"Light on the Dark Continent"
"Eye-opening observations of an American who has lived in Africa
for nearly 20 years."
Racism, Guilt and Self-Deceit (Self-Published) - Gedahlia Braun, 1993,
Reviewed by Jared Taylor, September-October, 1993
Dr. Braun has lived in Africa with only brief interruptions since 1976
and in South Africa since 1988. This book, in the form of a
chronological journal, describes how contact with the dark continent
quickly dispelled his liberal views and led to startling but plausible
conclusions that most Americans--even readers of AR--are likely to
find surprising.
Two Theses
Dr. Braun draws on his years of intimacy with Africans to support two
main conclusions:
The first is that virtually all Africans take it for granted that
whites are smarter than blacks. They haven't the slightest illusion
that they could have invented computers or built airplanes, and they
recognize that blacks and whites differ in moral and psychological
characteristics as well.
What is more, Africans are not the least offended by these
realizations. Unlike whites, they do not see any inherent immorality
in acknowledging racial differences. Some clever, westernized Africans
have discovered--just as American blacks have--that whites are
terrified at the thought of racial differences, and have learned to
manipulate this terror to their own advantage. But they, too, Dr.
Braun finds, can almost always be persuaded to acknowledge the
inherent limitations of Africans.
Dr. Braun's second thesis follows from the first: The vast majority of
South African blacks do not want black rule. They know from their own
experiences with black policemen and black bureaucrats that when
Africans are in positions of power they are corrupt, despotic, and
oppressive. Many blacks mouth the slogans of "liberation" but have
unrealistic, often ludicrous notions of what "liberation" is likely to
mean. Some, when pressed, will even admit that although they know
black rule would be a catastrophe for South Africa they pretend to
support it because they know that is what whites expect them to do.
Ultimately, as Dr. Braun recognizes, his observations illuminate the
terrible flaws in the white man. Without constant urging from liberal
whites, virtually all Africans would be content to put their fate in
the hands of a race that they recognize as smarter and more fair-
minded than their own.
Dr. Braun puts it this way:
(1) Blacks cannot manage a modern industrial democratic society;
(2) blacks know this and would never think of denying it were it not
for white liberals insisting otherwise;
(3) except for those black elites who hope to take power, black rule
is in no one's interest, especially not blacks;
(4) blacks know this better than anyone and are terrified of black
rule.
On what does Dr. Braun base these heretical conclusions? After several
years in Africa, he began to realize that many blacks do not think the
way white liberals keep telling us they do. He then systematically
started asking Africans--even virtual strangers--what they thought
about racial differences and whether they were in favor of black rule.
Unlike most whites, who would be ashamed to ask such questions, Dr.
Braun is utterly uninhibited. He discovered that most blacks are eager
to talk frankly; most have never had an honest conversation with a
white about race and are charmed to find one who is not blinded by the
usual cliches. Just as interestingly, he quickly learned that even
whites who have lived all their lives in Africa--including journalists
and other liberals who claim to speak for Africans--have never had an
honest conversation with a black about race.
For the most part, blacks fear majority rule because they know they
are much more likely to be cheated, robbed or brutalized by other
blacks than by whites.
Many Africans believe, in so many words, that "Whites respect one
another but we don't."
Dr. Braun has concluded that blacks and whites differ as much morally
as they do mentally, and that these differences made economic
development impossible. He wonders whether one of the reasons large-
scale cooperative enterprise is nearly impossible throughout Africa is
that blacks do not trust each other and cannot be counted on to work
together for the benefit of all. He advances the provocative view that
Africans may not have an internalized moral sense but depend instead
on tribal authority to set rules of conduct:
Hence, when they were detribalized (by colonialism, etc.), these
external constraints disappeared; and since there never were any
internal constraints, we witness rampant lack of self-control amongst
detribalized blacks (crime, drugs, promiscuity, etc.). Where there has
been some substitute for tribal control--as in white-dominated South
Africa or the segregated American South--this behaviour was kept
within tolerable limits. But when such controls vanish (as in present-
day South Africa and in large U.S. cities), you get this phenomenon of
widespread unrestrained violence"
Dr. Braun has found that like American whites, most South African
whites are incapable of talking sensibly about race. Like American
whites, they now even take a perverse joy in applauding their own
dispossession. He describes the tempestuous enthusiasm of white
audiences for the anti-white South African movie "Cry Freedom," and
writes, "the positive joy with which they cheer their own demise is
quite amazing, isn't it?" He speculates that this joy stems from "a
fatal flaw in the white race: the capacity for self-flagellating,
exaggerated and unwarranted guilt and the self-hatred that seems to
underlie it."
This self-hatred is at the heart of the white man's increasing
insistence that he is a miserable racist who is to blame for the black
man's failures:
"Once blacks learn that whites think blacks have reason to hate them,
many will be happy to oblige, instinctively realizing their
psychological advantage as the injured party . . . . All in all a
tremendous con game, in which the white man is both instigator and
willing victim."
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