FROM Racism, Guilt, Self Hatred, And Self Deceit (2010) by Gedaliah Braun:

In August 1976, when I left America to teach Philosophy at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, I did so somewhat reluctantly. On the subject of blacks and Africa, I was a tabula rasa [a ‘blank slate’]. I grew up in a typical ‘liberal’ environment where one was taught never to use the word ‘nigger’ (the American equivalent of the South African term ‘kaffir’) – and until 1969, in New Orleans, I don’t think I’d ever heard the word actually used. I was not involved in the Civil rights movement but was certainly not opposed to it. My hometown in upstate New York had few blacks, though in the mid-fifties our high school did have a black cheerleader. While I had no black friends as a youth, this was not by design, and when, in 1968, I met a black man (a fireman), I had no difficulty in forming a friendship – a friendship which has remained to this day.

So when I went to Nigeria I was neither anti-black nor an afrophile (a ‘lover’ of things black). Nevertheless, I immediately felt ‘at home’ there and because I went without prejudices, I was able to observe things with an unjaundiced eye; and I made some remarkable discoveries.

First, African blacks were not at all uptight about race; second, it was obvious to them that the white man was ‘cleverer’ – and, they were not the least bit uptight about this. Only later did I realize that racial ‘sensitivity’ was essentially a Western phenomenon with its roots in white guilt.

Few things I’ve learned in Africa are more important than this lack of racial sensitivity. Much of our ‘Western perspective is based on the ingrained assumption that blacks are deeply offended by any suggestion of racial differences; this in turn is based on the equally unquestioned belief – never examined – that the idea of such differences is morally offensive. To acknowledge that throughout Africa people are not uptight about race must have a profound impact on one’s thinking.

I spent the next five years at the University of Nairobi, where I began to observe things more carefully and eventually to formulate certain ideas. Everything I had noticed in Nigeria (about the lack of racial sensitivity, etc.) was confirmed, but it was in Kenya that I learned (e.g.) how Africans distrust each other, how little they confide in each other and how rarely they form real friendships.

— Comments —

Mrs. L. writes:

The lack of uptightness on the part of African blacks on the subject of white cleverness really registered with me. Of course American blacks can’t easily escape their narrative, but I’m reminded of a time when I had to visit a medical specialist’s office in a majority-black part of my then-city:

I was the only white person in a waiting room full of black people (perfectly polite people, I was at ease), when a family of three black women started worrying loudly about the forms they’d been given to fill out. One of the younger women looked around the room at the other patients until her eyes fell on me. She brought the forms over and very politely asked if I could help her understand what some of the questions meant (they did not know the meaning of the term “marital status”).

I was in my early twenties, inelegant in my dress, and clearly another patient as opposed to an administrator of the office. I don’t care to discuss how liberal I was then, but I thought nothing of helping them out just as they thought nothing of asking.

If only this “lack of uptightness” could be replicated on a wide scale. But it’s not going to happen in this country.

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