MY first thought on seeing images two weeks ago of the Kenyan military police who responded to the jihadist massacre at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi was that these men were not real soldiers. They looked like children playing a military game. They wore dazed expressions under helmets that appeared too big. Their assault weapons seemed unwieldy and out of place in their hands. It was almost touching how ill-suited they seemed to a disciplined military operation of any kind.

It turns out that my intuitions were correct. The soldiers, it is now believed, behaved like naughty children in the mall. According to The New York Times:

Witnesses said that the most they saw militants loot was a couple of cans of soda, and shopkeepers cited no instances of panicked shoppers helping themselves to merchandise as they ran for their lives, leading to the widespread conclusion that the security forces must have been involved.

Kenyans are accustomed to corruption — their country is consistently rated as one of the most corrupt in the world — but the evidence of looting amid a national tragedy has been too much for many to take.

“It’s disgraceful,” said Maina Kiai, one of Kenya’s best-known human rights defenders. “It’s part of a nasty culture where power means everything, where you take what you can, you do whatever you want, and there’s no accountability.”

The Negro is a child at odds with the modern world and its techno-wizardry. Give him advanced weaponry or bureaucratic power and he will use it in a childish way.

— Comments —

Jane S. writes:

Said Maina Kiai, one of Kenya’s best-known human rights defenders, “It’s part of a nasty culture where power means everything, where you take what you can, you do whatever you want, and there’s no accountability.” 

Before Christianity was introduced, that was the norm in societies throughout the world. If you had power, good for you. If the man with the sword cut you down, that’s your tough luck.

It is still the norm in societies where Christianity is not dominant. It will be the norm if totalitarian atheism takes over the world.

Laura writes:

There is no evidence that blacks can sustain a Christian civilization on their own.

Karl D. writes:

I read another account of this story a few days ago which really made me chuckle. One of the stores looted by the Kenyan “security forces” was a book store. The owner stated that the cash registers were opened and robbed, as were the laptop computers. When asked if any books had been stolen, he stated that all the bookshelves had remain untouched and that no books were stolen.

Murse writes:

Has there ever been a black society that wasn’t steeped in corruption? The only thing that comes to my mind is pre-desegregation America, when blacks comported themselves according to the standards of Western culture.

 John Hartley writes:

Apparently no one told Ethiopia that there was “no evidence that blacks can sustain a Christian civilization on their own.” They thought they had been doing just that for centuries!

Laura writes:

Ethiopians are distinctive racially and are largely non-Negroid in ancestry. The Amhara are related to peoples of the Mediterranean basin. See this discussion at VFR.

Paul writes:

Black American culture was steeped in corruption at the time of and before desegregation.  But whites usually forced it to affect only blacks.  I am a living witness.  I remember.  It is why we Southerners wanted segregation (and why it still exists).  We knew how awful their culture is and feared it.  I have borne witness a number of times before, so I won’t bore your readers now unless a reader challenges my assertions.

Kevin writes:

I lived in Saudi Arabia for four years. I’ve traveled a bit. It is disgusting what most Americans (indeed, most Westerners) accept that is shoveled through a TV set. I worked alongside men who were at the Bhopal Union Carbide plant when that disaster happened. I have known New York City fire fighters. I have shared dinner with a family of Brits who spent decades living in South Africa who told me the reality of life down there that you would never, ever hear on an American TV set.

When I was in Saudi, there was a popular shopping mall in Dhahran called the al-Shula. It caught fire and burned to the ground. There were newspaper photos of Saudi fire fighters all standing outside the burning building. When asked why they did not go inside to extinguish the flames, their captain replied, “You idiot! That building is filled with smoke!”

Fire fighters. The same heroes who let 80 Saudi girls perish in flames because the Mutawain (Muslim God Gestapo) barred them from entering a place where women might be seen without their head dresses.

The average Indian laborer at Bhopal couldn’t spell “preventative maintenance” or “safety.”

You really need to leave the U.S. to appreciate the simplest of our blessings. One of my British coworkers once said, “Teaching the concept of safety to a Saudi is like teaching particle physics to a cocker spaniel.” And he was in charge of the fire brigade.

Oct. 7, 2013

Paul writes:

I am relieved no one has challenged the point of your article in an attempt to change the subject.  So it is time, as you often do, to speak up for many and maybe most blacks.

Blacks, at least Southern Blacks, are friendly, affectionate, have many smart compatriots, and are not used to receiving respect.  As a Deep South city Southerner, I have been around our black fellow humans all of my life.  They are not stupid, and therefore, they must know their culture and intelligence does not compare well to white culture and intelligence.  It is why white liberals and smart black people like Opray Winfrey make such a big deal over a black who performs well.

If a white person shows a black person respect, especially a white male towards a black female, the black person will go out of his or her way and bend the rules.  Blacks know black females pairing with white males occurs much less frequently than black males pairing with white females.  Fellow blacks don’t give one another respect; and most whites are smartly wary of blacks.  Blacks are acutely aware of this wariness and naturally resent it.

And blacks have fought well in many American wars.  So they deserve our respect.

I hope a black leader steps forth, admits his culture’s deficiencies, and admits blacks will flourish only if they accept and appreciate white leadership, all of which is unlikely.  Alternatively, the black leader could make the same admissions and strive for separation, while explicitly stating their separate culture will never match white culture and achievement.  The leader should admit it is a burden that blacks alone must bear if blacks are to gain self-respect.

Oct. 8, 2013

David J. writes:

You said, “There is no evidence that blacks can sustain a Christian civilization on their own.”

In a previous discussion, I admitted my deep concern that the black race, as a group, is morally doomed given its steep behavioral and intellectual inabilities.  Bill R., one of your posters, berated me for my frank language and cold conclusion concerning the matter.  Does not the aforementioned quote of yours simply reinforce my opinion?  If a race cannot sustain a Christian civilization, how can it then sustain Christianity?  Does not this faith require organization, lawfulness, study of holy texts, civil honesty, lack of corruption, adult maturity, and other features of civilization?  Where has true Christianity ever been decoupled from some sort of civilizational foundation?

Did God then want my race only to be colonized or enslaved by others and never to practice self-rule or did He want blacks to be separated in Africa in their own blight and ignorance for eternity?  The two alternatives seem the only choices available for this seemingly benighted portion of humanity.  If my logic offends the likes of such posters like Bill R., I respectfully challenge them to point out the supposed holes in it.

 Laura writes:

It is also true that men could not sustain Christian civilization on their own. Nor could women. Nor could children. None of these groups could physically survive on their own of course, whereas the black race can, but still these facts point to the overwhelming truth that human beings are interdependent. While blacks as a group cannot sustain Christian civilization on their own, they can certainly be Christian and partake in Christian civilization. Is that not good enough? Your question somewhat reminds me of a sick man who sits in his hospital bed, cared for by attentive doctors and nurses, angry that he is sick instead of appreciative of the fact that he could be much worse off. Yes, he cannot cure himself or get up on his own without help, but the fact is, he has that help nearby.

What this all means for blacks in the future, we do not know. But we do know that the failure to recognize natural limitations is a form of hubris and would morally doom both black and white societies.

Did God then want my race only to be colonized or enslaved by others and never to practice self-rule or did He want blacks to be separated in Africa in their own blight and ignorance for eternity? 

Millions of whites have been colonized and enslaved. (The slavery of blacks in the American South was quite civilized for the most part. To be enslaved by those with moral standards who believe they can go to hell if they mistreat others is not the worse fate. Is it worse than slavery to urban lawlessness?) Advanced self-rule has been elusive and Christian civilization is the exception, not the norm. Whatever comes for black societies, I hardly think that blacks themselves have a greater share in the world’s sufferings. If they cannot sustain advanced civilization, they also are not troubled by its burdens. Children cannot sustain a household, but they are free from many of its worries.

God wants for the black race what he wants for all. He wants it to grow in suffering and reject self-love.

Bill R. writes:

David J. writes, “If my logic offends the likes of such posters like Bill R., I respectfully challenge them to point out the supposed holes in it.” It wasn’t his logic that offended me, it was his attitude. And he still has it. Laura captured the essence of the attitude well with her analogy about the sick person in the hospital complaining only about his misfortune and appreciating none of the good that still attended him.

Let me be blunt: David J. is right to be pessimistic about his race. The prospects for blacks as a race are exceedingly bleak, particularly when judged by the civilizational standards and moral norms of the white West; bleaker, by a good margin, in fact, than those of any other race on the planet. I say these things with no bigotry or malice, nor hostility toward blacks. I say what I say simply because I believe they are facts, hard though some of them may be.

Having said that, however, let me point out that the same bleakness has characterized the black race for millennia and yet they are still here. Some might say that suggests a rather impressive racial tenacity, that blacks could have so much less of certain natural gifts and yet still manage to survive all these untold centuries. Which is superior, the genius who gets an A in the course without even having to attend any lectures, or the moderately intelligent dyslexic who struggles for hours upon hours every week just to eke out a C+? There is no straight answer because it depends on what you value more. For me, I’ll take the dyslexic any day of the week. That’s character. The genius? You can always look up in a book what you don’t know but you can’t pull character like that dyslexic’s off a shelf.

Furthermore, our species has presumably had its share of evolutionary branches that were so flawed they didn’t even survive to see the dawn of civilization, much less be a part of it, much less still have the ability to sustain the most advanced modern expression of it. Compared to all the Homo sapiens that have walked this earth, the races extant today may represent quite an elite and exclusive club. I might add further that whites have a curious moral deficiency of their own which myself and other whites must face and acknowledge without succumbing to despair if we are to remain honorable and honest citizens, just as David J. and his fellow blacks must do with the deficiencies of their race. Furthermore, this deficiency of the white race may prove the most critical deficiency any race can ever have. I’m speaking, of course, of the apparent atrophy of my race’s instinct for self-preservation.

Nevertheless, I agree with David J.’s pessimistic assessment of his race. (When he says they’re “doomed,” however, okay, but once again only in the sense that they’ve been “doomed” for thousands upon thousands of years and yet they’re still here. Don’t forget, the ones that were really doomed are no longer here to talk about it.) What I don’t agree with, however, what I find even more pessimistic and sad because it’s a dead end being chosen by an obviously intelligent and articulate individual, is David J.’s apparent determination, once he cries, “Oh, woe is my race,” to remain stuck there, to remain mired in this terminus of racial self-pity instead of saying, “Okay, so now what? I’ve acknowledged the deficiencies of my race (and every race has them). There’s nothing I can do to change the facts about my race. There is only what I can do to change the facts about myself. And those facts will change, as they do for us all because life is constantly moving forward, with or without us. So it is up to me to decide whether I will dedicate myself to being one of those rarer parts of something better, or one of the more common parts of something worse.”

I should not need to add that should David J. decide on the former course, he will not only have honored himself but also his race, and made that one small, infinitesimal contribution of himself toward the cause of its elevation — small and infinitesimal, perhaps, yet precious and great as well because what I’m speaking of is the contribution we make with the conduct of our entire life. And if we should find ourselves tempted to despair over the pitiful insignificance of what one mere life can hope to accomplish, let us try to accept the limitations of our individual humanity with the same humility, patience, and compassion with which we should accept the limitations of our racial humanity, be that in our own race or in that of another.

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