AMERICA THE RACIST? Vol. I. By Herbert J. Harris, Wilmington: New Paradigm Publishing, 2008, 168 pages, ISBN 0-9748362-5-7

For other details of this book: Available from www.americantherracist.com. Amazon, Baker & Taylor, Ingram, Barnes & Nobles or Publisher.

A Review by Viban Ngo, PhD, FRGS.

Today when I come across incidents of racism, call it racial segregation, my back is spin-chilled and my memory races to one infamous racist leader known to most of us. His rhetoric dominated by racist attitude and doctrine of hate of the so-called inferior races triggered the Second World War (WWII). The war caused untold lost of millions of lives, damages to property and hitherto many are still paying in cash and kind. There is no end in sight. He was an Austrian called Adolph Hitler. After the First World War in which he was badly injured, he became obsessed over the domination of Jews who had permeated all walks of life in his native Austria and Germany. He attributed the defeat of the Germans in that war partly to the Jews. Consequently, he concocted all sorts of bogus theories against them as substandard vagrants whose miscegenation with the native Germans, “folkish” ways, and philosophies they called religion (Judaism which he disputed) and control of Teutonic economy for their selfish benefits as responsible for the fall of Germany. He advanced that if Jews were left unchecked they could prostitute and debase the blue-eyed Aryans who were the chosen people and bearers of culture.

In his personal account Mein Kampf, he heaved all sorts of vituperation against the Jews and other non-Aryan races. As such, he poisoned psyches of decent Germans thus preparing the way for the eventual pogrom of the Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and others by the Nazis and their cohorts during the Second World War.

Hitler remarked that South America could not be productive and advance intellectually as North America because the Spanish conquistadors had engaged in sexual debasement of their own race by engaging in intercourse with native Americans the outcome of which was an inferior class of people we now call the Latinos. He continued that North America then predominantly peopled by pure Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic races was ideal and for that reason were to maintain their dominance over other races, in inventions, productivity and retain their intellectual vivacity in all fields and walks of life.

Let us purse and ask this question: Who is a racist? A person who discriminates against another based on his or her race (sex and color), who a rational-thinking man will consider as myopic or impromentis. Racism is the false belief that one’s own race is inherently superior to others. The departing point is that no one has ever created him or her, not to talk of deciding which race, color or gender he would like to have. All are created by God in His image be they Caucasians, Africans or Mongoloids, the three prototypes of man on earth. Therefore in a levelheaded world, there is no podium where one can stand to proclaim that his race, color or sex is better than that of others. He or she cannot be loved, disdained or punished for his or her race for it is not his or her creation.

Do these racial attributes concern Harris’s newly released book, America the Racist? and the reader? Harris is talking of racial discrimination in the USA that was instituted by Caucasians some 500 years ago as a tool in the exploitation of African Americans and peoples of African descent for their economic benefits. This is still negatively affecting the vast majority of African Americans of all walks of life in the USA. Hitler we earlier saw, without any shred of scientific underpinning was naively glamorizing that racial segregation in North America and by insinuation the maltreatment of native African Americans who to him and other “Christian” Caucasians were inferior barbaric people vis à vis Aryans, Caucasians. As in Germany during the Second World War (1939-1945), in North America, the clamp down of native African Americans in their places by the whites, and their stoic stance to maintain that status quo led to a bloody civil war (1861-65) whose wounds still rankle today in nearly all fabric of the USA. The history of racism that had been eating the heart of America thin is clearly elucidated in this timely book America the Racist. Herbert J. Harris is of the opinion that so long as racism remains in the psyche of America, her “claims of moral authority will be hollow and disingenuous.”

Knowing the evil and harm racism could do to any society, any work that positively discusses racism and how it could be resolved, should be digested by all to know the raison d’être. Racism has caused so much pains and death in the world and should be stamped out from all decent societies at all cost.

If one reads between the lines Hitler’s open animosity of the Jews, and people of color, after the German lost of the First World War (WWI) [1914-1918], he attributed to the lack of patriotism of vagrant Jews and others, one could have inferred and even prognosticated the gross outcome, the purification of the Teutonic races that was to follow. If one had read too between the lines the hate that was coming from the mouths of the Hutus in Rwanda against the Tutsis since the 1930s one could have predicted too precisely the massacre of the Tutsis by the Hutus that took place in 1994. Harris takes the recent event, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans (2005) where the vast majority of African Americans were victims and the government was sort of apathetic, lackadaisical in coming to their rescue as evidence of racism that was still rife in the USA. The author then questioned where there was that liberty for all in one nation under God. He had forgotten that the founding fathers in 1776 had not included the black man that was then considered just up to four-fifth white and could not reason like them. Should they now be considered as equal to other races when that the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments had been promulgated?

People rarely change as the leopard will never change its spots even when it grows old. The Caucasians of Southern USA, particularly those of erstwhile Confederacy who were predominantly Christians strongly believed that Africans who were captured and brought in chains from Africa in galleons to work for the Christian whites Americans were just not real human beings and were very close to animals. Some nearly believed that they had no souls. Consequently, they were treated as uncouth horses that had to be domesticated by their white owners employing drastic methods that were used to handle captured wild horses. It was believed that the domestication was to be thorough if not the partially domesticated as any wild animals African Americans were to be dangerous to their property owners.

Therefore, the untamed African and his family had to be broken down to submission using all available physically and psychological tools at their disposal. On this project, Harris vividly analyzed, a Briton slave owner was invited from the West Indies to instruct the whites in Southern USA on how to subjugate their African slaves, property. This man was called Willie Lynch from which is derived the infamous cognomen or five-dollar word, lynching. Herbert J. Harris put verbatim the homily of this infamous racist Briton, Let us Make a Slave. What do we Need? That was used as the regulations by all whites in their maltreatment of African-American slaves, niggers. Readers have to be warned that any sensitive person reading this citation “that struck terror in their hearts…put new thoughts into their wooly heads” is likely to burst into tears and ponder upon what on earth African Americans did so wrong to the Caucasians to have undergone such torture not only for one year but also for over four hundred years.

Among many others, they did not allow families to be built; men and women were branded and bandied as goods, sodomized and raped. They could be bullwhipped to nearly the point of death to exercise their authorities or correct African Americans where deemed appropriate. They worked from dawn to dusk and had only one day of relative freedom, Sunday. Their white masters, they were initially told to address as bosses and after the abolition of slavery, the 13^thAmendment they reverted to the designation missus and masters did not spare them.

One of the reasons for excessive abuse was to make African Americans not to think for themselves or have possessions thereby ensuring their ease of control and dependency on the Caucasians slave masters. They relied upon their bosses for basic necessities: freedom to worship in segregated churches that sadly are still the norm in the 21^st century; have basic education. What was education? Teaching of the white man’s language was grudgingly taught, as the fear was that by mastering it slaves were to know the secret of the whites and eventually rebel. The NAZIS in Germany, who believed that a Jew could not even master German of the chosen Aryan as he would simply be translating his psyche into that language and not what was Germanic, adopted these attributes eventually. Similarly, the inferior races were to be deterred from learning German. Therefore, it was immaterial to the Africans and their descendants to learn English beyond what were necessary to officiously listen to ranting draconian commands to be peremptorily obeyed and work for the Caucasian masters and misuses.

Harris demonstrated with modern scientific experiments with laboratory rats and observation of monkeys in Japan the negative effects of years of subjugation and how it could be passed from generation to generation. From this, Harris was inclined to conclude that people of one generation could be affected by what was done to an earlier generation. It was not clear if the passing was genetically. He cited the inculcation of Kunta Kinte, one of the leading characters in Alex Harley’s ground breaking and bestseller Roots (1976) that was turned into a successful film. However, such subjects instinctively through transmutation behaved like the first generation and this was the case of slaves that had been broken down by their white owners. This, he christened Paradigm of slavery. He demonstrated a fortiori that the later generations of Africans Americans live under that Paradigm of Slavery in which their fore parents had lived. As such, African Americans of today have carried on with their dependency syndrome on Whites first drilled into them by lynching, bullwhipping, and psychological intimidation by the slave owners during the dark era of slavery. He proceeded that it was for that reason native African Americans were unable to make advances in many fields in the contemporary US unlike other new comers. He cited the Irish who after rigmarole for a hundred years against all odds, as African Americans before them were now excelling in the businesses; then the Greek, Italians, Germans, Jews, French, and lately Latinos and Continental Africans which the author failed to articulate.

Continental Africans with Caribbean Africans though starting modestly as peddlers (as Senegalese and other Francophone Africans and particularly those of former English-speaking Africa), were professors and researchers in some leading American universities and colleges and research establishments. A farsighted orator like the Democratic Presidential Candidate Senator Barack Obama who has shown his strength in an impressively orchestrated campaign could be said to have his roots in Africa. The Chinese were relatively self-sufficient and could chum up to run their businesses as well as the East Indian and Middle Eastern communities. African Americans had difficulties forging partnership. Teaming up for the mutual benefit of members was not a common practice of African American, a phenomenon that can be traced to the days of slavery when they were not allowed to associate with one another for fear of planning coups.  Briefly, Harris attributed the relative progress of other races to the fact that they were never affected by the slavery paradigm.

The author elucidated that those who had made phenomenal progress in the USA of African origin are not stricto senso native African Americans. He mentioned the erstwhile Chief of Staff and the first Secretary of State in President George Bush’s government Colin Powell (who endorsed the candidacy of Senator Obama on October 19, 2008), Marcus Garvey and presently, Senator Barack Obama aspiring to become the first ever African American president of the most powerful nation on earth. On the domination of the USA today, he cautioned her over euphoric successes on earth. He went on that their reign was still brief, as they were not even up to one a hundredth the Egyptian and Chinese dynasties that lasted for thousands of years.

Could we say that Obama’s parents were influenced by the Paradigm of Slavery of this author? Could we accept his citation from the bible, and the scientific experiments on rats and observations of monkeys’ behavior in Japan as applicable to human behavior? What of migratory birds, fish, turtles whose parents leave them as eggs, fingerlings/siblings and they are able to follow the migratory routes others had followed for millennium on their own? Could their behavior be applied to humans? One is tempted to ask if intelligence could be inherited. We will reiterate, is it possible to reverse the psychological damage that had been done to African Americans by their former slave masters that apparently seem to have been passed on to the genes of the present generation? Could some sort of mass hypnotism rescue African Americans? That is where we would like Harris and other scientists to prop in earnest. It would be a panacea to the present predicaments of African Americans and other disadvantaged peoples elsewhere in the world. African Europeans and Arabs in France seem to fall into this category.

What of the situation of continental Africans aforementioned that were untouched by the deep Paradigm of Slavery and had not progressed as other races? Could it therefore be the Paradigm of Colonialism, euphemistically called Neocolonialism where some Africans leaders are still stoically glued to the former mother countries? It should be recalled that since 1984 when the African had majority rule in Zimbabwe and 1994 in South Africa in the dependency syndrome of Africans on whites is gradually being truncated although it is at a snail rate. My recent visit in those continental African states revealed that there was progress among the Africans, but it will take perhaps a hundred years before there is total integration of races. The Reconciliation advanced by Bishop Desmond Tutu et al. could be helping. The whites came forward and confessed openly to the Africans that they had tortured in the past and ask for forgiveness. That was still a religious exercise in tangible profit-driven world and Africans were still left in their poverty-stricken state as they were before. The whites still control most of the lands and economies. What is the solution?

It should be remembered that in the USA after the 13^{th, 14th} and 15^th Amendments to the US Constitution that formally abolished slavery, all that was heralded by some white as a way forward was torpedoed and sank by the very whites that had fought to stamp our slavery and segregation of the blacks, native African Americans. In the case of South Africa, although there were joint public amenities after dismantling apartheid, as toilets, the point is that one had to pay for cleaner public toilets and dirty ones were free as in Durban, Johannesburg, Cape Town, etc. Full-blooded Africans who could not afford to spend a penny, so to say had to use dirtier toilets. Also, when it came to shopping white shops were leaving downtown Johannesburg for the northern suburbia. For Africans to do their shopping in white shopping malls, they would need private cars and drive miles away. Not many of them could afford those luxuries when many were still domiciling is decrepit, appalling shacks not fit for animals in Europe and North America.  On that point a White South African told me that Africans did not need proper houses as they had done most of their activities outdoors. Is it true?  …. To start with, Africans were not qualified to get jobs commanding better salaries as Caucasians. They are still behind in education and job experience. So reconciliation is cosmetic if not backed by well-programmed educational strategies and finances.

Moreover, it should be recalled that in the then Belgian Congo there was decapitation of recalcitrant Continental Africans as lynching in the southern USA, cutting of their hands, flogging in the then (French) Cameroon and the worse treatment of Africans in the hands of imperialists above all in the Italian, lusophone and Iberian colonial Africa. The question is: Are Africans better off after the departure of the colonialists some fifty years ago? When millions are killed each year in the Congo Democratic Republic, Darfur, Rwanda and Somalia, would one state that these regions were better off under colonialism than being independent? Of what use is independence that is replaced by mayhem? It does not mean that I am supporting colonialism. Any levelheaded man cannot and should never accept the domination of man by man. That is a different topic.

Do the inhabitants in those regions still live under the Paradigm of Slavery, Harris has eloquently described in his compulsive reading book? His question was how to get out of the debilitating conundrum African Americans have found themselves in for no reasons of theirs? The author pointed out that the coming of a person like Senator Obama in the limelight motivated him to write this book and it was as a step in the right direction. Then Senator Obama has stressed in most of his presidential campaign speeches that he owes much to his mother, Grandmother Madelyn Dunham and the locality in which he grew. Succinctly, he is a self-made man. He agreed to be educated and did not see Western education as some African Americans erroneously see as a way the white man is trying to keep on controlling them. That is why this honorable man kept on stressing in his presidential campaign speeches that (African American) parents should take away their children from the computer/Internet CRT games, TV screens and should be at home after work to help them with their home work. Genuine education of all African Americans could replace that paradigm of slavery with that of progress, happiness and peace.  (It could be on Earth as it is in Heaven). Armed with the right education, they will get the job they like and do what they like without inhibition so long as it is within the bylaws and laws of the USA. I do not see any white who would not buy a computer produced by an African America that works better than that produced by the Japanese or any Caucasian because he is an African America. African Americans produce records. Who buy them? Whites form the bulk of their clients. Why do they think that the will not succeed if they are educated and could produce commodities that are in demand?

It is true that we are thinking aloud of Slavery Reparations today one expected Harris to have discussed in his book. That was proposed when the 13^thAmendment was passed that Africans be given lands, and a donkey to carrying on with their lives. The Christian whites in the Southern Confederacy states saw this as a way of cutting off that umbilical cord that African Americans were attached to them. It was to be their liberty. That was to contradict the codes of James Lynch. If that were to be the case, the standard of living of the whites was to plummet. Many gave up their lives to fight hard to retain this. The outcome was the bloody American civil war we earlier referred to where many as up to 700,000 Unionists and Federalists died fighting. The south was eventually defeated but that was not clear-cut defeat of racial segregation and putting the black man in his place.

Segregation has continued in slightly different formats hitherto. Subtle means were used to keep the black in his place and that is why today we are still asking ourselves why other races are advancing when African Americans natives are regressing in both the social, economic and political domains.Were Africans still broken down by the Whites after several years of slavery abolition? Are Slavery Reparations a way forward? What happened then if lands and other forms of wealth are given back to the blacks to atone for the wrongs and injustices of the whites of yesteryears, would that improve their lots? That is the same question that the minority whites in Zimbabwe are asking when President Robert Mugabe and his entourages had been a catalogue of disasters. Do we need a second revolution to catapult blacks to the same level as the whites and other races? Some present white generation do openly admit that it was gross what their forefathers did to the blacks. Behind close doors Africans expect reparations of slavery. Then there is a rider: Do we ask the children to pay for the fault of their parents? Base on Harris thesis of Paradigm of Slavery, there could be Paradigm of White Domination that may be halted if reparations were implemented.  That is a theme for another book.

What of deterrence towards progress of African Americans above-mentioned from a handful of African Americans who go about stating that education was a white man’s creation to stupefy Africans and continue with their domination? From my perspective, they are awry as the ancient Greek learned from Africans as the Japanese did lately from Europeans, and customized for their own usage and advantage. What was wrong with African Americans following the same footstep? Culturally, are African Americans not Europeans (Anglo-Saxons) with dark-skinned complexion? If some native African American youths do not entertain the white man’s education, could they show us their opportunity cost? The Chinese and Japanese copied the white technology and adapted it. Show me anything that the whites can do that the Chinese, East Indians and Japanese cannot do? There is none. Do the whites not respect and even fear them for those achievements? What is the difference between these Earthians and African Americans, and Continental Africans who were the first to inhabit mother earth? The same sentiments of ignoring the white man’s education are expressed by the First Nation Peoples (Native Indians) in Canada and that is sad. What of others who are of the opinion that progress can only be when one sings rap songs, act on podia and appear on TV as Fifty Cent and Will Smith? Whoever told them that a plumber could not be as comfortable and as affluent as a musician or a medical doctor?

Harris conclusion was that it was owing to that Paradigm of Slavery the psyche that was still injected in the bloods of African Americans he calls black Americans. Even though they were inter-racial marriages, Africans were still discriminated against by the predominantly white population that was at the forefront of most economic activities of the USA. What was the reason? A Nigerian scholar once hinted to me that it was because African races were the most difficult to be broken down. Then are we not lamenting because Africans have been broken down beyond repairs? The author continued that where Africans Americans were in businesses, they were not necessarily the leaders. If they were doctors, lawyers, accountants, pharmacies, etc, one tended to find them liaised with whites that were leaders and not necessarily leading themselves. To the author, African Americans like the film director and magnet Spike Lee, Oprah Winifrey,Michael Jordan, Bill Cosby, Russell Simmons, Sean “Diddy Combs, Curtis James Jackson III (50 Cent), Michael Jackson, Denzel Washington,etc, were they just mavericks? Is that true? If the past treatment of blacks Americans by their past “Christian” slave owners were responsible for the present day’s predicaments of the Africans, how was the situation is Zimbabwe where the whites reduce Africans to slaves in their own land as from 1894; what of South Africa of the apartheid where similar conditions prevailed? Were it to have the negative effect on the psyches of continental Africans, Chinese coolies and Indians who were under the same umbrellas of subjugation in Southern Africa as the blacks in America?

This work is timely and should not only be read by native African Americans but by all Americans. It is crucial for better understanding of neighbors. Oftentimes the lack of understanding stems from the lack of knowledge. Where else can one go at the mo other than dwelling into this book? They will understand where Africans Americans are coming from and if the theoretical underpinning of Harris is true, they will instead sympathize with them and sincerely put their heads together to see how best they could help African Americans progress like the rest of the Americans. I know of one prominent Caucasian actor, producer and writer called Michael Moore who is sincerely on this bandwagon (digest his book: Stupid White Men published by Regan Book, 2001, 277 p.). We hope that the voting of the Presidential Candidate Senator Barack Obama as the first African American president of the USA will spur others to emulate him. A crucial book of this caliber will be relegated in the archives and the theme not duplicated. America is having a positive revolutionary change and calling a spade a spade and not anything else.

In the 1960s no one could even have dreamt of the son of the soil standing for election, not even mentioning rubbing his shoulders with the whites al fresco without being threatened with lynching. Those who attempted suffered the consequences and there are glaring statistics in this book. We lost many including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for suggesting equality of black and whites. Prior, those who attempted were dragged and chastised by the Ku Klu Klan, their cronies, lynched and the like. America of today is that of the impending positive change that epitomizes Obama’s theme and this book is timely in laying down the historical facts for all to see.

The work is fluid as one reads. Highlighting statements with tangible facts makes it totally convincing to all and sundry readers irrespective of their color, creed and political inclination. It is therefore a must-read for all particularly those who have not made up their mind as who to elect at the forthcoming election. It has twelve captivating chapters. It is highly recommended particularly at the dawn of this historical election in the USA where inevitably race is going to influence the way some people will be casting their votes for an African American, Obama and Caucasian candidate Senator John McCain for the first time in the history of the USA. It is a litmus test for those who believe in liberty, justice and God.  Everyone anticipates that total implementation of inalienable rights that the founding fathers of the USA after profound thought put down. It has not been so for blacks. Is the promotion of social justice, liberty and happiness the prerogatives of the whites or does it permeate to all quarters of the USA. Ideally, it should but does it and had it?

Finally we must recapitulate that some of those advocating slavery and slave trade were Christians Whites and many had erroneous beliefs that it was their way of bringing Christianity to uncouth Africans. Was it? It was a Catholic Bishop De Las Casa who suggested that Africans who were several times stronger than whites and native Indians be brought from Africa to replace Indians who were dying like flies and could not withstand the torture and diseases of the white men. This Bishop’s suggestion was out of Christian sympathy. He had no clue what he was dragging Africans into. Therefore, do Africans, their descendants and African Americans expect an apologia from the Christian churches?

On page 161 Harris suggested the way forward: “an epiphany, a total recapitulation, a confession of her (USA, my emphasis) sins, apology and atonement.” Is this possible for some who are in denial and have used God as a smokescreen for centuries? Who are still segregating churches, schools, residential areas, burning black churches and closing the doors of their factories and offices of work in the face of blacks? The whites! Let me be diplomatic, some whites! What is the color of Our Lord Jesus Christ whom many purport to be working for? What is the color of a human soul?

We would have appreciated it if Harris could have provided an index and reading list for scholars of the future as we are convinced that his Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon, rats’ research in laboratories to determine the behavior of Africans will still interest many. Many a scientist will yearn to replicate his cited experiment with the programmed rats to see if other means could be used to reverse the rats to their original status quo. I thoroughly enjoyed this treatise, which I read it nonstop from page one to the epilogue and will recommend it to all and sundry.

Viban Ngo, PhD, FRGS

vibanngo@hotmail.com

Is author of: Before You Leave For Europe and North America (2007) and Shadows of Fire (2007) and Who is African American? (2009)