ON THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE BLACK MAN

       BY 

Prof Steve Ibenta

In 1994, a popular liberal magazine in the USA, The New Republic published an article by a right wing sociologist, Charles Murray, linking race with intelligence. In the article, he argued that intelligence is largely inherited and that low IQ lies at the root of crime, greed, corruption, injustice and other social problems prevalent among the black race. He supported the argument with lower IQ test scores among blacks as compared to whites.

The extremely derogatory remarks on the black race and the African continent is not new. Most of the English literature of the 19th and early ,20th centuries was replete with episodes that portrayed the black man as a beast, pathologically idiotic and completely without history or culture. Professor Chinua Achebe recounted that from the period of the slave trade through the age of colonization to the present day, caucasian supremacists have continued to portray the black man as inherently, genetically lazy and inferior to their white counterparts. Even Church men at some point wondered whether the black man has a soul. The only difference between man and animals is possession of a soul and conscience.

George Hegel, the German philosopher and one of the greatest minds of his era has this to say: ” It is manifest that want of self control distinguished the character of the negroes. The condition of capable of no development or culture and as we see it today , such have they always been. Hegel was merely referring to what the Scottish philosopher, David Hume declared as far back as 1735: “I am apt to suspect the negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites. There was never a civilized nation of that complexion, no Indige nous manufacture among them, nor science nor invention”.

Achebe explained that when in the 1870s Durham university in England arrangeo9d an affiliation with the first university institution in west Africa in modern times, the Fourth Bay college, Freetown in Sierra Leone, the Times of London wask so deeply incessed that it published an editorial reprimand asking Durham if it might next affiliate with a Zoo.

Thomas Jefferson, the great American statesman and author of the epochal American declaration of independence, who contrived the statement that ‘all men are born equal’ was at a point constrained to say: “The blacks, whether originally a distinct race or made district by time and circumstances are inferior to the whites in endowments both of body and mind”. To drive the point home, a character in John Buchan’s famous novel, Prester John dramatized the difference between whites and.blacks: the white man had to take all the risks and responsibilities for the common good. He concluded: “that is the difference between white and black, the gift of responsibility and so long as we know and practice it, we will rule not only in Africa but wherever there are black men who live only for their bellies”.

These unmitigated categorizations have been denounced all over the world as pseudo-scientific racism and philosophically shabby. But still, many questions remain unanswered which are the sources of worry for the teeming talented black youths and revolutionary intellectuals around Africa and the world over.

It is necessary to remember that at that time, and until today, Europe has been under severe economic pressure due to lack of natural resources and very harsh climatic conditions. It was simply a question of survival of the fittest. Such an atmosphere was favorable to the intellectual and scientific spirit that florished in Europe at the time which set the stage for the agricultural and industrial revolution.

In 1776, Adam Smith, the Scottish political economist published his famous book titled: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. In the book, he argued that ‘wealth’ does not consist in money, but on the goods that men use and their productivity, creativity or ability in making them. Thomas Malthus (1830) made his most important contribution in his essay on Population and the struggle for existence and warned of the threat to peace and stability if a country should outstrip it’s capacity to provide enough food for the growing population. At about the same epoque, Charles Darwin (1909-1882) published his evolutionary thesis: On the origin of Species by means of Natural Selection and the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life. Many other writers applied the evolutionary paradigm in the analysis of economic, social and technological change and competition among nations and the necessity for the pursuit of the general wilfare for their common survival.

The works and writings of these immortal philosophers marked a stage in the economic thinking of their generation as they were to exercise unlimited influence on the people’s mentality and productivity.

While Europe was apparently denied the luxury of much of the world’s natural resources, Africa on the other hand, was characterized by natural abundance, beautiful all round weather and absence of natural disasters.
which perhaps may be the reason why they have no serious concern for the future. This state of affairs accounted for the wide gap recorded on the area of scientific and technological progress, subsequent colonization and imperialism and the present world economic order.

Ever since the industrial revolution, the gap in technology, incomes and living standard between the developed countries of western Europe and other developing nations has become the dominant feature of the world economic history characteristically referred to as underdevelopment – a state of economic and cultural backwardness. The situation is characterized by: abundant of unexploited natural resources and raw materials; unemployment or underemployment of available manpower; deficiency of modern techniques of production; lack of industrial planning or articulated productive system; lack of equitable distribution of wealth or appreciate policies for savings, investment and capital formation, and inefficient socio-economic organization and poor management culture, resulting in a general irrational economic comportment and a vicious circle of poverty.

While other developing countries of eastern Europe, south-east Asia and Latin America are struggling to catch up with the the developed nations by adapting the scientific inventions to shot-circuit the long and rigorous pioneering experience undergone by western Europe to achieve their present status, African leaders and intellectuals have remained complacent and complicit in the looting of the economy and creating a situation of anarchy and general scramble of the financial resources of the nation.

The World bank annual reports aptly depict the poor and declining quality of life in black Africa. Every year, the gap in technology and living standard between sub- sahara Africa and the rest of the world becomes wider and wider.

For example, despite the fact that the developed western Europe (EU, Japan and USA) constitute only about 13% of the world population, they control about 75% of the world trade in technology and manufactured goods. Africa on the other hand contributes only about 1% to the world’s manufacture and technology. While the average GDP per capita (total value of goods and services produced in a country per head) in the developed countries is about $60,000 (Ireland is $145,000; Qatar – 224,000; UAE – 88,000; USA – 80,000; etc), the average GDP per capita in sub-sahsra Africa is about $2000. This is a continent that has 40 percent of the world’s gold and up to 90 percent of its chromium and platinum, the largest reserves of cobalt, diamonds, platinum uranium and large quantities of oil reserves. It also holds 65 per cent of the world’s arable land and ten percent of the planet’s internal renewable fresh water source.

It is this our inability to manage these resources to create a decent society and acceptable living standards for the citizens that has tended to reinforce the apparent doubt on some parts of the world about the intellectual capacity of the black man.

We do not subscribe to the inferiority argument, but why is it that the black man has proved incapable of becoming part of the civilized world by sharing with them certain basic characteristics of moral decency and consideration of the welfare of their citizens? What about the lopsided, crowded and dirty environment the we build? What about the insecurity of lives and property, the unprecedented corruption and mismanagement of the economy, resulting in abject poverty, hunger and disease and deprivation everywhere?

Nigeria with about 25% of the population of the black race and blessed with such enormous human and material resources must begin to reflect and evaluate her contribution to human civilization as an appropriate response to the supremacist ideology.

We are right that slavery, colonialism and imperialism plundered Africa, dehumanized the black man and truncated our cultural and economic advancement. But why have we allowed and continue to tolerate the looting and plunder of our national resources by local political oligarchs?

In any case, Africa is by no means the first and the only people to have suffered such domination. The Jews fell, rose, fell and rose again under Egypt, Rome and under Hitler’s Germany. West Europeans suffered in the hands of Barbarians and the Romans. The USA was once a colony of Britain. The industrial and cultural achievements of Japan and Europe were up in flames during the 1st and 2nd world wars. They rose from the ashes to dominate the world. Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, and Malaysia all suffered violent colonization and plunder in the hands of Europe and Japan. These people survived and with visionary leaders, worked so hard to build their nations and today have taken their rightful positions in the world economic map. Israel returned from exile to an empty desert in 1948. Today, they have converted that desert into a flourishing, world class agricultural economy, a first class industrial, technological and military power and one of the richest countries in the world.

While all other regions of the world are up on their feet demanding for genuine democratization, strict accountability and liberation from oppression, exploitation and injustice from their leaders, black people are busy playing pranks with tribalism, ethnicity and religion. Again, unlike our counterparts in the developed world, our leaders lack social conscience by which they create untold hardship for their fellow country men and women through deliberate policies of marginalization, and show no concern for this human suffering.

America is great today because it has always valued hard work, freedom, justice and equal opportunity so that every citizen, regardless of class or background can attain and prosperity through hard work, determination and initiative.

There is no doubt that the escalating social and economic disorder in our country is obviously a serious challenge to our intelligence as a people and calls for a new economic way of thinking and a new adaptation to the realities of the digitalized world economy if we hope to survive and earn our pride of place in the committee of Nations.