As for the West Africans, I would advise that people fully investigate the actual events. I would ask you to imagine a scenario where you return home from work to discover that you family is being held ransom. You are promised that your family will be returned provided that you find replacements for each family member. But instead of an exchange, your family members are abducted any way to a place and to conditions beyond your imagination. The African had seen servitude before, but never exposed to the model of slavery that we’re all too familiar with today. Understanding and healing must come from the TRUTH, not perpetuated lies that are devised to keep the African Diaspora from knowing who they really are. Call it propagandist rhetoric if you like, the reality remains that millions of people in this country and millions more world-wide undervalue their self-worth due to a lack of knowledge of their history. And issues such as the one that is the topic of this discussion only exasperate the problem.

And as long as a slave was considered BY LAW to be only 3/4 human, they could not be “americans” during the slave period. Those rights as citizens were not fully implemented until the 1960’s and some of us may argue have not been fully implemented until this day…

That’s sort of what I expected.

Still comparing blacks of the same IQ, some from Africa, some from the inner cities, might point out that the problem has something to do with individual motivation or black culture.

I suppose comparing black immigrants to white immigrants from the same financial background – not comparing poor Umi who had to search for books to read to some well off Irish immigrant – would yield some insight into if and how much discrimination there is.

I just skimmed that Enough book at the bookstore and seemed good except for the lack of footnotes and academic studies beyond ad hoc examples. Colorful Bill Cosby examples, but some more academic rigor would be nice. Nice book review in the Examiner Lashawn.

Most of what I’m reading today is just a glorified finger pointing game:

1. what color did what to what color
2. how the media reports on what color does what
3. the liberal or conservative bias
4. which color did what to the other color and when.
5. that color is responsible for what this color is doing today or not doing today.

All this is silly and pointless to me.

This is the reason why race problems cannot be solved in this world system.

It would require that all men of all races realize that they are inherently full of sin and unrighteous, just as much as the next guy, and in need a savior. And everyone realizing that no one is better than anyone else in God’s eyes.

There’ll never be a majority thinking this way, therefore the race problem cannot be solved in this world.

Just my thought…

Posts like this continue to remind me of the depravity of man.

We will lie, cheat, steal, kill, do anything for that money.

Dems: Shade please do not gloat.

Please don’t falsely accuse me of gloating.

There have been black Africans who have spoken up for black Americans too.

And don’t pretend that there are no black Americans that look down on black Africans.

Show me where I have pretended this.

Your use of stats makes me think you’re one of them.

What you think is irrelevant to what is truth.

To see black people using stats against each other is sad and pathetic. So pathetic!

You remind me of those individuals who are quick to castigate an American for criticizing another country, but readily accept a person from another country criticizing Americans. I tend to consider this sad and pathetic. This is shown by how you conveniently ignored the fact that this particular discussion started with a rather brutal attack on black Americans by a person from Africa and I responded in a way to show how hypocritical it was. Period. I have no desire to put down Africa and would generally be more inclined to defend her, yet I don’t see anything wrong with constructive criticism even if statistics are involved.

UNK: It could be self selection of the type of people I meet and type of people who are immigrants

Typically, immigrants from overseas are the cream of the crop and often come as students.

Charles Murray speaks well, but he has a Ph.D. in POLITICAL SCIENCE, not any psychology field. Derbshire or whatever his name is failed to mention this – from another thread – while insulting Steven Jay Gould for haveing only a Ph.D. in planentology (spelling?)

The argument it could be worse in a different location (Africa) or different time period (Europe in 1940) is a red herring and not relevant for comparing conditions in one location today.

But arguments from African immigrants who come here today and succeed, despite some discrimination, is relevant.

It could be self selection of the type of people I meet and type of people who are immigrants, but most of the African immigrants I meet speak better English and dress decently (not like thugs or bums)

Shade’s reply was 100 percent on point.

He is responding to Yemi Olu’s impliying that American blacks are whiners, niave, uneducated (we don’t read),we are lazy, The Get off your behinds and work comment) and the tirade begin with the assumption or indication that we somehow have been asking Africa to apologize for slavery, when we have not. In that the entire post was uneccessary.

His Wendy Williams comment is indictive to how we have been stereotyped. Again, I’m the average African American (black American) and I don’t read Wendy Williams and really don’t care about her.

Or that somehow we can’t have respect for Africa or try to reconnect to something that was forcefully taken from us. No one else puts this burden on anyone but us. If whites want to romanticize the Roman Empire, medieval Europe, current Western societies, languages, styles, and ideals, its allowed. Once a black American decides they want to maybe reconnect to African than it is the crime of the century.

Then he is responding to the hear hears, and ‘telling the truth’ about us.

He is also responding to the indications that we , black Americans, should accept the dehumanization and discrimination , and hypocrisy we faced in American because its , ” Better than Africa” which is illogical because the two have nothing to do with each other and we haven’t been africans for a long long time.

DarkStar makes no such assumption.

In 38, Shade writes: I made a post critical of black Africans, including the tendency of black Africans to blame colonization on their current problems. Darkstar notes that under any other circumstance, you would have been in 100% agreement with me and your last post is pretty much evidence of this.

And Shade’s reading is correct.

but I think I can guess, given the poverty in Africa today and its Third World status, that black Africans – or blacks anywhere – would still be better off if they lived in the United States.

It’s illogical. Some good science fiction has been written concerning “alternate universes” that key on what would have happened if X became Y. In fact, one of THE Christmas movies of all time, “It’s A Wonderful Life”, shows this very point.

“After the Black Death decimated Europe in the 1340s, land rents crashed while wages soared”

and virtually all academics agree that economically this helped – of course not nice to get sick and die.

If you want to blame slavery for Africa’s problems, you need to construct a weak-institutions causality.