The Evolution of Racial Differences in Morality
| AR Articles on Racial Differences |
|---|
| Race and Psychopathic Personality (Jul. 2002) |
| Race and Teenage Pregnancy (Feb. 2002) |
| The Biological Reality of Race (Oct. 1999) |
| Why Race Matters (Oct. 1997) |
| Race and Health (May 1996) |
| A New Theory of Racial Differences (Dec. 1994) |
| Search AmRen.com for Racial Differences |
| More news stories on Racial Differences |
Readers of AR will be aware of the well-documented race differences in intelligence and temperament. The mean black score on valid IQ tests is 85, while the white mean is 100 (and some Asian groups outscore whites). Black children adopted into upper-middle class white families fail to attain IQs much above 85, which implicates genes as the cause of this difference. Twin studies and cross-cultural comparisons implicate genes in the greater levels of impulsiveness and aggression also found in blacks.
A less frequently noted point is that these psychological differences suggest race differences in morality. Part of the difference may be due simply to different levels of intelligence. The mean IQ of incarcerated felons is about 90, and Lawrence Kohlberg’s extensive research on children found that IQ is correlated with moral development. It should not be surprising that mental ability is linked to moral character, since the latter requires grasping rules and thinking through the consequences of one’s actions.
However, different levels of intelligence are not likely to be the sole cause of racial differences in morality. Data reported in The Bell Curve (and noted in the February issue of AR) show that black and white populations differ in crime and illegitimacy rates even when IQ is held constant. Thus, in one large-scale study, blacks in general were 6.5 times more likely to be incarcerated than whites, but when the comparison was restricted to blacks and whites with IQs of 100, blacks were still 2.5 times more likely to be incarcerated.
Temperament therefore appears to have an effect on behavior that is independent of intelligence. This is intuitively obvious, as aggression easily becomes heedlessness of the rights of others; we should therefore expect black and white standards of behavior to differ.
Examples of this difference abound. “Trash talk,” the stream of arrogant banter with which black basketball players seek to intimidate and humiliate opponents, is alien to white ideals of sportsmanship. Likewise, Montel Williams, the host of a television talk show, claimed to have discovered racial bias in a question on an IQ test that asked children what they would do if they threw a baseball through a neighbor’s window. The answer scored as correct was offering to pay for the window, but Mr. Williams, who is black, objected that in his old neighborhood a “Sorry, man” would have sufficed. No doubt, Mr. Williams was right that blacks do attach less urgency than whites to compensating damage.
Numerous fights among blacks result from “dissing”-males seeking dominance over each other by shows of disrespect—a practice that indicates disregard for the golden rule. Moreover, it is hard to imagine a more blatant violation of the golden rule than the constant demand for royalties by Martin Luther King’s estate whenever his speeches are published—especially when his own plagiarism is justified as “voice merging.”
What Morality Is
Evolutionary biology suggests an explanation for race differences in moral values. But first, to begin with a definition: An individual’s “morality” is the rules he wants everyone to follow, and that he wants everyone to want everyone to follow. Honesty is a moral value for him if he tries to be honest, tries to make his children honest, hopes others will be honest, and encourages others to reinforce honesty. A group’s morality is the moral rules its members share.
The clause about “wanting everyone to want everyone” is needed to distinguish moral questions, like honesty, from other “universal” concerns. If you are like most people, you think others ought to be honest. But you may also think everyone should exercise, without considering exercise a “moral” value. The difference between the two is not in their usefulness, since both are useful: jogging is healthful, and honesty facilitates such profitable activities as trade. But honesty, unlike exercise, is advantageous only if everyone else is honest. Jogging strengthens my heart whether or not you jog, whereas being honest helps me only insofar as it induces others to reciprocate, allowing me to rely on their words. This is also why it is smart to be honest even when tempted to lie—if you are found out, others will feel no obligation to be honest with you.
On the other hand, if everyone else is a liar, honesty only lets others take advantage of you. Therefore, since honesty, self-restraint, and other moral virtues are good ideas only when everyone thinks they are good ideas, you not only want everyone else to be honest, you want everyone to encourage others to be honest, and to ensure that honesty is widespread.
The advantages of honesty and other virtues have a biological dimension. Since moral individuals in a moral community do better than scoundrels, they live longer and have more children. Obeying and reinforcing moral rules is adaptive. If there is any genetic tendency to obey and reinforce moral rules, a tendency to obey and reinforce them and to be susceptible to reinforcement will be passed on to offspring.
However, selection for morality need not have been uniform, since honesty, cooperation, and the other virtues need not have been equally important in all environments. Cooperativeness (like intelligence) was probably more adaptive in the colder, harsher, Eurasian environment in which whites and Asians evolved than in sub-Saharan Africa. Food grows year-round in a warm climate. There is little danger of freezing to death, so it is not necessary to work together to build large shelters. Sexual patterns are also influenced by environment: Since a woman abandoned by her mate has a better chance of supporting herself and her children in a benign environment, there is less pressure on women to evolve a demand for male fidelity, or for males to evolve a strong sense of attachment.
The situation was otherwise in Eurasia, where large game was a dietary staple. Bringing down a cornered mastodon takes cooperation, with each man in his assigned position, ready to respond to shouted instructions. There must be jointly acceptable rules for dividing the kill. And, since females depend on male hunters for their own survival and that of their children, an advantage would accrue to females who chose mates likely to support them for a lifetime. Sexual selection would then mold males more inclined to satisfy the female demand for fidelity.
Environment does not consist merely of natural factors like climate. Since morality is advantageous only when others are moral, a major determinant of the fitness of an individual’s “gene for morality” is the character of those with whom he interacts. As Robert Axelrod and William Hamilton put it in their classic study, “The Evolution of Cooperation” (Science 1981), “there is no single best strategy regardless of the behavior of others in the population.” In fact, seemingly irrational levels of mistrust can become locked into a group. Suppose a mild physical environment has selected for weak cooperative tendencies. A worsening of the environment might make greater cooperation in everyone’s interest, but not necessarily more fitness-enhancing, for any honest, helpful mutants who appear will simply be exploited until they die without issue. It is perfectly rational to be indifferent to others when they are indifferent to you.
In short, observed race differences in honesty, sexual self-restraint, and cooperativeness may be due to the fact that these traits did not have the same evolutionary value in Africa that they did in Eurasia. Indeed, since universality and reciprocity are built into the very concept of morals, it is incorrect to talk of “different moralities.” It is more accurate to say that individuals of Eurasian descent tend to be more moral than individuals of African descent.
Consequences
Nobody can go back in time to verify whether the races really developed in the way outlined. Still, the hypothesis sketched above is plausible enough, and it may be useful to note some of its implications.
1) Black behavior that is unacceptable by white standards—theft, drug use, preoccupation with sex—is not “sick.” It is how traits that were once adaptive in Africa express themselves in Western urban society. This may be part of the reason blacks seem not to experience white laws and standards of personal responsibility as binding, and why black spokesmen are so curiously unapologetic about black crime. They will caution black males that crime is “stupid” (i.e. apt to lead to punishment), and a Jesse Jackson may denounce black-on-black crime as harmful to blacks, but they do not say that crime, particularly black-on-white crime, is intrinsically bad.
In one remarkable incident, Edmund Perry, a Harlem teenager recruited on full scholarship to the prestigious boarding school of Exeter, was killed a few weeks after graduation when he attempted to mug a plainclothes policeman. Angry demonstrations ensued, in which blacks complained of Perry’s alienation at Exeter. Far from expressing regret over Perry’s actions, blacks blamed white society for them. In fact, the difficulties blacks experience in conforming to American society cannot really be blamed on black attitudes or white norms, but on the mismatch between the two.
2) Black children cannot be expected to respond as white children do to externally imposed white socialization. If the races evolved different values, black and white children will be receptive to different sorts of training and exhortation, a point with important practical consequences. It is often suggested, for instance, that black children would do better in school if told, as white and Asian children are, that school is important. But black children will not care about grades and the esteem of teachers, no matter how much they are told to, if valuing knowledge is a more weakly evolved norm among blacks. Since black societies never evolved formal education, it would make no sense for black children to be ready to internalize praise of education.
3) Violence will skyrocket when a group acquires a killing technology it did not develop. Groups that have invented such things as firearms without killing themselves off must also have developed sufficient inhibitions about using them. Groups that acquire weapons from outside sources are less likely to have evolved the same level of self-restraint, just as groups that do not discover fermentation are unlikely to develop a tolerance for alcohol, and often fall prey to drinking problems when alcohol is introduced from outside. Blacks may have been unprepared for access to the firearms developed in Western society.
Consider the remarkable increase in gunshot homicides among black men in the last half-century. In 1943 there were 44 handgun homicides in New York City; in 1992, 1,500 black males died of gunshot wounds inflicted by other black males. Since 92 percent of the 2,200 murders recorded in New York that year were committed by blacks, black males must have also killed several hundred non-blacks with firearms as well. The parallel increase in gunshot homicides nationally over the same period is essentially an increase among blacks.
Now, the sheer availability of guns does not automatically mean murder. Guns have been available for centuries to the whites who invented and manufacture them. Every adult male Swiss citizen owns a gun, yet the annual homicide rate in Switzerland is one two-hundredth that of Washington, D.C. or Harlem. The immediate cause of the rise in homicide has been the sudden availability of guns to blacks, who seem ready to resort to firearms in disputes that whites would regard as trivial. (Gunfights over calls in pick-up basketball games are not uncommon in New York City.) It may well be that blacks lack the restraints that would have evolved during the march to the invention of firearms—a possibility that should be considered in any discussion of gun control. If the “gun problem” is really the problem of black access to firearms, forbidding whites to have guns is pointless and unjust.
4) Moral signals may become confused when divergent groups interact. To explain the point with a crude example, suppose that blacks, being less empathetic than whites, must use stronger signals to rouse each others’ solicitude. It takes angry shouting to get another black to notice an injury that a white can be induced to attend to by less strident means. Likewise, a white will take an angry shout as expressing a more serious injury. If these signal patterns have themselves become innate in the two populations, whites will interpret the signals of blacks as if they were coming from other whites, and consistently overestimate the seriousness of injuries claimed by blacks.
The tendency of whites to interpret the angrier manner of blacks as if blacks were other whites leads whites to respond to black complaints with inappropriate generosity, thereby reinforcing black anger by teaching blacks that anger is rewarded. The result is intensified demands and further white confusion—a dynamic that may explain the puzzling phenomenon of white guilt, and the indulgence of many whites toward even the most unreasonable black demands.
Neither Is Better
The idea that blacks and whites evolved different systems of values says nothing about which values are “better,” and each group can be expected to think its values best.
Whites will continue to consider blacks “irresponsible” and blacks will, more openly, continue to call whites “up tight.” But the practical decisions of life require the adoption of some standards, and a group can use only those standards evolution has given it.
What by white standards is a black deficiency in morality—defined as conformity to the golden rule—explains the persistent unwillingness of the races to associate with each other. People almost by definition prefer the company of those who share their values, so it is no wonder that whites feel more comfortable with whites. Indeed, while blacks—even including Malcolm X—prefer to send their children to white schools and to use the other amenities of white society, blacks nevertheless prefer the company of blacks. The conventional idea is that these preferences are entirely due to “prejudice” that can and should be extirpated by education (i.e. propaganda). But if preference for one’s own kind is due to deep-seated differences in values, there seems nothing wrong with it, and there certainly seems no reason for it to be illegal.
Moreover, from their own point of view, whites are right to prefer their own company. By white standards, adherence to the golden rule and norms associated with it are the chief criteria of personal merit. Since blacks are on average less likely than whites to adhere to the golden rule—less cooperative, more aggressive, less respectful of property and persons—the average black is, by white standards, not as good a person as the average white. This is perhaps the least politically correct statement it is possible to make, but it is true and must be made. And, put in non-racial terms, it is one that even liberal egalitarians would assent to. Even they would admit to preferring the company of people who are less apt to steal, kill, lie, cheat, and shout them down in a debate.
It is possible to argue on purely philosophical grounds that people should be able to associate with whomever they please. This right, after all, can be enjoyed by everyone, and is itself in conformity with the golden rule. And this right, which implies that whites can “discriminate” in favor of other whites in housing, employment, and the schools to which they send their children, has been contravened by civil rights laws. This was allowed to happen because Americans, who respect freedom but also like to see that freedom is not abused, became convinced by the 1960s that use of the freedom of association to avoid blacks was entirely arbitrary. They became convinced that it could be motivated only by ignorance and hatred, and saw no reason not to forbid actions so maliciously based. Race differences in moral outlook, which people have long sensed, are perfectly good, non-arbitrary reasons for whites to wish to avoid blacks. Perhaps when this is more widely realized whites will once again permit themselves this liberty.
(Posted on May 23, 2008)
Comments
I first read this article in the book, “A Race Against Time.”
Excellent then; excellent now.
But is the European soul naturally Christian?
Posted by Garvin Alfred Schmaltz at 7:10 PM on May 23
The multicultists know about the morality gap more surely than does Michael Levin. That’s why people of color are encouraged to lie and take advantage of whites at any opportunity - as long as they are respectful to each other.
Posted by at 7:56 PM on May 23
Differences in IQ show quite clearly why diversity is not a strength.
Differences in morality, however, show quite clearly why, eventually, whites must expel, or, at least, segregate blacks from our nations, communities and personal space.
A hundred years ago, these differences were taken for granted. EVERYONE knew these things were true. Since there was clarity and consensus on the issue, blacks could be allowed to coexist relatively peacefully in our lands. But ONLY because they were kept on a short leash and definitely not allowed to contaminate our institutions, let alone our gene pool.
That has changed. And the changes have brought disaster with them. Incredible energy has been expended to hide the consequences from common awareness and face them. But the limits of that nonsense have been reached. There is only so far that whites can flee. Only so much our economy can take. And only so much prison space we can afford. And only so many murder, rapes, assaults and theft the media can cover up, in this day of non-centralized internet news. People (white people) are starting to notice.
Once enough whites understand that blacks don’t just have social problems but rather, as a group, they are evil and mean us as much harm as their ability and powers afford them, they simply will not be welcome here anymore.
They will have to leave. One way or another. This could mean strict segregation and laws making things like welfare illegal for them. More likely, it will mean forced relocation out of our country.
Posted by at 8:31 PM on May 23
There is no question at all that there is a moral difference between blacks and other races. Patterns of violence, crime, irresponsibility, promiscuity, illegitimacy etc, are vastly higher among blacks then among various white ethnicities or certain Oriental groups like Japanese, Koreans, etc. Any honest observation of blacks and their actions bear this out.
Posted by at 10:32 PM on May 23
It’s the little things you notice, again and again, predictably. Like how blacks cross the street whenever and whereever they want. Or how much more garbage is left on the ground after an event in a public park, with plenty of trashcans in plain view. Or how they inconsiderately blast their annoying obscene music with such dimwitted nonchalance. Many affirmative-action blacks are not like this, though. They often seem to refute the “stereotypes”. But I would suggest that affirmative-action blacks are basically being paid by whites to behave themselves. And that they consider behaving themselves to be “acting white” is actually the ultimate confirmation of the stereotypes.
Posted by HideouslyWhite at 11:55 PM on May 23
The best rational explanation I have read for the differences.
This is excellent ad for segregation. Most races prefer their own skin. It is perfectly natural. Before transportation the races were placed together. It is travel/migrations of last century that mass integration has been required by governments.
Norms are more likely defined by race than by country, economics,
or other considerations. V
Posted by at 2:26 AM on May 24
“Race differences in moral outlook, which people have long sensed, are perfectly good, non-arbitrary reasons for whites to wish to avoid blacks. Perhaps when this is more widely realized whites will once again permit themselves this liberty.”
This is to be hoped.
However, in the States, few blacks are without white admixture, and this trend can only increase with continued integration and miscegenation.
This creates more confusion, as some blacks will share the whites’ moral outlook much more than the average black will.
Since there will always be some ‘good’ blacks, even when judged by the Golden Rule standard, liberal whites will always be able to claim, with some truth on their side, that it is unfair to discriminate against individuals who may differ from the other members of their racial group.
Posted by Thrasymachus at 5:26 AM on May 24
A suggestion.
By attributing traits to races we make ourselves easy target for damaging criticism by Liberal scientists who capitalize on trivial observation that the concept of race has not been well defined, particularly under the circumstances of mass inter-breeding.
The arguments like the one above would be much more defendable if they replaced “races” with “genetically kin groups” and referred to various studies that demonstrated inheritability of many traits, including political orientations.
Once prevailing traits of given group are properly identified one may proceed onto statistical analysis of their secondary characteristics, like appearance and preferred culture. By doing so, all the valid conclusions will be preferred without even to having mention the notion of “race”, which, in the eyes of American public, will likely invalidate fallacious objections of Liberal “scholars”.
Posted by A Reader at 1:17 PM on May 24
Reply to Hideously White at 11:55 PM;
That was an insightful post. You are right. IT IS the little things that blacks so routinely do that give insight into their character and makeup. These little, seemingly irrelevant things are actually ‘defining moments’ - things, situations that reveal the type of human being one is. The blaring music blacks play in their cars for example. A need for attention? Or just a basic lack of consideration for others? A bit of both? Take the black propensity for littering, even when there are plenty of trashcans nearby. Just laziness? Ignorance? Indifference to the environment? No sense of responsibilty? All four perhaps? At my work a very large number of blacks from another department were recently moved into our building. What had formerly been a clean and tidy parking lot is now a sea of discarded fast food containers. The building janitors now have to go out twice a day and clean the parking lot. Putting in several additional trashcans made no difference. How about the black tendency to begin crossing a light on an amber. Wouldn’t simple prudence dictate waiting until the light is green? Then they make no effort to hurry across, seemingly indifferent to the drivers who have to wait on a green for them to shuffle aimlessly across? At least if the person was hustling quickly across you would get the implication that “yes he understands what he is doing is borderline wrong. He is also delaying me but by hurrying across he at least is aware of this and trying to minimize the problem”. You DO NOTICE these ‘little’ things. People basically reveal their true character not so much in moments of crisis but in banal day to day gestures. They are signs or indications of what blacks are REALLY like. Just a basic lack of thoughtfulness or consideration for others. No sense of responsibility or accountability. A sense of entitlement. These “little things” tell you all you need to know about blacks.
Posted by at 2:54 PM on May 24
Don’t forget their dadblame pitbulls, and their walking aroung with one hand feeling of their groin area.
And the spinning rim hubcaps—oh, yes!
Posted by Garvin Alfred Schmaltz at 9:16 PM on May 24
Michael Levin wrote that more than a decade ago. What a visionary. Levin’s insight provides a plausible explaination of what we see in modern times. It’s only starting to dawn on liberals now…or they cannot hold back the truth any longer.
http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2008/04/fairfax_postpon.php
Fairfax Postpones Vote About Student Behavior Study
The Fairfax County School Board voted unanimously last night to postpone a decision on whether to accept a school system report that showed racial and ethnic gaps in certain measures of achievement in character education.
http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2008/04/behavioral_stud.php
Behavioral Study on Students Stirs Debate
The [Fairfax] county School Board, which oversees one of the country’s largest and most diverse suburban school systems, is scheduled to vote tonight on whether to accept a staff report that concludes, in part, that black and Hispanic students and special education students received lower marks than white and Asian American students for demonstration of “sound moral character and ethical judgment.”
http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2008/04/fcps_cite_moral.php
FCPS Cite ‘Morality Gap’
At-large School Board member Tina Hone questioned the validity of data that shows a “morality gap” between white students and some minority groups in Fairfax County Public Schools.
Posted by Reality Check at 2:23 PM on May 25
This kind of analysis should be extended to the other non-white races as well. They do not all exhibit the same profile as blacks but nevertheless demonstrate day by day their absolute incompatability with European people.
Take Indians, for example (yes, please, take them). They are not violent like blacks but they are just as dirty and noisy. Hindu weddings can last up to seven days (usually a three day weekend)and they will blast it out for all that time, or until the cops show up. Although there have been some genuine Indian geniuses for the most part intellectually they are way overrated. Yet they are the biggest braggarts I have seen. They care more about social status in their neighborhood than in actually living in a clean, quiet, safe place. So common practice is to take a modest single family house with a simple picket or chain link fence (kept up nicely for decades by whites) and put up an elaborate facade to it, complete with big fluted columns and garish plaster elephants. Then they will proceed to fill it with three to four families (and plenty of transients). The garbage will pile up in the front and back, where Grandmas´s roses used to be but hey, they´re Rajah, or something (“Check out my Taj Mahal!”).
These are just my observations, of course, and not scientific. But try it with any group, Mexicans and other mestizos or indians, Africans, South East Asians (ask Minnesotans about those wonderful Hmong), Arabs, whatever. They will all come up zero on the compatability scale. And to think people once complained about the Irish.
Posted by at 9:51 AM on May 27
I’m not sure I get his use of the title of the one section “Neither is Better”.
But I will say that it’s obvious that the general outlook on Morality by Whites is much better. Though that does come with some qualifications.
Anyway, today we are expected to extend unconditional empathy, love, and respect for Blacks that, given our own record concerning Family Dysfunction based on Abuse and Neglect, we don’t even extend to ourselves!
Also, we are told not to judge Blacks by a White standard. But the Black standard is based on hypocrisy. For example, they don’t want us to judge them while they sit back and judge us. And we can’t even criticize the manner and method of judgement they use!
Why should this surprise us? After all, Black men routinely do this to their own women. According to their “culture” a Black man can have as many women as he can get his hands on. Whereas if a Black woman is caught cheating she better have a gun and be ready to use it. So, if he’s going to do this to his woman, what do you think he’s going to do to us?
And speaking of woman and sex it’s worth pointing out that it seems to be all he thinks about, which ought to tell you something. Actually, he does think about something else, ie; blaming, hating, and killing White people. In short, his thoughts are divided between sexual gratification, blame, revenge, and violence. And all of this is be to dismissed by bathing the word “culture” in a religious aura when applied to Blacks and other non-Whites, while ours is relentlessly, and ignorantly, demonized.
In fact, what W.C. Fields once said of most of the Actors, Directors, and Producers and Studio Executives in Hollywood, can be said of Blacks and most non-Whites when it concerns their criticism of us and OUR Culture -
“It’s their ignorance that gives them confidence.”
Posted by Mal Evans at 10:37 AM on May 27
Great article. First time I read it and I’ve been a loyal and rabid Amren fan for several years now. Perhaps we can get the Keystone State Skinheads to raise posters imprinted with this message throughout Philadelphia. It confirms what most whites think about blacks when whites do any thinking about race at all.
Posted by GetBackJack at 10:53 AM on May 27
It has become obvious to me over my life time that Africans lie naturally , anything they feel might make them “look bad” is edited before and while they speak.
Perhaps morality is tied to intellect . Since morality is a means by which a society might flourish over time. Idiots have no concept of time , they understand only the present moment. Cheating stealing and lying is nothing more than a tool used by those who live moment by moment , to maintain their status quo.
Posted by Len at 2:42 PM on May 27
I’ve taught ESL to a handful of African blacks over the years, and find them fair-to-middling students. One fellow this semester was among the “Lost Boys of Sudan”, and is a really good guy. This morality gap seems to be mostly an African-American phenomenon, in my observation… though folks like Mugabe and Bokassa and Idi Amin make one wonder at times.
Much as they hate whitey, American blacks crave our attention and wouldn’t survive thirty days without us. Generally unable to get our attention in a positive way, they tend to do it by disrupting whatever positive things WE might be doing. Thus the crossing of the street anywhere and anytime, assaulting people who are minding their own business, playing loud rap “music” that probably even they themselves don’t really enjoy, dressing ridiculously, interrupting classroom instruction, littering, causing disturbances, etc. It’s a form of profound alienation, explainable by anyone who’s taken a Sociology 101 course… but antisocial just the same.
BTW, how many of you have noticed the “look” they give people when they’re deliberately littering or doing something obnoxious just to get attention? It’s exactly the same look I used to get from the family dog at a house where I was rooming as a foreign student decades ago. It would deliberately urinate on my clothing or furniture, then stare at me like “Whaddaya think about THAT, human?!”
Posted by generalquagmyer at 2:43 PM on May 27
While I can’t agree with all of Dr. Levin’s points, he certainly makes a strong case for inherited differences. We can only hope that Michael Levin will revise his article at some later date to refect current research in socio-biology. He is a thoughtful and informative writer.
Posted by Sardonicus at 12:21 PM on May 28
Reading the descriptions of African-American behaviour convinces me that the premise of the article is wholly correct.
During the Apartheid era in South Africa there was forced segregation of the races. Whites of course were the privileged group because they held government and industry. Blacks were the underdogs living in “townships” apart from but alongside other population groups, Soweto for instance is a city on the western side of Johannesburg (South West Township). Asians were also segregated, living in their own townships but the differences were exactly as described in the article. The black townships were (are) violent, dirty places where no one seemed to respect either their own or their neighbours’ property and possessions. The streets were always filled with litter and gang warfare was common. The Asian community also suffered from a litter problem but there was obvious further segregation within the townships imposed by their own culture, i.e. the Cast system. At one end of the Asian township would be small low class housing while the other end would have magnificent structures that few whites could afford. High Cast Asians were as wealthy, if not more wealthy than the majority of whites. There were white suburbs that practiced “white at night” curfews. Blacks were allowed to work in the white suburbs providing they had “pass books” (identity documents) that allowed them to do so – the police would regularly stop blacks in the street to check their pass books – if not valid they would be bundled into the back of the police van and taken away. The majority of white houses were built with a servants room – usually about 3m x 2m with an outdoor toilet / cold water shower, where the maid would live separated from her family (O.K. it was harsh – but their choice to live as a maid in a white community). In the “white at night’ suburbs blacks on the street after curfew would be arrested even if they were maids officially living at the white’s house.
Blacks were educated in Bantu schools where the standards were very much lower than those at white schools. Asians provided their own schooling, but it was on-par with white schools.
Strangely, Japanese were classed as white and Chinese were classed as coloured (coloured being somewhere between white and black), this I believe was to appease the Japanese government – they have always been an important trading partner.
Parks, public swimming pools, public toilets, zoos, and every other amenity were reserved for whites – there were signs everywhere declaring “Whites Only”, although there were also things reserved for blacks, such as a bus company Putco (Peoples Urban Transport Company)
There was also segregation amongst the whites, the dividing line being English speaking or Afrikaans speaking, however it was more self imposed and less apparent than the official segregation, but there was “job reservation” for instance because the government was Afrikaans all government post were reserved for Afrikaans South Africans.
For a whitey it was a great place to live. Everything was clean and tidy and everything worked. Children played in the street and it was safe.
Apartheid ended
The streets are permanently littered. Houses are surrounded by high walls, razor-wire and electric fences. The insurance policy for my house contents is invalid unless I have an intruder detection alarm system that is automatically coupled to an armed response company, with detectors in all rooms and on all external doors. During a schoolyard fight it is now common for a white boy to be stabbed in the neck and killed by his black assailant – no matter how trivial the argument. White people do not walk in the street. Those who venture into parks are mugged. To get to work from my home it is speedier to cut through suburbs than to use the freeway, but since blacks have moved into the suburbs my travelling time has doubled – not because there is more traffic but because they drive so slowly.
Segregation (Apartheid) works.
Wouldn’t it be a good idea to ship all the blacks in the USA back to Africa (so they can find their roots) and in exchange ship all the whites from Africa to the USA? And let’s have a United Nations moratorium on aid and military assistance – within a generation or two the population problem will be over, they breed so fast but they kill each other off so quickly if there’s no outside interference. Eventually when black numbers are few enough to become the minority we can move bck to Africa and continue mining it’s vast mineral wealth…
Posted by flowerpower51 at 1:09 PM on May 28
After reading the comments about blacks in South Africa from “flowerpower51” I see that it is no different there then where I am(in Texas). Go through any black neighborhood here or if too many blacks move in and the place becomes utterly trashed and run-down. Crime skyrockets and being around large number of blacks(I went to school with them they were bussed in)was a nightmare. Yes, there is a certain percentage that are decent, nice, smart people but such a large number of them were horrible, obnoxious, prone to theft and aggression especially fighting and sexual abuse.
Posted by kc at 7:45 PM on May 31
“It’s the little things you notice, again and again, predictably. Like how blacks cross the street whenever and whereever they want. Or how much more garbage is left on the ground after an event in a public park, with plenty of trashcans in plain view. Or how they inconsiderately blast their annoying obscene music with such dimwitted nonchalance.”
I notice the same things. Don’t get me wrong, there are whites(usually young or low class) who are obnoxious, trash places and play loud music and care for nobody around them. However this behavior is so much more prevelant among blacks. I was flying on American Airlines recently and the casually well-dressed black man just leaves his trash on the seat whereas whites usually pick theirs up. At parks, blacks will just leave beer cans everywhere and fast food bags everywhere even though the garbage can is two feet away. They play their loud rap music with no regards for anyone.
Posted by JO at 4:57 AM on June 2