaving for South
Africa, where he spent some time in the Navy. He wrote a book called
"Government by Deception" about African politics related to Zimbabwe and the
effects Mugabe's policies may have on other countries.
He publishes a popular, highly "politically-incorrect" web site
AfricanCrisis.org
http:***//www.globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=852&cid=8&sid=59
Just take out the asteriks if you wanna check it out yourself.
__________________
Tell the truth and shame the devil!  
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