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var sbtitle4977=encodeURIComponent(Between Bla...Read the full article.

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I don't mean to be harsh but I am going to be! It is this kind of unbelievably simplistic approach to the complex issues in Nigeria (and also Africa) that ensures that we don't see the level of progress that we deserve! White people are not destined to rule anymore than black people are destined to serve - we have bad rulers in Africa for a variety of reasons - a lack of political literacy amongst the general population being one of the most important. In Nigeria, I would argue that we have a vast amount of political awareness but we do not have political literacy - literacy implies not just an understanding and knowledge of the political system but an ability to use that system to one's advantage. It could be argued that this lack of literacy has occurred because we are trying to master our traditional political systems and modern 'imported' western political systems.

Rather than handing over our future to a person who has no passion, desire for the improvement of our nation, we should be working to raise the political literacy of our population so that we can get to a point where our leaders are accountable to us and we, as a nation, are clear about what we want our leaders to achieve!

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Hi Chris!

I prefer to use Africans instead of blacks. Many so called black people are actually brown coloured.

I always tell my students that no one is white. That a whiteman is actually someone who is dead! OR have you ever seen a living person with white skin colour in the real sense? I say these things to discourage them from paying attention to skin colour and to remind them that most of them are actually pink in colour.



I read your essay. I understood the message. Remember my travails when I asked if we could lease Nigeria for a decade?

Recently at my work place (3 wks ago), I had a heated debate with some colleagues who were going to ask students to discuss that "white people think that they are more intelligent than blacks".

We had to remove that aspects from the intelligent question because I (thought) it was a way to protect the integrity of the african kids whom I mentor and tutor. I don't know if I made the right decision to truncate the process.

It is difficult to know why the western world is making progress while the african race on the african continent is confined to hopelessness. If not intelligence, then what? Don't tell me it's slave trade because Ethiopia was not colonised. If it is imperialism, it will also mean that the imperialist is more intelligent.

It is complicated!

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When a black man marries a white girl and they procreate there's every possibility that the offspring would most definitely be more white than black in every physical attribute -- pigmentation, facial characteristics and hair feature.

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You are wrong on this one. Mixed african children born to Gambian fathers are more african in the colour of their skin and the way they look. People always ask their mothers if the kids are adopted!





By the way, black man marries a white girl...why not black man marries a white woman?

Just a thought. Have a nice day!

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sir,

I expect that before you write on such a topic you should have researched on the subject, I can infer from your write up that you believe that whites are more intelligent than blacks, that said i will declare you a victim of inferiority complex, on the other hand if you are using this as a means of spurring black leaders to perform you may be playing into the hands of whte supremacist, the racial intelligence bullying has been on for centuries, even between fair skinned egyptians and the black egyptians of old, just as a note the people living in Egypt are not in anyway related to the old egyptians. i am disappointed you dont understand this is all about politics and dominion, even in Nigeria some ethnic groups resought to this superiority theory and the truth is that it works. when you raise a child and make him feel he is gifted the chances are, that he will perform at a premium. Dont forget that this supremacist theory created Nazi Germany and guess what? they almost succeeded.

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do obama, colins powell and jerry rawlings really look more white than black??
i guess that is a matter of opinion, cos when i look at them, i c black ppl, with white blood.
their skin color is several shades darker than so-called whites and not much lighter than light-skinned blacks who have NO white parentage or bloodline.
anyway, thats not d point.
its true that whites saunter thro life with more confidence on the whole than blacks.
has anyone noticed that nigerians saunter thro life with more confidence that non-nigerian africans?
i think its a matter of where u are coming from really.
i will post a write-up on the subject of race that i found very interesting for the benefit of d forum

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here is d article for interested villagers to ruminate over.
The Global Hierarchy Of Race
>
> By Martin Jacques
>
> Guardian/UK
> 20 September, 2003
>
> I always found race difficult to understand. It was never intuitive.
> And the reason was simple. Like every other white person, I had never
> experienced it myself: the meaning of color was something I had to learn.
> The turning point was falling in love with my wife, an Indian- Malaysian,
> and her coming to live in England. Then, over time, I came to see my own
> country in a completely different way, through her eyes, her background.
> Color is something white people never have to think about because for
> them
> it is never a handicap, never a source of prejudice or discrimination,
> but
> rather the opposite, a source of privilege. However liberal and
> enlightened
> I tried to be, I still had a white outlook on the world. My wife was the
> beginning of my education.
>
> But it was not until we went to live in Hong Kong that my view of the
> world,
> and the place that race occupies within it, was to be utterly
> transformed.
> Rather than seeing race through the prism of my own society, I learned to
> see it globally. When we left these shores, it felt as if we were moving
> closer to my wife's world: this was east Asia and she was Malaysian. And
> she, unlike me, had the benefit of speaking Cantonese. So my expectation
> was
> that she would feel more comfortable in this environment than I would. I
> was
> wrong. As a white, I found myself treated with respect and deference; my
> wife, notwithstanding her knowledge of the language and her intimacy with
> Chinese culture, was the object of an in-your-face racism.
>
> In our 14 months in Hong Kong, I learned some brutal lessons about
> racism.
> First, it is not the preserve of whites. Every race displays racial
> prejudice, is capable of racism, carries assumptions about its own virtue
> and superiority. Each racism, furthermore, is subtly different,
> reflecting
> the specificity of its own culture and history.
>
> Second, there is a global racial hierarchy that helps to shape the power
> and
> the prejudices of each race. At the top of this hierarchy are whites. The
> reasons are deep-rooted and profound. White societies have been the
> global
> top dogs for half a millennium, ever since Chinese civilization went into
> decline. With global hegemony, first with Europe and then the US, whites
> have long commanded respect, as well as arousing fear and resentment,
> among
> other races. Being white confers a privilege, a special kind of
> deference,
> throughout the world, be it Kingston, Hong Kong, Delhi, Lagos - or even,
> despite the way it is portrayed in Britain, Harare. Whites are the only
> race
> that never suffers any kind of systemic racism anywhere in the world. And
> the impact of white racism has been far more profound and baneful than
> any
> other: it remains the only racism with global reach.
>
> Being top of the pile means that whites are peculiarly and uniquely
> insensitive to race and racism, and the power relations this involves. We
> are invariably the beneficiaries, never the victims.
> Even when well-meaning, we remain strangely ignorant. The clout enjoyed
> by
> whites does not reside simply in an abstraction - western societies - but
> in
> the skin of each and every one of us. Whether we like it or not, in every
> corner of the planet we enjoy an extraordinary personal power bestowed by
> our color It is something we are largely oblivious of, and consequently
> take
> for granted, irrespective of whether we are liberal or reactionary,
> backpackers, tourists or expatriate businessmen.
>
> The existence of a de facto global racial hierarchy helps to shape the
> nature of racial prejudice exhibited by other races. Whites are
> universally
> respected, even when that respect is combined with strong resentment. A
> race
> generally defers to those above it in the hierarchy and is contemptuous
> of
> those below it. The Chinese - like the Japanese - widely consider
> themselves
> to be number two in the pecking order and look down upon all other races
> as
> inferior. Their respect for whites is also grudging - many Chinese
> believe
> that western hegemony is, in effect, held on no more than prolonged
> leasehold. Those below the Chinese and the Japanese in the hierarchy are
> invariably people of color (both Chinese and Japanese often like to see
> themselves as white, or nearly white). At the bottom of the pile,
> virtually
> everywhere it would seem, are those of African descent, the only
> exception
> in certain cases being the indigenous peoples.
>
> This highlights the centrality of color to the global hierarchy.
> Other factors serve to define and reinforce a race's position in the
> hierarchy - levels of development, civilizational values, history,
> religion,
> physical characteristics and dress - but the most insistent and
> widespread
> is color The reason is that color is instantly recognizable, it defines
> difference at the glance of an eye. It also happens to have another
> effect.
> It makes the global hierarchy seem like the natural order of things: you
> are
> born with your color, it is something nobody can do anything about, it is
> neither cultural nor social but physical in origin. In the era of
> globalization, with mass migration and globalized cultural industries,
> color
> has become the universal calling card of difference. In interwar Europe,
> the
> dominant forms of racism were anti-semitism and racialized nationalisms,
> today it is color: at a football match, it is blacks not Jews that get
> jeered, even in eastern Europe.
>
> Liberals like to think that racism is a product of ignorance, of a lack
> of
> contact, and that as human mobility increases, so racism will decline.
> This
> might be described as the Benetton view of the world.
> And it does contain a modicum of truth. Intermixing can foster greater
> understanding, but not necessarily, as Burnley, Sri Lanka and Israel, in
> their very different ways, all testify.
>
> Hong Kong, compared with China, is an open society, and has long been so,
> yet it has had little or no effect in mollifying Chinese prejudice
> towards
> people of darker skin. It is not that racism is immovable and
> intractable,
> but that its roots are deep, its prejudices as old as humanity itself.
> The
> origins of Chinese racism lie in the Middle Kingdom: the belief that the
> Chinese are superior to other races - with the exception of whites - is
> centuries, if not thousands of years, old. The disparaging attitude among
> American whites towards blacks has its roots in slavery. Wishing it
> wasn't
> true, denying it is true, will never change the reality. We can only
> understand - and tackle racism - if we are honest about it. And when it
> comes to race - more than any other issue - honesty is in desperately
> short
> supply.
>
> Race remains the great taboo. Take the case of Hong Kong. A conspiracy of
> silence surrounded race. As the British departed in 1997, amid much
> self-congratulation, they breathed not a word about racism. Yet the
> latter
> was integral to colonial rule, its leitmotif:
> colonialism, after all, is institutionalized racism at its crudest and
> most
> base. The majority of Chinese, the object of it, meanwhile, harbored an
> equally racist mentality towards people of darker skin.
> Masters of their own home, they too are in denial of their own racism.
> But
> that, in varying degrees, is true of racism not only in Hong Kong but in
> every country in the world. You may remember that, after the riots in
> Burnley in the summer of 2001, Tony Blair declared that they were not a
> true
> reflection of the state of race relations in Britain: of course, they
> were,
> even if the picture is less discouraging in other aspects.
>
> Racism everywhere remains largely invisible and hugely under- estimated,
> the
> issue that barely speaks its name. How can the Economist produce a
> 15,000-word survey on migration, as it did last year, and hardly mention
> the
> word racism? Why does virtually no one talk about the racism suffered by
> the
> Williams sisters on the tennis circuit even though the evidence is
> legion?
> Why are the deeply racist western attitudes towards Arabs barely
> mentioned
> in the context of the occupation of Iraq, carefully hidden behind talk of
> religion and civilizational values?
>
> The dominant race in a society, whether white or otherwise, rarely admits
> to
> its own racism. Denial is near universal. The reasons are manifold. It
> has a
> huge vested interest in its own privilege. It will often be oblivious to
> its
> own prejudices. It will regard its racist attitudes as nothing more than
> common sense, having the force and justification of nature. Only when
> challenged by those on the receiving end is racism outed, and attitudes
> begin to change. The reason why British society is less nakedly racist
> than
> it used to be is that whites have been forced by people of color to
> question
> age- old racist assumptions. Nations are never honest about themselves:
> they are all in varying degrees of denial.
>
> This is clearly fundamental to understanding the way in which racism is
> underplayed as a national and global issue. But there is another reason,
> which is a specifically white problem. Because whites remain the
> overwhelmingly dominant global race, perched in splendid isolation on top
> of
> the pile even though they only represent 17% of the world's population,
> they
> are overwhelmingly responsible for setting the global agenda, for
> determining what is discussed and what is not. And the fact that whites
> have
> no experience of racism, except as perpetrators, means that racism is
> constantly underplayed by western institutions - by governments, by the
> media, by corporations.
> Moreover, because whites have reigned globally supreme for half a
> millennium, they, more than any other race, have left their mark on the
> rest
> of humanity: they have a vested interest in denying the extent and
> baneful
> effects of racism.
>
> It was only two years ago, you may remember, that the first-ever United
> Nations conference on racism was held - against the fierce resistance of
> the
> US (and that in the Clinton era). Nothing more eloquently testifies to
> the
> unwillingness of western governments to engage in a global dialogue about
> the problem of racism.
>
> If racism is now more widely recognized than it used to be, the situation
> is
> likely to be transformed over the next few decades. As migration
> increases,
> as the regime of denial is challenged, as subordinate races find the will
> and confidence to challenge the dominant race, as understanding of racism
> develops, as we become more aware of other racisms like that of the Han
> Chinese, then the global prominence of racism is surely set to increase
> dramatically.
>
> It is rare to hear a political leader speaking the discourse of color
> Robert
> Mugabe is one, but he is tainted and discredited. The Malaysian prime
> minister, Mahathir Mohamed, is articulate on the subject of white
> privilege
> and the global hierarchy. The most striking example by a huge margin,
> though, is Nelson Mandela. When it comes to color, his sacrifice is
> beyond
> compare and his authority unimpeachable. And his message is always
> universal
> - not confined to the interests of one race. It is he who has suggested
> that
> western support for Israel has something to do with race. It is he who
> has
> hinted that it is no accident that the authority of the UN is under
> threat
> at a time when its secretary general is black. And yet his voice is
> almost
> alone in a world where race oozes from every pore of humanity. In a world
> where racism is becoming increasingly important, we will need more such
> leaders. And invariably they will be people of
> color: on this subject whites lack moral authority. I could only
> understand
> the racism suffered by my wife through her words and experience. I never
> felt it myself. The difference is utterly fundamental.
>
> Martin Jacques is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics.
> The
> death of his wife, Harinder Veriah, in 2000 in a Hong Kong hospital
> triggered an outcry which culminated in this summer's announcement by the
> Hong Kong government that it would introduce anti- racist legislation for
> the first time martinjacques1@aol.com
>
> (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

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Datowadaberechi,

Thanks for your post and the article. The article deals with a lot of things one needs to know about racism. It is no longer an understatement to aver that blacks are at the bottom of global racial hierarchy. Racial prejudice against other beings is driven by the knowledge that we have what you don't and that we are smarter than you. If what we see today are indices of development, then blacks should accept their inferior status. It is not enough to say I am black and proud, what are you proud of? The reality is that we are using western civilisation to gauge development in the world. If we had rejected it and still continue in our jungle life, we can still pride ourselves as being great peoples like in the old Benin or Oyo empire. But can you now say that you can overtake the white man in science or space travel, I doubt it. Racism has more to do with what you can contribute to civilisation and less to do with colour. If blacks were to be at the centre of imparting scientific , political and economic knowledge to the world, people would come begging to have a feel of us. It is not for nothing that you find white women running after successful black men in various fields.

What I find rather curious about blacks is that on one hand they claim to be proud of their colour but on the other they do every thing to look white. Why do our women bleach their skin, put on attachments on their hair and colour their hair blond? Some even go as far as operating their nose to make it pointed. We know quite a number of black women like Tina Turner who carry permanently blond hair.

What all this boils down to is that whites can tell us we are inferior with evidence, we cannot say the same. They came, conquered and enslaved us. When they decided to grant us independence they continued their political domination over us through proxies. As long as we continue to live in a system designed by the white man, we must be subservient to him. What I'm convinced of is that the problem of the black man could only be traced in the spiritual realm.

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overdry

You speak the truth, there are victims of inferiority complex propagated by the white supremacists, its a white man's world and they wont give you the slack to compete. the western world affects you wherever you are, they run the global economy, they ran china and japan down over their manufactured products till the Asians pulled through, dont forget they are second in the racial hierachy. We have a long way to go before we start competing in the global market, infact we are still undergoing civilisation, we still have uncivilised but hghly educated people, we have a long way but we will get there,maybe in 1000 years time(if the Lord tarries) I will also ask you, do you think whites are smarter than blacks? The article above really didnt answer that biologically, the truth is simple there is no biological evidence to show that skin colour has a relationship with intelligence, infact about 2% of genes account for skin pigmentation, if you rely on statistics in white countries with black population, statistics has shown that white boys under achieve fairly similarly to black boys with parents in the same income band, the factor that clearly stands out are social and economic, not inherent factors. The whites are responsible for this current civilisation and they have to enjoy the fruits till the next epoch, it looks more like enjoying a racial superiority patent for their strides in technology. But we have to prepare our unborn for the take over.
Black is power

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=aguabata;4294985634>overdry

, the truth is simple there is no biological evidence to show that skin colour has a relationship with intelligence, infact about 2% of genes account for skin pigmentation,

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I cannot disagree with this. Afropologists and fake intellectuals will probly blame whites. It's not skin colour. It's laziness and scammers and thieves among Africans that cause their backwardness.

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@SCO

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Colin Powell is a popular Black American who served Uncle Sam meritoriously under President Bill Clinton

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This information is false. Powell is not even a Democrat. He worked for the first President Bush (the Senior).