Goodbye, White Guilt
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. (more…)



