Central Problem of Blackness

The Crash of Races, is not just about blackness and negritude. It is about the inevitable growth of racial consciousness, and the world-wide long-war this will engender in the 21st century owed to negritude, and whiteness.  At this stage, we are discussing negritude – but only within the overall context of the Crash of Races.

Racial confrontation has always existed – witness the epic struggles of supra-ethnic dimensions- attributed to wars between the Turanians and Aryans, the Orientalisation of Persians by Greeks, or the initial stuggles and eventual persecution of blacks in post-Fatimid Egypt.  Brutal Mongol conquests of much of Eurasia in the 13th and 14th century, were perceived racially from Ferghana to Cairo, and eventually Delhi to Budhapest.

What distinguishes the Crash of Races, is a new-found simplicity and brutality coupled with protracted insurgency-like characteristics of combat, for which blacks and whites are directly responsible.

It was and remains the interaction between two of the most distinct races on earth, that is expressing itself violently as the interaction intensifies, and grows in geographic scope.

The central problem of negritude is to reconcile the unapproachable question of

1. black intellectual inferiority compared to non-blacks
2. black physical superiority, compared to non-blacks

Modern society – which boasts a commitment to empiricism and positivism unlike anything which preceded it – refuses to give such a question legitimacy. That it troubles the hearts and minds of countless negroes – need not matter. That blacks exhibit all the symptoms of an engrained inferiority complex a la masse, is simply ignored by psychologists and psychoanalysts.

Modern society does recognized one legitimate approach to what we’ll call the Black Inferiority Complex, or BIC for short. As long as Black mental problems are framed in terms of “results of slavery” or “white domination” they can be discussed among members of the PC circuit.  The general conclusion of such an approach is the emphatic call to end anti-black  racism, as the sina qua non cure for BIC.

Such an approach is as ignorant as it is foolish. It robs negroes of an agent role in their own fortune, and makes them the passive receivers of others impressions. As with slavery, it denies the negro an active part in his own fortune.

The Black Inferiority Complex (BIC), is a result of the very real dilema facing blacks. The problem of  comparative intellectual weakness, coupled with physical superiority. Contrary to popular preconceptions, BIC is especially acute not among lower-class blacks, populating the dregs of nearly every society in which they happen to live, but among negroes who find themselves in middle and upper class professional settings.

The feelings of a black lawyer in a non-black law firm, of a black trader on a predominantly non-black trade floor, or a black academician in a non-black conference, is more often than not one of perpetual insecurity, which has absolutely nothing to do with racism – and everything to do with the unyielding question of why he is always in the minority. The worst thing to do in such a situation, is to deny the empirically observable intellectual failure of negroes. A society-wide obsession with racism, pushes black professionals into the corner. Rather than acknowledge the underlying empirical problems of BIC, they are forced to deny facts, and to exaggerate the importance of racism for black failure.

Being black-professionals, the strategy is doomed to fail. Doubt nags at them, every time they visit a predominantly black community – be it in America, Brazil, Africa, or the Caribbean. It takes a particularly self-deluded negro, to escape this predicament. Hence, most suffer from BIC. In this sense, Affirmative Action is the worst of all possible cures – as it undermines any and all hope a negro may have, of meeting objective criteria of success, in the non-black world.

BIC is a pervasive pestilence for negroes residing in non-black societies. As with all racial consciousness, homogeneity reduces awareness of widely shared traits, and they are taken for granted. Hence, BIC is always a result of the comparative inability of blacks to compete in intellectually demanding undertakings, while outcompeting non-blacks in a series of physical tasks with such consistency and advantage – that the genetic factor can only be denied like an elephant in the room.

A common tactic of BIC negroes, is to play-up, and exaggerate, the impact of racism and colonialism on the failure of the negro. The more isolated a black man or woman is – vis a vis his or her professional setting, the more he or she obsess on what their non-black surroundings, think of blacks.

Besides polluting the work environment with unnecessary tension, the preoccupation with what others’ think about one’s race, can reach mentally debilitating levels, obstructing regular work performance, and making it all but impossible to share in a common culture with one’s surroundings.

Both BIC, and Racism Obsessive Syndrome (ROS), are a way for a negro to come to terms with the Chief Problem of Blackness identified above, namely of intellectual weakness vs. physical strength. How blacks deal with this problem, what questions they ask and what answers they are ready to accept, will in large part determine, what impact they will have, on the future development of humanity.

As long as the Problem remains ignored, or untouchable, not to mention inflammatory and incriminating,  the conditions for a Clash of Races advance. It is only through at tough and hard look at his own psyche, and reality, that the negro is empowered in this world. A power he needs, to actively shape a world, in which a Clash is averted.