Northwest Europeans spent centuries bashing one another and their peasants, which might have justified tut-tutting by say, a Chinese observer, on the congenital surliness and indiscipline of those hairy barbarins. In some ways, Northwest Europeans have improved since then, not counting WWI and WWII.

It may take Africans quite a while to develop civil society and institutions to improve their situation, and perhaps they will require tutelage from practical people like the Chinese. Or, perhaps, a few generations of Christianity will contribute to some improvement, and indeed, perhaps Africans will help rescue Euro-American Christianity from the current heresies.

Since Europe and we have wisely decided not to try to run the place, the best thing we can do on the state level is let Africans be Africans. Private charity and solidarity are different matters, and there, humility is warranted. How often do we have little understanding of what we’re getting into, matched by overweening arrogance.

Oh that is so very clever. I had not thought of that. You are right. Iceland resembles Zimbabwe after all, and if Iceland did resemble her not then the reason could not possibly be racial, because then someone’s feelings would be hurt. I was confused. I appreciate the correction.

Since I am learning Politically Correct lessons from you, maybe you will now teach me the answers to a few questions I have. My questions: What problem do you think ersatz moral posturing such as yours solves? Whom do you think it saves? What, exactly, would it take to convince you that something as elemental as race actually might matter?

I replying, beware pedantry. No responses that employ “[sic]” to a void offering a serious argument will be honored.

Cordially,

Howard

I applaud your ability to speak Truth to Power. It takes great courage to insinuate the racial inferiority of black people through personal anecdotes–not just to whites but all other races on the planet.

Considering the compelling evidence you have provided, I think we should move past the debate about black’s inferiority and grapple with a more pressing issue: interbreeding.

If blacks are stupid and socially inept because of their skin pigment, then it would follow that anyone who shares those genes would also share these short comings. Consequently, allowing blacks to breed with the other races is a recipe for social disaster and widespread stupidity and ignorance.

Unfortunately, we have let the cat out of the bag on this one. The interbreeding is already occurring. Since we can’t re-institute miscegenation, it behooves white people to study what effects this interbreeding will have on social stability and white intelligence.

For example, did you know that there has been a disturbing mixture of the races in the American South? Do you think that explains why the American South is poor, stupid, and ignorant ? Now its possible that white genes can combat black genes to some extent, all non-black genes are superior to whites. However, that is mostly speculation at this point. Right now we just don’t know how powerful black genes are.

If there was a person who was half white and half black, would he or she only have a quarter of the stupidity and social instability that a full blooded black person would? Or would black genes be dominant and overwhelm the superior white genes? I don’t know and neither do you “because to ask the question—much less seriously to study it—is to be read out of polite society.”

Note: If it was unclear, this post is satire. I strongly disagree with the racism I was caricaturing.

The most obvious fact about sub-Sharan Africa is that Great Unmentionable: that it is black. Does race explain societal failure? I don’t know and neither do you, because to ask the question—much less seriously to study it—is to be read out of polite society. Witness James Watson.

It is indeed heartening to learn that good news comes out of Africa, not only bad. However, it is hard to take seriously any analysis of African affairs that will not acknowledge that Iceland has certain important things in common with, say, Alabama but not with, say again, Haiti—the last of which country seems to have rather more in common with Zimbabwe than she has with either of the other two. The obvious explanation, race, may be the wrong explanation, but if so then I am still waiting for a convincing refutation of it.

There is a fundamental corruption in our discourse regarding Africa and Africans, Daniel. It cannot be impermissible to ask why Detroit lies nearly in ruins whereas, for instance, Boise does not. Are you familiar with Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel? Mr. Diamond was courageous in his own perverse way, boldly, forthrightly defending the probably indefensible proposition that race does not matter. However, one suspects that you are more likely a disciple of Charles Murray than of Mr. Diamond.

I like your work and I like your style very much. Were I asked to criticize your work—and I have not been so asked—I might observe that your work were too pessimistic, never that it were too hypocritical. This is why to analyze “Which Africa?” without acknowledging so an obvious facet of the matter as race does not seem your style, even when one appreciates the article’s uncharacteristic optimism. Thus the present comment.

Your (maybe unwritten) response may be that it is too early in your career for you to risk Steve Sailer-style marginalization, that an elderly Pat Buchanan can afford the risk whereas you cannot. If so, then this would be a wise response. But, if so, then why write on Africa at all?

I recently met a white American who had worked four years in Japan. He remarked on the near impossibility of losing one’s wallet in Tokyo without having it returned, observing that organized crime existed in Japan but that even Japanese mobsters did not stoop so low as to fail to return a lost wallet found on the street. All this was strange and interesting to me, and the more so when the man reminded me that the population of Tokyo’s metropolitan area rivalled the poputaion of the entire state of California. The depressing part of the man’s story came when he told me that his sole brush with common crime in Japan occurred when he was out late one night on an unfamiliar Tokyo street. A, er, if a euphemism may be employed, a broker of illicit personal services had propositioned him, suggesting that he might like the company of “a beautiful woman.” The man did not think it necessary to mention that he had turned the “broker’s” proposition down, but he did mention that the “broker” was not Japanese. The “broker” was an African American.

How typical.

Are you not as tired of the conventional double-speak as I am?

Howard

I am all for solidarity between Western and African Christians (of which there are a lot actually) but anything that cuts the “development mafia” and their government enablers (USAID, DFID, etc.) down to size is a very good idea.