by James Jackson White Zimbabweans used to tell a joke—what is the difference between a tourist and a racist? The answer—about a week.
Few seem to joke any more. Indeed, the last time anyone laughed out there was over the memorable headline “BANANA CHARGED WITH SODOMY” (relating to the Reverend Canaan Banana and his alleged proclivities). Zimbabwe was just the latest African state to squander its potential, to swap civil society for civil strife and pile high its corpses. Then the wrecking virus moves on and a fresh spasm of violence erupts elsewhere. Congo, Ivory Coast, Sudan, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, even Kenya. Take your pick, for it is the essence of Africa, the recurring A-Z of horror. And as surely as Nelson Mandela took those steps from captivity to freedom, his own country will doubtless shuffle into chaos and ruin.
Mark my words. One day it will be the turn of South Africa to revert to type, its farms that lie wasted and its towns that are battle zones, its dreams and expectations that lie rotting on the veldt. That is the way of things. Africa rarely surprises, it simply continues to appall.
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Consider the words of Charles Darwin on this subject:
"Since the dawn of history the negro has owned the continent of Africa - rich beyond the dream of poet’s fancy, crunching acres of diamonds beneath his bare black feet. Yet he never picked one up from the dust until a white man showed to him its glittering light. His land swarmed with powerful and docile animals, yet he never dreamed a harness, cart, or sled. A hunter by necessity, he never made an axe, spear, or arrowhead worth preserving beyond the moment of its use. He lived as an ox, content to graze for an hour. In a land of stone and timber he never sawed a foot of lumber, carved a block, or built a house save of broken sticks and mud. With league on league of ocean strand and miles of inland seas, for four thousand years he watched their surface ripple under the wind, heard the thunder of the surf on his beach, the howl of the storm over his head, gazed on the dim blue horizon calling him to worlds that lie beyond, and yet he never dreamed a sail.” — Charles Darwin
Thank you for continuing to tell the truth.
Do you have a reference for the great Darwin quote?
Thanks,
Louis Andrews
LRA@LRAINC.COM
The quotation seems to be from a book by Thomas Dixon, 'The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan'. There's an online book with that extract in it. Must have been written before about 1914 as it was the basis for the film 'Birth of a Nation'.
I think Darwin (or Galton) may have said something similar, though.
There are various so called "racist" quotes attributed to Darwin here are some http://ministries.tliquest.net/theology/evolution/Darwin%27s%20Racism.html
I have no idea whether they are true
The quotation may be from the novel "Oil!" by socialist Upton Sinclair. So says blogger Dulupdate. Excerpt below:
Pg 544
And from there they would be swept to the ballroom of the Emperor Hotel, Angel City, Radio RWKY, the Angel City Patriot broadcasting by direct control. Or was it to the heart of the Congo, where the naked savages danced to the music of the tom-tom, their black bodies, smeared with palm oil, shining in the light of blazing fires? For a hundred centuries these savages had paddled the river, and never to the mind of one of them had come the thought of an engine; they had stood on the shores of mighty lakes, and never dreamed a sail. The weight of nature's blind fecundity rested upon them, stifling their minds. And now capitalist civilization, rushing to destruction with the speed of its fastest battle-planes, cast about to find a form of expression for its irresistible will to degeneracy, and chose the tom-tom of the Congo for its music, all the belly-dances of the Congo for its exercise, and so here was America, Land of Jazz.
Old Holborn has analysed the nexus behind Africa's parlous position rather succinctly:
http://www.oldholborn.net/2010/07/africa-couldnt-give-shit.html
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