Why Black People struggle

[About the writer: This aticle was written by Jan Lamprecht, originally for WWW.Etherzone.com. Jan is a white African, originally born in Rhodesia, now living in South Africa and is the author of Government by Deception which is available on Amazon.com]

Let me get on with the business of the day. Seeing the photos in my gallery (at: www.africancrisis.com/photos.asp) will no doubt help to reinforce the point I am going to make in this mail. I"ve been meaning to write about Racial Discrimination for a long time, because there is not a day of my life that goes by that I don"t see the untruth of the entire situation. Black people around the world have been hypnotized into believing that all their failures in life are due to discrimination and hatred which emanates from whites. This couldn"t be further from the truth.

Everyday I see life here in Johannesburg carrying on a lot like it did under white rule. In spite of racial quotas, blacks struggle forward. Black Empowerment businesses hit the wall one after the other. 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 the blacks 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 its 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 very many problems for them.

Today, in Zimbabwe, we see Mugabe murdering people and 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, those 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 daily experience has taught us that most of the problems which affect blacks are actually preventable.

I"m not a slave to science, nor 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, in keeping with many Jews in South Africa (the few that are left), are 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, as the political interpretation of Darwin goes, 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, 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, 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, but most people do), then 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 - but those are mythical dreams in their minds - about the days of a super black civilization. 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 FREE ENERGY vehicles which white people used to travel the entire globe from north to south, east to west. These free energy, 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 decolonisation 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. In terms of proportion, 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 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, 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 Reader. You"ve heard about Apartheid, and how whites maltreated blacks, etc. 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 did make a difference in terms of one"s IQ. It was not skin color that was the issue, it was IQ. I notice 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 we whites 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 here 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. Its 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 gambling or doing other things to see how flush they really are with cash. Yet, they were considered "black" and all the rules which applied to the blacks applied to them to.

Even in the USA, Asians have a hard time, coming to a new country, getting no special treatment and yet, time and again they prove themselves and become extremely successful.

So now we have outcome based education and job quotas and Affirmative Action because, giving blacks an equal chance did not achieve the desired results. I believe, 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. So is your hair and eye color, so too the shape of your nose, lips, etc. 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 it is. 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 of 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 to use the term we have in Africa, "colored" people), 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.

Now interestingly, here in South Africa, the "colored" people like to identify with the whites. They regard themselves as superior to the blacks. It is entirely possible that a lot of 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 probably only in West Africa. You won"t find any cities in the rest of Africa. If blacks were so clever and united back then, then how come they could be conquered by so very few whites? Also, 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 by buying it or getting people to come and teach them? 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 to Bernadette, on different occasions, 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.

This brings me back to the beginning, to 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? Is this not what the USA is about to do to Iraq, and has done in Afghanistan? Is this not good? 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". Well, 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, etc. 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 manner 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 which we currently have no power over. 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 South Africa is 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.