First, we have this bit of inconvenient truth: http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t733304/
How Africans may differ from Westerners by Gedaliah Braun
"I am an American who taught philosophy in several African universities from 1976 to 1988, and have lived since that time in South Africa. When I first came to Africa, I knew virtually nothing about the continent or its people, but I began learning quickly. I noticed, for example, that Africans rarely kept promises and saw no need to apologize when they broke them. It was as if they were unaware they had done anything that called for an apology.
It took many years for me to understand why Africans behaved this way but I think I can now explain this and other behavior that characterizes Africa. I believe that morality requires abstract thinking—as does planning for the future—and that a relative deficiency in abstract thinking may explain many things that are typically African.
What follow are not scientific findings. There could be alternative explanations for what I have observed, but my conclusions are drawn from more than 30 years of living among Africans.
My first inklings about what may be a deficiency in abstract thinking came from what I began to learn about African languages. In a conversation with students in Nigeria I asked how you would say that a coconut is about halfway up the tree in their local language. “You can’t say that,” they explained. “All you can say is that it is ‘up’.” “How about right at the top?” “Nope; just ‘up’.” In other words, there appeared to be no way to express gradations.
A few years later, in Nairobi, I learned something else about African languages when two women expressed surprise at my English dictionary. “Isn’t English your language?” they asked. “Yes,” I said. “It’s my only language.” “Then why do you need a dictionary?”
They were puzzled that I needed a dictionary, and I was puzzled by their puzzlement. I explained that there are times when you hear a word you’re not sure about and so you look it up. “But if English is your language,” they asked, “how can there be words you don’t know?” “What?” I said. “No one knows all the words of his language.”
I have concluded that a relative deficiency in abstract thinking may explain many things that are typically African.
“But we know all the words of Kikuyu; every Kikuyu does,” they replied. I was even more surprised, but gradually it dawned on me that since their language is entirely oral, it exists only in the minds of Kikuyu speakers. Since there is a limit to what the human brain can retain, the overall size of the language remains more or less constant. A written language, on the other hand, existing as it does partly in the millions of pages of the written word, grows far beyond the capacity of anyone to know it in its entirety. But if the size of a language is limited, it follows that the number of concepts it contains will also be limited and hence that both language and thinking will be impoverished.
African languages were, of necessity, sufficient in their pre-colonial context. They are impoverished only by contrast to Western languages and in an Africa trying to emulate the West. While numerous dictionaries have been compiled between European and African languages, there are few dictionaries within a single African language, precisely because native speakers have no need for them. I did find a Zulu-Zulu dictionary, but it was a small-format paperback of 252 pages.
My queries into Zulu began when I rang the African Language Department at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and spoke to a white guy. Did “precision” exist in the Zulu language prior to European contact? “Oh,” he said, “that’s a very Eurocentric question!” and simply wouldn’t answer. I rang again, spoke to another white guy, and got a virtually identical response.
So I called the University of South Africa, a large correspondence university in Pretoria, and spoke to a young black guy. As has so often been my experience in Africa, we hit it off from the start. He understood my interest in Zulu and found my questions of great interest. He explained that the Zulu word for “precision” means “to make like a straight line.” Was this part of indigenous Zulu? No; this was added by the compilers of the dictionary.
But, he assured me, it was otherwise for “promise.” I was skeptical. How about “obligation?” We both had the same dictionary (English-Zulu, Zulu-English Dictionary, published by Witwatersrand University Press in 1958), and looked it up. The Zulu entry means “as if to bind one’s feet.” He said that was not indigenous but was added by the compilers. But if Zulu didn’t have the concept of obligation, how could it have the concept of a promise, since a promise is simply the oral undertaking of an obligation? I was interested in this, I said, because Africans often failed to keep promises and never apologized—as if this didn’t warrant an apology.
A light bulb seemed to go on in his mind. Yes, he said; in fact, the Zulu word for promise—isithembiso—is not the correct word. When a black person “promises” he means “maybe I will and maybe I won’t.” But, I said, this makes nonsense of promising, the very purpose of which is to bind one to a course of action. When one is not sure he can do something he may say, “I will try but I can’t promise.” He said he’d heard whites say that and had never understood it till now. As a young Romanian friend so aptly summed it up, when a black person “promises” he means “I’ll try.”
The failure to keep promises is therefore not a language problem. It is hard to believe that after living with whites for so long they would not learn the correct meaning, and it is too much of a coincidence that the same phenomenon is found in Nigeria, Kenya and Papua New Guinea, where I have also lived. It is much more likely that Africans generally lack the very concept and hence cannot give the word its correct meaning. This would seem to indicate some difference in intellectual capacity.
Note the Zulu entry for obligation: “as if to bind one’s feet.” An obligation binds you, but it does so morally, not physically. It is an abstract concept, which is why there is no word for it in Zulu. So what did the authors of the dictionary do? They took this abstract concept and made it concrete. Feet, rope, and tying are all tangible and observable, and therefore things all blacks will understand, whereas many will not understand what an obligation is. The fact that they had to define it in this way is, by itself, compelling evidence for my conclusion that Zulu thought has few abstract concepts and indirect evidence for the view that Africans may be deficient in abstract thinking.
Abstract thinking
Abstract entities do not exist in space or time; they are typically intangible and can’t be perceived by the senses. They are often things that do not exist. “What would happen if everyone threw rubbish everywhere?” refers to something we hope will not happen, but we can still think about it.
Everything we observe with our senses occurs in time and everything we see exists in space; yet we can perceive neither time nor space with our senses, but only with the mind. Precision is also abstract; while we can see and touch things made with precision, precision itself can only be perceived by the mind.
How do we acquire abstract concepts? Is it enough to make things with precision in order to have the concept of precision? Africans make excellent carvings, made with precision, so why isn’t the concept in their language? To have this concept we must not only do things with precision but must be aware of this phenomenon and then give it a name.
How, for example, do we acquire such concepts as belief and doubt? We all have beliefs; even animals do. When a dog wags its tail on hearing his master’s footsteps, it believes he is coming. But it has no concept of belief because it has no awareness that it has this belief and so no awareness of belief per se. In short, it has no self-consciousness, and thus is not aware of its own mental states.
It has long seemed to me that blacks tend to lack self-awareness. If such awareness is necessary for developing abstract concepts it is not surprising that African languages have so few abstract terms. A lack of self-awareness—or introspection—has advantages. In my experience neurotic behavior, characterized by excessive and unhealthy self-consciousness, is uncommon among blacks. I am also confident that sexual dysfunction, which is characterized by excessive self-consciousness, is less common among blacks than whites.
Time is another abstract concept with which Africans seem to have difficulties. I began to wonder about this in 1998. Several Africans drove up in a car and parked right in front of mine, blocking it. “Hey,” I said, “you can’t park here.” “Oh, are you about to leave?” they asked in a perfectly polite and friendly way. “No,” I said, “but I might later. Park over there”—and they did.
While the possibility that I might want to leave later was obvious to me, their thinking seemed to encompass only the here and now: “If you’re leaving right now we understand, but otherwise, what’s the problem?” I had other such encounters and the key question always seemed to be, “Are you leaving now?” The future, after all, does not exist. It will exist, but doesn’t exist now. People who have difficulty thinking of things that do not exist will ipso facto have difficulty thinking about the future.
It appears that the Zulu word for “future”—isikhati—is the same as the word for time, as well as for space. Realistically, this means that these concepts probably do not exist in Zulu thought. It also appears that there is no word for the past—meaning, the time preceding the present. The past did exist, but no longer exists. Hence, people who may have problems thinking of things that do not exist will have trouble thinking of the past as well as the future.
This has an obvious bearing on such sentiments as gratitude and loyalty, which I have long noticed are uncommon among Africans. We feel gratitude for things that happened in the past, but for those with little sense of the past such feelings are less likely to arise.
Why did it take me more than 20 years to notice all of this? I think it is because our assumptions about time are so deeply rooted that we are not even aware of making them and hence the possibility that others may not share them simply does not occur to us. And so we don’t see it, even when the evidence is staring us in the face.
Mathematics and maintenance
I quote from an article in the South African press about the problems blacks have with mathematics:
“[Xhosa] is a language where polygon and plane have the same definition … where concepts like triangle, quadrilateral, pentagon, hexagon are defined by only one word.” (“Finding New Languages for Maths and Science,” Star [Johannesburg], July 24, 2002, p. 8.)
More accurately, these concepts simply do not exist in Xhosa, which, along with Zulu, is one of the two most widely spoken languages in South Africa. In America, blacks are said to have a “tendency to approximate space, numbers and time instead of aiming for complete accuracy.” (Star, June 8, 1988, p.10.) In other words, they are also poor at math. Notice the identical triumvirate—space, numbers, and time. Is it just a coincidence that these three highly abstract concepts are the ones with which blacks — everywhere — seem to have such difficulties?
The entry in the Zulu dictionary for “number,” by the way — ningi — means “numerous,” which is not at all the same as the concept of number. It is clear, therefore, that there is no concept of number in Zulu.
White rule in South Africa ended in 1994. It was about ten years later that power outages began, which eventually reached crisis proportions. The principle reason for this is simply lack of maintenance on the generating equipment. Maintenance is future-oriented, and the Zulu entry in the dictionary for it is ondla, which means: “1. Nourish, rear; bring up; 2. Keep an eye on; watch (your crop).” In short, there is no such thing as maintenance in Zulu thought, and it would be hard to argue that this is wholly unrelated to the fact that when people throughout Africa say “nothing works,” it is only an exaggeration.
The New York Times reports that New York City is considering a plan (since implemented) aimed at getting blacks to “do well on standardized tests and to show up for class,” by paying them to do these things and that could “earn [them] as much as $500 a year.” Students would get money for regular school attendance, every book they read, doing well on tests, and sometimes just for taking them. Parents would be paid for “keeping a full-time job … having health insurance … and attending parent-teacher conferences.” (Jennifer Medina, “Schools Plan to Pay Cash for Marks,” New York Times, June 19, 2007.)
The clear implication is that blacks are not very motivated. Motivation involves thinking about the future and hence about things that do not exist. Given black deficiencies in this regard, it is not surprising that they would be lacking in motivation, and having to prod them in this way is further evidence for such a deficiency.
The Zulu entry for “motivate” is banga, under which we find “1. Make, cause, produce something unpleasant; … to cause trouble . … 2. Contend over a claim; … fight over inheritance; … 3. Make for, aim at, journey towards … .” Yet when I ask Africans what banga means, they have no idea. In fact, no Zulu word could refer to motivation for the simple reason that there is no such concept in Zulu; and if there is no such concept there cannot be a word for it. This helps explain the need to pay blacks to behave as if they were motivated.
The same New York Times article quotes Darwin Davis of the Urban League as “caution[ing] that the … money being offered [for attending class] was relatively paltry … and wondering … how many tests students would need to pass to buy the latest video game.”
Instead of being shamed by the very need for such a plan, this black activist complains that the payments aren’t enough! If he really is unaware how his remarks will strike most readers, he is morally obtuse, but his views may reflect a common understanding among blacks of what morality is: not something internalized but something others enforce from the outside. Hence his complaint that paying children to do things they should be motivated to do on their own is that they are not being paid enough.
In this context, I recall some remarkable discoveries by the late American linguist, William Stewart, who spent many years in Senegal studying local languages. Whereas Western cultures internalize norms—“Don’t do that!” for a child, eventually becomes “I mustn’t do that” for an adult—African cultures do not. They rely entirely on external controls on behavior from tribal elders and other sources of authority. When Africans were detribalized, these external constraints disappeared, and since there never were internal constraints, the results were crime, drugs, promiscuity, etc. Where there have been other forms of control—as in white-ruled South Africa, colonial Africa, or the segregated American South—this behavior was kept within tolerable limits. But when even these controls disappear there is often unbridled violence.
Stewart apparently never asked why African cultures did not internalize norms, that is, why they never developed moral consciousness, but it is unlikely that this was just a historical accident. More likely, it was the result of deficiencies in abstract thinking ability.
One explanation for this lack of abstract thinking, including the diminished understanding of time, is that Africans evolved in a climate where they could live day to day without having to think ahead. They never developed this ability because they had no need for it. Whites, on the other hand, evolved under circumstances in which they had to consider what would happen if they didn’t build stout houses and store enough fuel and food for the winter. For them it was sink or swim.
Surprising confirmation of Stewart’s ideas can be found in the May/June 2006 issue of the Boston Review, a typically liberal publication. In “Do the Right Thing: Cognitive Science’s Search for a Common Morality,” Rebecca Saxe distinguishes between “conventional” and “moral” rules. Conventional rules are supported by authorities but can be changed; moral rules, on the other hand, are not based on conventional authority and are not subject to change. “Even three-year-old children … distinguish between moral and conventional transgressions,” she writes. The only exception, according to James Blair of the National Institutes of Health, are psychopaths, who exhibit “persistent aggressive behavior.” For them, all rules are based only on external authority, in whose absence “anything is permissible.” The conclusion drawn from this is that “healthy individuals in all cultures respect the distinction between conventional … and moral [rules].”
However, in the same article, another anthropologist argues that “the special status of moral rules cannot be part of human nature, but is … just … an artifact of Western values.” Anita Jacobson-Widding, writing of her experiences among the Manyika of Zimbabwe, says:
“I tried to find a word that would correspond to the English concept of ‘morality.’ I explained what I meant by asking my informants to describe the norms for good behavior toward other people. The answer was unanimous. The word for this was tsika. But when I asked my bilingual informants to translate tsika into English, they said that it was ‘good manners’ …”
An all-too-common problem.
She concluded that because good manners are clearly conventional rather than moral rules, the Manyika simply did not have a concept of morality. But how would one explain this absence? Miss Jacobson-Widding’s explanation is the typical nonsense that could come only from a so-called intellectual: “the concept of morality does not exist.” The far more likely explanation is that the concept of morality, while otherwise universal, is enfeebled in cultures that have a deficiency in abstract thinking.
According to now-discredited folk wisdom, blacks are “children in adult bodies,” but there may be some foundation to this view. The average African adult has the raw IQ score of the average 11-year-old white child. This is about the age at which white children begin to internalize morality and no longer need such strong external enforcers.
Gruesome cruelty
Another aspect of African behavior that liberals do their best to ignore but that nevertheless requires an explanation is gratuitous cruelty. A reviewer of Driving South, a 1993 book by David Robbins, writes:
Victim of Rwandan violence.
“A Cape social worker sees elements that revel in violence … It’s like a cult which has embraced a lot of people who otherwise appear normal. … At the slightest provocation their blood-lust is aroused. And then they want to see death, and they jeer and mock at the suffering involved, especially the suffering of a slow and agonizing death.” (Citizen [Johannesburg], July 12, 1993, p.6.)
There is something so unspeakably vile about this, something so beyond depravity, that the human brain recoils. This is not merely the absence of human empathy, but the positive enjoyment of human suffering, all the more so when it is “slow and agonizing.” Can you imagine jeering at and mocking someone in such horrible agony?
During the apartheid era, black activists used to kill traitors and enemies by “necklacing” them. An old tire was put around the victim’s neck, filled with gasoline, and—but it is best to let an eye-witness describe what happened next:
“The petrol-filled tyre is jammed on your shoulders and a lighter is placed within reach . … Your fingers are broken, needles are pushed up your nose and you are tortured until you put the lighter to the petrol yourself.” (Citizen; “SA’s New Nazis,” August 10, 1993, p.18.)
The author of an article in the Chicago Tribune, describing the equally gruesome way the Hutu killed Tutsi in the Burundi massacres, marveled at “the ecstasy of killing, the lust for blood; this is the most horrible thought. It’s beyond my reach.” (“Hutu Killers Danced In Blood Of Victims, Videotapes Show,” Chicago Tribune, September 14, 1995, p.8.) The lack of any moral sense is further evidenced by their having videotaped their crimes, “apparently want[ing] to record … [them] for posterity.” Unlike Nazi war criminals, who hid their deeds, these people apparently took pride in their work.
Where Amy Biehl was killed.
In 1993, Amy Biehl, a 26-year-old American on a Fulbright scholarship, was living in South Africa, where she spent most of her time in black townships helping blacks. One day when she was driving three African friends home, young blacks stopped the car, dragged her out, and killed her because she was white. A retired senior South African judge, Rex van Schalkwyk, in his 1998 book One Miracle is Not Enough, quotes from a newspaper report on the trial of her killers: “Supporters of the three men accused of murdering [her] … burst out laughing in the public gallery of the Supreme Court today when a witness told how the battered woman groaned in pain.” This behavior, Van Schalkwyk wrote, “is impossible to explain in terms accessible to rational minds.” (pp. 188-89.)
These incidents and the responses they evoke—“the human brain recoils,” “beyond my reach,” “impossible to explain to rational minds” — represent a pattern of behavior and thinking that cannot be wished away, and offer additional support for my claim that Africans are deficient in moral consciousness.
I have long suspected that the idea of rape is not the same in Africa as elsewhere, and now I find confirmation of this in Newsweek:
“According to a three-year study [in Johannesburg] … more than half of the young people interviewed — both male and female — believe that forcing sex with someone you know does not constitute sexual violence … [T]he casual manner in which South African teens discuss coercive relationships and unprotected sex is staggering.” (Tom Masland, “Breaking The Silence,” Newsweek, July 9, 2000.)
Clearly, many blacks do not think rape is anything to be ashamed of.
The Newsweek author is puzzled by widespread behavior that is known to lead to AIDS, asking “Why has the safe-sex effort failed so abjectly?” Well, aside from their profoundly different attitudes towards sex and violence and their heightened libido, a major factor could be their diminished concept of time and reduced ability to think ahead.
Liberian billboard
Nevertheless, I was still surprised by what I found in the Zulu dictionary. The main entry for rape reads: “1. Act hurriedly; … 2. Be greedy. 3. Rob, plunder, … take [possessions] by force.” While these entries may be related to our concept of rape, there is one small problem: there is no reference to sexual intercourse! In a male-dominated culture, where saying “no” is often not an option (as confirmed by the study just mentioned), “taking sex by force” is not really part of the African mental calculus. Rape clearly has a moral dimension, but perhaps not to Africans. To the extent they do not consider coerced sex to be wrong, then, by our conception, they cannot consider it rape because rape is wrong. If such behavior isn’t wrong it isn’t rape.
An article about gang rape in the left-wing British paper, the Guardian, confirms this when it quotes a young black woman: “The thing is, they [black men] don’t see it as rape, as us being forced. They just see it as pleasure for them.” (Rose George, “They Don’t See it as Rape. They Just See it as Pleasure for Them,” June 5, 2004.) A similar attitude seems to be shared among some American blacks who casually refer to gang rape as “running a train.” (Nathan McCall, Makes Me Wanna Holler, Vintage Books, 1995.)
If the African understanding of rape is far afield, so may be their idea of romance or love. I recently watched a South African television program about having sex for money. Of the several women in the audience who spoke up, not a single one questioned the morality of this behavior. Indeed, one plaintively asked, “Why else would I have sex with a man?”
From the casual way in which Africans throw around the word “love,” I suspect their understanding of it is, at best, childish. I suspect the notion is alien to Africans, and I would be surprised if things are very different among American blacks. Africans hear whites speak of “love” and try to give it a meaning from within their own conceptual repertoire. The result is a child’s conception of this deepest of human emotions, probably similar to their misunderstanding of the nature of a promise.
I recently located a document that was dictated to me by a young African woman in June 1993. She called it her “story,” and the final paragraph is a poignant illustration of what to Europeans would seem to be a limited understanding of love:
“On my way from school, I met a boy. And he proposed me. His name was Mokone. He tell me that he love me. And then I tell him I will give him his answer next week. At night I was crazy about him. I was always thinking about him.”
Moral blindness
Whenever I taught ethics I used the example of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French Army who was convicted of treason in 1894 even though the authorities knew he was innocent. Admitting their mistake, it was said, would have a disastrous effect on military morale and would cause great social unrest. I would in turn argue that certain things are intrinsically wrong and not just because of their consequences. Even if the results of freeing Dreyfus would be much worse than keeping him in prison, he must be freed, because it is unjust to keep an innocent man in prison.
To my amazement, an entire class in Kenya said without hesitation that he should not be freed. Call me dense if you want, but it was 20 years before the full significance of this began to dawn on me.
Death is certain but accidents are not.
Africans, I believe, may generally lack the concepts of subjunctivity and counterfactuality. Subjunctivity is conveyed in such statements as, “What would you have done if I hadn’t showed up?” This is contrary to fact because I did show up, and it is now impossible for me not to have shown up. We are asking someone to imagine what he would have done if something that didn’t happen (and now couldn’t happen) had happened. This requires self-consciousness, and I have already described blacks’ possible deficiency in this respect. It is obvious that animals, for example, cannot think counterfactually, because of their complete lack of self-awareness.
When someone I know tried to persuade his African workers to contribute to a health insurance policy, they asked “What’s it for?” “Well, if you have an accident, it would pay for the hospital.” Their response was immediate: “But boss, we didn’t have an accident!” “Yes, but what if you did?” Reply? “We didn’t have an accident!” End of story.
South African AIDS education poster.
Interestingly, blacks do plan for funerals, for although an accident is only a risk, death is a certainty. (The Zulu entries for “risk” are “danger” and “a slippery surface.”) Given the frequent all-or-nothing nature of black thinking, if it’s not certain you will have an accident, then you will not have an accident. Furthermore, death is concrete and observable: We see people grow old and die. Africans tend to be aware of time when it is manifested in the concrete and observable.
One of the pivotal ideas underpinning morality is the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. “How would you feel if someone stole everything you owned? Well, that’s how he would feel if you robbed him.” The subjunctivity here is obvious. But if Africans may generally lack this concept, they will have difficulty in understanding the Golden Rule and, to that extent, in understanding morality.
If this is true we might also expect their capacity for human empathy to be diminished, and this is suggested in the examples cited above. After all, how do we empathize? When we hear about things like “necklacing” we instinctively — and unconsciously — think: “How would I feel if I were that person?” Of course I am not and cannot be that person, but to imagine being that person gives us valuable moral “information:” that we wouldn’t want this to happen to us and so we shouldn’t want it to happen to others. To the extent people are deficient in such abstract thinking, they will be deficient in moral understanding and hence in human empathy—which is what we tend to find in Africans.
In his 1990 book Devil’s Night, Ze’ev Chafets quotes a black woman speaking about the problems of Detroit: “I know some people won’t like this, but whenever you get a whole lot of black people, you’re gonna have problems. Blacks are ignorant and rude.” (pp. 76-77.)
If some Africans cannot clearly imagine what their own rude behavior feels like to others—in other words, if they cannot put themselves in the other person’s shoes—they will be incapable of understanding what rudeness is. For them, what we call rude may be normal and therefore, from their perspective, not really rude. Africans may therefore not be offended by behavior we would consider rude — not keeping appointments, for example. One might even conjecture that African cruelty is not the same as white cruelty, since Africans may not be fully aware of the nature of their behavior, whereas such awareness is an essential part of “real” cruelty.
I am hardly the only one to notice this obliviousness to others that sometimes characterizes black behavior. Walt Harrington, a white liberal married to a light-skinned black, makes some surprising admissions in his 1994 book, Crossings: A White Man’s Journey Into Black America:
“I notice a small car … in the distance. Suddenly … a bag of garbage flies out its window . … I think, I’ll bet they’re blacks. Over the years I’ve noticed more blacks littering than whites. I hate to admit this because it is a prejudice. But as I pass the car, I see that my reflex was correct—[they are blacks].
“[As I pull] into a McDonald’s drive-through … [I see that] the car in front of me had four black[s] in it. Again … my mind made its unconscious calculation: We’ll be sitting here forever while these people decide what to order. I literally shook my head . … My God, my kids are half black! But then the kicker: we waited and waited and waited. Each of the four … leaned out the window and ordered individually. The order was changed several times. We sat and sat, and I again shook my head, this time at the conundrum that is race in America.
“I knew that the buried sentiment that had made me predict this disorganization … was … racist. … But my prediction was right.” (pp. 234-35.)
Africans also tend to litter. To understand this we must ask why whites don’t litter, at least not as much. We ask ourselves: “What would happen if everyone threw rubbish everywhere? It would be a mess. So you shouldn’t do it!” Blacks’ possible deficiency in abstract thinking makes such reasoning more difficult, so any behavior requiring such thinking is less likely to develop in their cultures. Even after living for generations in societies where such thinking is commonplace, many may still fail to absorb it.
It should go without saying that my observations about Africans are generalizations. I am not saying that none has the capacity for abstract thought or moral understanding. I am speaking of tendencies and averages, which leave room for many exceptions.
To what extent do my observations about Africans apply to American blacks? American blacks have an average IQ of 85, which is a full 15 points higher than the African average of 70. The capacity for abstract thought is unquestionably correlated with intelligence, and so we can expect American blacks generally to exceed Africans in these respects.
Still, American blacks show many of the traits so striking among Africans: low mathematical ability, diminished abstract reasoning, high crime rates, a short time-horizon, rudeness, littering, etc. If I had lived only among American blacks and not among Africans, I might never have reached the conclusions I have, but the more extreme behavior among Africans makes it easier to perceive the same tendencies among American blacks."
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And this: http://www.amren.com/ar/2003/09/index.html#cover
Urban Law 101
What I Didn’t Learn in Law School:
Adventures with black clients
by Donald Williamson
I grew up in a suburb of a large northern city, and had no real contact with blacks until I became a lawyer. After I got my law degree I naïvely looked forward to a rewarding legal career. Little did I realize that 25 years later I would be a self-employed attorney doing domestic and civil litigation for a clientele that is overwhelmingly black.
I didn’t plan it that way. I just wanted to do a lot of work in the courtroom, and the best offer I got out of law school was with a small firm that specialized in bankruptcy. Most of its clients were black. Several years later, I set up an independent practice and many of my former clients came to me for domestic work.
Most people do not realize this, but outside the world of corporate or securities law, in any big city the legal profession is to a large degree fueled by the pathologies of blacks and other Third-World people. Of course, whites hire lawyers, but in any city, especially one with a good-sized black population, most of the people who need lawyers are black. In this respect, lawyers are like police officers or social workers — they rarely deal with ordinary white people.
To a large degree, I became racially conscious because of my black clients, who eventually destroyed all my preconceived notions about race. My awakening did not come from one or even a few incidents, but from the accumulation of thousands upon thousands of small interactions.
Day after day my clients continue to amaze me. There is no racial education quite so thorough and convincing as spending time with blacks, and my clients are far from being the poorest and least competent blacks. They are not indigent criminals for whom I am a court-appointed lawyer. They are people who can afford (or think they can afford) a lawyer to get a divorce, contest a custody judgment, beat a traffic ticket, etc. Some are government employees who make $60 to $70 thousand a year, yet even this group is vastly different from whites.
They Don’t Know
One of the most striking things about my black clients is the things they do not know. Many blacks, for example, do not know their own telephone numbers. They may think they do but they don’t, and the problem has gotten worse with the proliferation of cell phones. At least a third of the numbers they leave with my receptionist or on my answering machine are wrong numbers. Often, a potential client will call several times, each time leaving a variation of the same phone number. I keep calling until they get it right. At first I thought I was taking down the numbers incorrectly, but now I know better. With caller ID, it is clear when what the client says does not match the digital display.
Some callers don’t even leave a number. About a quarter of the messages blacks leave do not include either a name or a number. Needless to say, many calls are not returned.
More than a handful of blacks who have come to my office do not even know their own home address (they move often). Many cannot tell me their own spouse’s names. Now I know to tell clients ahead of time that they will need this sort of information when they come in. Otherwise, if I ask for someone’s address he may look hurt and say, “If I’d known you were going to ask me that I would have come prepared.”
My black clients eventually destroyed all my preconceived notions about race.
Many black men know their children’s names but do not know how to spell them. With the proliferation of unusual names among blacks, I can only guess at how they are spelled. One client who told me he couldn’t spell his children’s names said I would need an encyclopedia to look them up. Many men have admitted to me they are not even sure how to pronounce their children’s names. Black woman, on the other hand, often become incensed if you mispronounce the very unusual names they have given their children.
The most unusual name I ever came across was Iisszzttadda. I have never met a person, white or black, who could pronounce it correctly. To my surprise the name is pronounced, “I seize the day.” Iisszzttadda had siblings named Raheem, Utopian, Desiorme, Sid-Timothy, Kizzma, and Larilaril. I have occasionally asked clients the reasons for such unusual names, but the most common answer is “I don’t know. It just sounded good.” This is the answer I got from a mother who named her child Latrine. (See sidebar for actual names of blacks I have encountered in my practice.)
I once had a client in my office who did not know his own name. He had been called by his nickname for so long he couldn’t remember his given name. This is not as shocking as it sounds. Some black names, like Phe-anjoy or Quithreaun or JyesahJhnai, are so odd, it would be no surprise if they were never used and eventually forgotten.
Names are not the only things blacks do not know. Once when I was filling out a form for a female client I asked if she knew how old her husband was. She told me she didn’t know. I asked her the next question on the form, which was her husband’s birth date. Amazingly, she knew it — and was genuinely surprised when I told her she could figure out her husband’s age from his birth date.
When potential clients call for the first time, often the hardest part is to figure out why they are calling. Usually they begin in the middle of the story. If you let them, they will go on and on, and say nothing. Clients may call about papers they got in the mail, but never have the papers in front of them. They may call for information, but never have a pen or pencil ready to take it down. I have learned to ask direct questions: “What is your name?” “What is the problem?” If a client cannot tell me in three minutes or less what the problem is, I tell him to come to my office and bring a small retainer fee. That way at least I will have to listen to their ramblings only if they are prepared to pay.
Blacks with whom I have already spoken seem to think I should know instantly who they are when they telephone. After I get on the line, a typical conversation may go like this:
“Who am I speaking to?”
“I am your client.”
“I have many clients, can you tell me which one?”
“I am your divorce client.”
“Can you tell me your name?”
“Rufus.”
“Rufus, can you tell me your last name?”
The conversation may go on for some time before I finally figure out who is calling.
I do not take personal injury or product liability cases, but blacks are always asking about bringing suits of this kind: “My vacuum cleaner broke. Can you help me?”
Since appointments mean so little to my clients, I decide each day when I am available, and tell everyone to show up at the same time.
Most of my clients who are not black either show up on time for appointments or call if they must reschedule. Amazing as this may seem, only about five percent of my black clients show up on time, and by that I mean within an hour of the appointed time. Only one in five show up on the appointed day. A few trickle in a day or two later. Most just never show up. Missing an appointment never embarrasses black people. They call repeatedly for new appointments, making four, five or even six appointments and then miss them all. I had one client who called more than 50 times before he finally came to my office. Rarely do I ever get a call from a black client canceling an appointment.
When I first started out as a lawyer I would call clients in advance to remind them of their appointments. They thanked me, but it made them no more likely to show up. Also, I used to call clients and potential clients who missed appointments, and try to have them reschedule. This did very little good. The most common response was, “Why are you calling me?” and it was never their fault that they didn’t show up. They had many different excuses, but I never heard, “I forgot,” or “I’m sorry I didn’t make it.”
Since appointments mean so little to my clients, I decide each day when I am available, and tell everyone to show up at the same time. On Saturday afternoons I can have as many as twenty appointments for the same time. Usually it is not a problem because few show up and even fewer show up on time. Only once in the last 20 years did everyone show up.
Many of my clients are unable to explain even the most basic facts. Often they must take the witness stand, and no matter how many times we have gone over the testimony in advance, I can be surprised by what they say. Some are simply lying and get tangled up in their lies, but most have such low IQs, they cannot describe even the simplest things. Often they seem to say the first thing that pops into their heads. When they are questioned further they cannot remember what they said previously.
I once had a client whose wife was suing him for child support. In discussions before trial he told me he had two children from a previous marriage. This was favorable for him because it meant he would probably owe his current wife less money. At trial, his wife testified that my client had no children outside of their marriage. When I asked him on the stand how many children he had before he married his current wife, he said he had none. Later I asked him why he had answered that way, when he told me before that he had two other children. “Did I say that?” he asked. I never found out which version was true.
Many of my clients have a hard time following simple directions. Once I appeared in traffic court with a client. In lieu of a conviction he was to see a traffic safety movie. The courtroom was on the second floor of the courthouse, and the traffic safety movie was shown on the first floor. The client was to come back to the courtroom with proof — which would be given him on the first floor — that he watched the movie. Both the judge and I explained this to the client. At the designated hour my client did not come back to the courtroom. Later that afternoon I got a call from the judge, who told me my client had completely misunderstood the instructions. He went to the nearest commercial movie house, saw a movie, and brought back his movie ticket stub.
Long ago I stopped asking my clients why they did something. It is not worth the effort. Most don’t know. The ones who know usually cannot give a coherent answer. Even if they can give a coherent answer, it usually changes every time you ask.
For example, one of my black divorce clients tried to hide assets from his spouse — this is not uncommon. Through discovery it came to light that he had secretly bought a piece of property after the divorce had begun. He put his wife’s name on the title, a very odd thing to do, since he was trying to hide the property from her. I made the mistake of asking him why he did that. True to my previous experiences, he could not give an answer that made sense.
Clients sometimes tell me they knew they were being cheated, but signed the papers anyway. I have given up asking why they signed, because I know I will not get an intelligible answer.
My clients make mistakes in written and spoken English that are often comical. One client in a criminal case told me he was telling the truth, and was willing to take a “polyester test” to prove it. Another told me he desperately wanted to see me, and needed an appointment “between Tuesday and Wednesday.” One who bounced a check told me the problem was “insignificant funds” in his account. I have had clients who have “profiteering” plans at work, want an “uncontestable” divorce (or a “detested” divorce, or an “untested” divorce), had “insects” (incest) in the family, need an “annoyment” (annulment), want a free “flirtation” (consultation), ask about my “container” (retainer), want to “consultate” about a divorce, or had to meet with “media people” (mediation counselors). One man told me, “I own a car but it is not mine,” and one who was accused of indecent exposure insisted, “I didn’t take my stuff out of my pants.”
It took me some time to understand certain kinds of black slang. Within the first month of my independent practice a man called to ask if I could “put a suitcase on a cat.” After much inquiry I realized he wanted to know if I could file a law suit against someone. Within the week I got another call asking if I “did luggage.” Since I now knew about suitcases, I said yes, I do luggage.
I pride myself on doing good work for my clients, but I cannot remember even once being thanked or complimented by a black client. They do not observe even the most common courtesies. Also, with rare exceptions, blacks will never admit they made a mistake. When things go wrong, as they inevitably do, it is always someone else’s fault. The most common excuse blacks give is, “They are putting me through the changes.” I have yet to figure out exactly what that means.
Most people tell lies because they think a lie will help them. I have come to the conclusion that most of my clients cannot distinguish between a plausible lie and a wild fairy tale. They are convinced people will believe anything they say. Clients often tell me some fantastic story I cannot possibly defend in court. If I tell them what they are saying is unbelievable the usual reaction is anger and screaming. Typically, they will add, “I’m paying you. You have to believe what I say.”
Cats on a suitcase.
Sometimes, despite my warnings, clients will get on the stand and tell obvious, outright lies. The judge may interrupt the testimony and tell me to go outside with my client to “get your story straight.” They are not going to sit in court and listen to fairy tales. I take my client outside and tell him he has got to tell the truth, or at least say something believable. My client then starts screaming. “Why are you talking to me this way? You’re supposed to be on my side.”
I once had a client testify about his assets in a divorce case, in which the court was to determine whether he should pay his estranged wife temporary support. My client was a store-front preacher, and testified that he lived in the marital residence with his wife, though in separate quarters. His wife testified that he was out living with his “ho.” My client went on and on about how this was impossible because he was a Man of God. I thought he was lying. The judge ruled that if my client was living with his wife he should share household expenses, which he was not currently paying. At this point, my client realized there was a cost to pretending to be a Man of God living with his lawful wife, and changed his tune. “Judge why are you believing me?” he said. “Believe my wife. I am nothing but an old lying nigger.” No one in the courtroom could stop laughing.
Outside Kids
“Outside kid” cases are one of my specialties. For those not in the know, blacks call any child born out of wedlock an outside kid. Black men are good at making children but not at supporting them, and this can be a terrible burden under laws written with white people in mind.
One client was willing to take a “polyester test” to prove he was telling the truth.
In my state, the parent who does not have custody — almost always the father — pays a percentage of net income to the parent with custody — almost always the mother. The mother gets 20 percent of the father’s net income for the first child, 25 percent for two children, and up to 50 percent for five or more children. What if a man has children by several women? Each mother gets 20 percent for the first child, so a man with five children by five different women is supposed to be paying 100 percent of his income in child support. I once had a client who had 12 different children by 10 different women. Theoretically, he owed 250 percent of his income. These laws simply don’t make sense for blacks. Judges have to decide each case as best they can.
Not surprisingly, the average black client will not pay child support unless it is deducted from his paycheck. Many refuse to work, or leave a job to avoid paying. Job turnover is very high among blacks, and the court system has a hard time keeping up with them. Some blacks quit on purpose, and move to another job so as to keep one step ahead of the collections.
Whenever I ask a potential client whether he has paid court-ordered child support he will almost invariably answer with one or more of the following: “I always helps my kids.” “I gives the mother money whenever she asks.” “I am always there for my kids.” “I buys my kids whatever they needs.” It almost always turns out they have paid no support, haven’t seen their children in years, and at best may have paid for some basketball shoes.
Seventy percent are “outside kids.”
Children do not always seem to have the same importance for blacks that they do for whites. I was in bankruptcy court once waiting for my client’s case to be called. A black debtor — not my client — was before the judge trying to convince him to approve his bankruptcy repayment plan. The judge told him he could not afford both his Cadillac and his children, and had to give up one or the other. The debtor immediately said he could not give up his car, and therefore the judge would have to take his kids. The judge threw up his hands and walked off the bench. On another occasion, the same bankruptcy judge told a black debtor he could not afford both his Cadillac and his house. The debtor replied, “You can live in your car but you can’t drive your house. Take my house.” This was many years ago and tastes in cars may have changed, but I learned how important Cadillacs were to blacks.
In one respect my job is very different from that of a policeman or social worker: I have to make sure I am paid. I try to get paid in full before I agree to represent a client. If I am not paid in full before the case is over I know I will never get any more money. Clients have a hard time understanding they are paying for an attorney’s time. Invariably, if a client drops a case before it is over he asks for a full refund. Their reasoning goes something like this: “I paid for a divorce and I didn’t get one, so I should get all my money back.”
Once I sued a client who didn’t pay me. I finally garnished his wages and was paid in full. About six months later he called to ask me to take his next case. I told him I didn’t want a client that doesn’t pay his bills. He became indignant. He said I got all my money, so what did I have to complain about.
To hear my clients tell it, banks are constantly “messing” with their checking accounts. At least that is what they tell me when their checks bounce. Most of my clients do not have checking accounts, and pay cash. The ones who do have accounts have no idea how much money is in them. Many clients have written me checks on accounts that were closed.
Black clients yell and scream at me every day; I have learned that this is normal. They are like young children who don’t get their way. I usually ignore these outbursts, though screaming back at them is usually more effective. I have been threatened with physical violence only twice, and once I had to call the police to escort a client out of my office.
My experience is hardly unique. Most of the lawyers I know have practices similar to mine. Most lawyers therefore are racial realists even if they do not admit it openly. Their actions and comments are no different from mine. People who have daily contact with minorities, who know first-hand that there are racial differences, are likely to be the best prospects for any movement that promotes racial consciousness. They don’t like dealing with blacks, but that is simply part of the business. If they can’t take it anymore they get into some other line of work.
More important than house or kids?
One lawyer I know moved to the country so he would have white clients. He had lived in the big city all his live, but was willing to pull up all his roots to get a different clientele.
Recently the supreme court in my state ruled that a lawyer can be disciplined for communications that racially denigrate litigants. For that reason I cannot write this article under my own name, much as I would like to. I must hide behind a pseudonym for fear of falling victim to our politically-correct supreme court.
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