I previously wrote an article explaining why the whites people’s legacy of slavery should not be the shame of owning slaves, which all nations and races have done, but rather the pride in ending slavery not only in their own societies but around the world. Now let us consider colonization as a source of African economic troubles.
Rather than destroying Africa, colonization introduced modernity and good management to the Dark Continent.
Before colonization most of sub-Saharan Africa was literally stuck in the Stone Age. (Black Supremacists who want to argue that North of Saharan states like Egypt and Carthage were black, should read the articles here.)
Even the most advanced parts of Black, sub-Saharn Africa were still in the Iron Age. Africans had no written language, no concept of science or math, no multistory buildings, no calendar, nothing that would remind one of any modern society.
Prior to colonization, Blacks were never anywhere near as wealthy as they were during European rule. When the white powers left, African economies collapsed – in stark contrast to other liberated colonies that prospered.
The longer a black country has been independent, the more problems it has. Haiti had been independent for 200 years. At the time when they won independence, blacks massacred all the whites and mixed-race people who did not escape the island. Today the island is the poster child of mismanagement of the economy, government, criminal justice and everything else. The only time the island and its economy were stabilized was during the several American interventions when Haitians ran their country into the ground and could not continue without foreign help.
Ethiopia is another basket-case. Images of Ethiopian children dying from starvation on the filthy streets of Addis Ababa are forever burned into our collective memory. The country was never colonized and foreign occupation lasted only 5 years.
The wealthiest African countries got independence recently. South Africa was taken over by blacks only in 1994. Namibia achieved independence in 1990.
The longer an African country had been run by blacks, the poorer it is. As a government official from the Democratic Republic of Congo acknowledged a couple years ago, “we are moving back into the cave.”
The excuse commonly used is that colonialism was replaced by “neo-colonialism”, which is even more severe, causing greater poverty.
The claim is so ridiculous that it can’t even be backed up by any logical reason. We must state the conclusion and accept it on pseudo-religious grounds. To suggest that Africans have less power now that the colonial governors and military forces withdrew is an equivalent of saying that a man who moved out of his parents’ house, has his own job and his own family is under more influence from his parents than he was as a child when the parents could completely dominate his life.
We are told that Europeans who are now in London, Paris and Lisbon have more power over Africa than they did when they were in Brazzaville (Congo), Abuja (Nigeria) and Lusaka (Zambia). The claim is simply preposterous.
We are also told that whites who remained in Africa and kept their dominant positions are to blame. Yet, the only African countries with stable governance and economics are those that gave their whites disproportionate power. Amongst them are Kenya and South Africa. Where the white minority lost its power, the economy collapsed. The latest example of that was seen in recent years in Zimbabwe where the government confiscated by force the land of the white farmers, destroying the economy and forcing millions of the country’s blacks to eat rats or nothing at all.
Nor can we blame whites for taking natural resources out of Africa. For one, before colonization blacks did not know what to do with oil, diamonds and other resources. Without white technology and customers, the natural resources would be largely useless. More importantly, the overwhelming majority of gold, diamonds and oil in Africa were discovered either after independence or in the very last few years of colonization. Lastly, many countries without natural resources are extremely successful, including Japan.
African poverty is the fault of the African people. The myth that minorities are never to blame for any of their troubles, and whites are the source of all things that are wrong with the world must be rejected.
# The article was written and originally published last year.
Excellent post.
The common sense of the argument is so obvious: Africa is a “kinder, gentler” place for both black and white, when white civilization is in the picture – without that your have the savagery of the stone-age.
The really sad and tragic thing is that so many whites in America & Europe insist on the feel-good religion of racial egalitarianism, as the “kinder, gentler” way, but this really just ensures that thugs and bullies rule in Africa. “Oh, you racist… “, liberals will say.
Well come on then – give an example of one black African country that disproves this. Waiting… In every case whites were the motor of progress – and as they improved life for themselves, they improved life for the blacks – contrary to leftist myths of white oppression.
If colonisation was so bad for Africa, why were 20,000 blacks illegally entering apartheid South Africa illegaly every year during the 1960s, while very few were leaving?
As someone who has lived in Africa for almost 20 years and traveled widely on the continent, I can say that most of these problems you are referring to are endemic and cultural.
What you are actually talking about here is Old World Mentality vs. New World Mentality. Old World mentality is corruption, and paying baksheesh (bribe money) to get anything done. The only places in the world haing the New World Mentality are perhaps Canada, the United States, and SOME of Western Europe. Much of even Western Europe is entrenched in Old World Mentality. I’ll give you an example. I was shocked when buying land in Africa that there is the “declared price” and the “real price.” Sometimes the real price is three times as high as the declared price. I discussed this problem with my European friends and found that this is the same not only in Spain and Italy, but also in GERMANY (which I had always viewed as the “model” country of doing things correctly).
So there is a continuum of corruption. I live in North Africa, which I see by American standards (and yes, I have traveled extensively all over the world) is very corrupt, but by world standards, is only moderately corrupt. Having spent considerable time in Black Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Zaire, South Africa) I see those countries as FAR, FAR more corrupt. It’s the way the people behave. It’s not because of their RACE that they are behaving this way, it is the CULTURE they are brought up in. If everyone around you is cheating and corrupt when you are a child, and people even make fun of the people who are not corrupt, then it is a very rare person who is going to grow up to be honest. The whole reason for getting a government job is to rake in personal profits. If you got a government job (in Central Africa)and did not do that ,you would not be admired or appreciated; you would be thought stupid!
Having come to terms with this type of corruption even extending right down into the family level, I am personally an advocate of NOT giving any more American aid to these sorts of countries as I think it never gets to the right people.
Most of those donations people give (like clothes after disasters) never get donated to poor people. Instead, they are commandeered by the rich and SOLD to poor people.
In saying all this, I am not saying that you are entirely wrong in some of the points you may be making. What I am saying is that SOME of the points you are making can be attributed to the CULTURES people are growing up in and NOT to their race. That goes for Haiti, too (although I’ve never been there myself).
Expat 21, at Expat Abroad
expat21.wordpress.com
I forgot to add one thing, Guy. I think you need to read Jared Diamond’s book on Guns, Germs, and Steel, the Fate of Human Societies.
It’s a very readable book, that is basically a study about why some societies have/achieve more than others economically, politically, socially.
It seems to me that you are entirely unfamiliar with his ideas. I think you would enjoy his book a lot, as it is based in a lot of sound science. (When you get done with that read Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.)
Definitely read Guns, Germs, and Steel FIRST, however.
Here is the Amazon Link to the book Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond, that I’m recommending you read (both of his books are two of the best books I ever read in my whole life):
amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393061310/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238483238&sr=8-2
Best,
Expat 21
One of the great lies of liberalism, and multiculturalism in particular, is that society and culture are analogous to natural resources. They are not created so much as found, and whites have unfairly used their technological advantages to take and maintain possession of them to the exclusion of others. Thus affirmative action, etc., is needed to correct this exclusion so others can enjoy their natural right to this resource.
Diamond’s leftist mumbo-jumbo purports to prove that this European advantage was all an accident of geography without any genetic component.
To write, as Expat does above, “It’s not because of their RACE that they are behaving this way, it is the CULTURE they are brought up in,” is to display an astounding degree of blindness (to put it politely), and, of course, to beg a whole lot of questions. It actually proves exactly the opposite of what Expat thinks it does.
31Mar09
Old World Mentality vs. New World Mentality? I don’t think a real change has occurred. Just the presentation!
I wish someone would categorically point out any differences in the ESSENTIAL behavior of the inhabitants of the black ghettos of American cities and the black managed areas of Africa.
There is no question in my mind (and I hope not in yours) that intellect affects a person’s comportment elevating it in proportion above basic instincts. Observation and testing seem to reveal some rather inescapable associations with regard to sub-Sahara Negroids and their cosmopolitan cousins.
Anybody seen a National Geographic from 50yrs. or more ago? You can lead a horse …….
Nice try Expat, but the big question here is *WHY*.
For example, you say that, “Black Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Zaire, South Africa) [is] FAR, FAR more corrupt.”
OK, and then you say that Black Africa is so corrupt because, ” It’s the way the [Black Africans] behave. It’s not because of their RACE that they are behaving this way, it is the CULTURE they are brought up in.”
That’s like saying Black Africa is corrupt because Black Africans do and believe a lot of corrupt things.
…Right. I think most of us here understand that corrupt is as corrupt does. The question is WHY. *Why* are some people more prone to believe and do corrupt things than others?
If you would like to suggest that culture is to blame rather than race, then you need to separate the culture from the race of people which adheres to it. That means you have to prove the corrupt culture is alien to the Black Africans. If it turns out that the Black Africans invented their own corrupt culture, well now that just points the finger back at race doesn’t it?
My reading of how to know how large a colony of monkeys was, was to measure their brain size. The reasoning was the larger the brain the larger the colony, for a lot of brain power was used in face-recognition and grasping all the hierarchical levels of society.
IQ therefore has a direct impact in how large a colony can be created. If too complex it collapses. Africans did not live in centralised cities when first colonised by the Europeans but in small sustainable villages.
Ergo, Socialists, (who follow is the simplex religion “fairness” to steal from the gainfully employed) can only pretend to lead a country; being exploited by the Bankers.
I’m quite familiar with “Guns, Germs, and Steel.” It contains a number of faulty assumptions and misrepresentations of concepts that numerous professionals have called into question even while applauding his efforts. Many believe he is oversimplifying. Wikipedia’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel” article sums up the various criticisms nicely, so I won’t recount them all, but it’s certainly worth pointing out that he ignored the frequent significant variation in climate in an east-west line across Eurasia, he ignores several food crops available to non-whites that they apparently lacked the resourcefulness to exploit, several domesticable animals that were similarly simply hunted or otherwise ignored. He ignores the effect of human (whites) in MAKING crops more useful to agriculture by artificial selection, making it sound like we simply “lucked” into having high-yield wheat and tame, easy-to-breed cattle waiting for us rather than our having to develop them from less beneficial forms.
Most telling by far, however, is this statement:
“Diamond…was trying to explain why, for example, in 1492 Eurasia was almost entirely populated by settled societies with governments, literacy, iron technology and standing armies while the other continents were almost entirely populated by stone age tribes of hunter-gatherers….For example Australia had hundreds of independent Aboriginal tribes, with very different cultures; some built villages with canals and fish farming; but none developed agriculture, armies, or metal tools. Therefore, Diamond argued, one must look at environmental factors, and failure to do so would leave a gap that might be filled by racist assumptions.”
In other words, Diamond assumes from the outset that the concept of racial intelligence differences, no matter how well-founded scientifically and no matter how dependably established, must be racist and are therefore to be ignored. This bias leaves him desperate to bend whatever history or science he must in order to construct an alternative explanation to fit his personal prejudice. He is making the kind of prejudiced assumptions he denounces by rejecting science that does not fit his personal belief system in favor of a simplistic world-view that is unsupported by science.
We’re at 400 years in North America, waiting for the white culture that blacks grow up in to have its effect. Still waiting….waiting…don’t hold your breath.
Expat,
You should read Michael Hart’s Understanding Human History as an alternative to Guns, Germs and Steel. He points out that if, as Diamond claims, geography can drive culture then it can athrough natural selection drive genetic differences between population groups. Since natural selection may not stop at the neck these genetic differences may include behavior (low IQ, high time preference) and hence culture.
Its anti-black to do white things. Just like its anti-male to do feminine things. The pressure is immense and cultural. Nobody wants to appear emasculate or non-black. Thrown into a truly different culture (all black private schools that are successful) and raised by 2 responsible parents Im pretty sure blacks will overcome pessimistic future outlook, and follow in the paths of good role models.
Asians perform best at school. Its the culture. Indians are a bit more indulging.
To dream and to be ambitious is not something that is part of the black communities of N.A. Unless its to be a rapper, crack dealer, athlete because they are….black masculine ideals.
(Black girls are taught to be self sufficient because black guys arent interested in marriage anymore)
These are some thoughtful comments that other readers have left to my comments above, and I appreciate them. I will check out some of those resources mentioned above and consider these opinions.
Expat 21
expat21.wordpress.com
“Black girls are taught to be self sufficient because black guys aren’t interested in marriage anymore”
May be off-topic, but marriage is disintegrating in the Western world. The advocates of the marriage strike claim (quite rightly) that marriage is a system rigged against men owing to the nature of the divorce laws, alimony, child custody bureaucracy, and so forth.
Throw in the general feminist anti-male and anti-marriage propaganda, and you wonder why any man bothers to get married at all. It’s interesting that feminists have spent several generations bashing marriage as the “central institution of oppression in patriarchal society” and then wonder why men no longer want to get married.
Duh.
I would recommend against reading “Gun, Germs and Steel”. In the very first chapter, Jared Diamond lays out his agenda; he wants to prove that some groups are not inherently more intelligent than others and he is explicit about his goals. He lived for decades amongst the people of Papua New Guinea and feels an affinity for them. He wants to prove that the Papuans are not less intelligent, simply less fortunate. He says that the idea that Europeans are more intelligent than Papuans is abhorrent, then in the very next sentence he says, “In fact, I believe that the Papuans are more intelligent than Europeans”. He states the reason for this is that European children watch too much TV. I find it laughable that so many people have bought into what Diamond says. He is not a scientist.
In science, you gather data and form a conclusion from the data. What Diamond does is form a conclusion then he works out an elaborate series of “proofs” to support his predetermined answer.
In a nutshell: colonization is not causation.
I acknowledge that blacks as a group have high testosterone and low levels of IQ, empathy, and delayed gratification, all caused to a great degree by genetics, and thus that to a great extent their past and current failures cannot be blamed on anyone, least of all whites.
And I do NOT in principle or in most particulars (Leopold’s Congo Free State excepted) condemn white imperialism in Africa – whites were nearly always wiser, fairer, kinder, and more effective rulers than the natives, and accomplished far more *for the locals* in decades than the locals did in millenia.
However, I do think that whites do bear some blame for Africa’s current problems for a reason that PC types dislike to acknowledge: kinship-based nationalism and ethnic loyalty.
It’s one thing, as the Europeans did at the Berlin Conference of 1884, to carve up the continent into gigantic random chunks that have nothing to do with the demographic lay of the land, drawing borders that slice through peoples who prefer to live together and loop together peoples who would rather live apart. In fact if you’re empire-building it’s actually wise to copy the Romans and their slogan of “divide and conquer”.
But once you decide to de-colonize, you don’t just take a colony like German East Africa, Portuguese West Africa, or French Northwest Africa, give it a black ruler and a new made-up African flag and name, and leave. That doesn’t create a real country, a real nation-state – instead a better term is “post-colony.” And indeed, that’s exactly what most African countries are. Their borders are still the same as those drawn in utterly arbitrary fashion by the colonial powers generations ago.
And that sets everything up for spectacular failure. A major reason for Europe’s relative stability today is the fact that its borders at long last, and after centuries of bloody war, now roughly conform to ethnic and demographic reality. Immigration aside, most European states are closer to being homogeneous nation-states than they have ever been. The few places where there are still tensions are almost always where the process is not complete.
Well, clearly, any factor that is destabilizing in Europe is going to be even more so in Africa. And sure enough, almost no African has any truly patriotic feeling or loyalty to his post-colony, whose leadership often comes almost exclusively from some hated rival ethny. Without the legitimacy and loyalty that kinship ties bring, and when the law and the state are seen as the tools of traditional enemies (or a way to crush them) then respect for and compliance with the law collapses.
Hence, widespread crime, corruption, and dysfunction.
And nearly every one of Africa’s wars, civil wars, coups, slaughters, riots, revolutions, and rebellions has an ethnic cause. Even nominally peaceful times are riddled with ethnic tension, as nearly all political parties and movements, every National Salvation Front, People’s Liberation Alliance, Patriotic Coalition for Freedom, or what have you, are mere ethnic organizations with little interest in abstract universal ideology or the well-being of the entire country but an intense interest in grabbing as much wealth and power for itself with the machinery of the state and sticking it to its hated ethnic rivals.
Africans may well be more susceptible to such negative elements of human nature than we, but that makes Europeans more culpable, not less, for having failed to set things up with as much potential for stability as possible with cohesive, coherent, and homogeneous nation-states, as many as necessary – hundreds, even thousands, each reigned over by a traditional chieftain for the sake of continuity and legitimacy but ruled by a self-perpetuating class of technocratic local mandarins selected through competitive examination to weed out the low IQ and with strict probity rules. Eventually the need for efficiency would create customs, trade, and currency unions, and later defense pacts and confederations, the equivalent of a Celtic Union, a Nordic Alliance, a Pan-Slavic Coalition, etc., to make order from all the little cantons and Ruritanias.
Instead they gave into Communist pressure and set up sprawling multi-ethnic post-colonies with universal suffrage for their 70 IQ natives.
youre a fool n dont know wat ure talking about.in as much as african leaders are to blame so do d white devils.u dont talk bout the IMF,foreign policies,devaluating ones currency just open ur dirty mouth n talk bout ressources it aint bout just that
“youre a fool n dont know wat ure talking about.”
Brilliant refutation! Absolutely brilliant!
[GW: That's why I posted it here. As everyone can see, I was obviously proven wrong. Didn't want him to think I would block his intellectual refutation.]
Racebiologists and racists and bears, oh my!
Don’t think I’ve ever made a google search and found a more one-sided intellectual debate…
Still, I realize why it is so one-sided: Even now, being deeply disturbed by the theme and approach here, I simply can’t bring myself to honour this “debate” with a reply. I’d sooner marry a KKK member, at least they don’t understand better.
Bookmarking this as “Nietzsche lovers postathon”