This is a very interesting experiment. I want to share it with you my dear reader. If you are ready let us start. First, take your iPad, your laptop, palmtop, Samsung Galaxy or whatever gadget that can enable you to access the Internet. Then go to the Google search route.
Begin your experiment by typing in the engine the words; Why Africans are a… Then your drop down menu will be; always on the phone, athletic and always killing each other and then why Africans are black. Now the experiment has only started. Then go ahead to type the words; why are Africans b…..Then your menu response to this will be; Why are Africans bald, black and better runners. When you type the same structured question and end with letter ‘C’ the Google menu for you will now be; why are Africans cheap, corrupt, Christians, concupiscent and crepuscular- the list is long.
Dear reader, you can pause a while before we move to the next flip in our experiment. If you are back I should then make a comment. Africans are neither crepuscular nor concupiscent. It is only bias in perception that can make a person to express such an overt racial sentimentality by publishing such a taradiddle in cyberspace.
Now type again your question. But this time end with letter ‘D’. A vista of questions to drop down as on the menu from the engine route are; why are Africans discriminated, driving less, dumbasses and dark. I think the word dumbasses was supposed to be; dumb asses. Alright let us go to the next trial again. Maybe the probability will give us a positive outcome this time round. You type your question again, but this time type letter ‘E’ at the end. What you come to are the following derogatory questions; why African eyes are yellow, eyes red, eyes too red and then why are east Africans good runners. Let me also ask Google this question; what are the legal implications of pointing out that one’s eyes are too red?
What does the question with suffix ‘F’ have for us, dear readers? Just type the question and you will see that the menu has the following items; Fast, fat, fast runners and flatulent. To be flatulent is to fart loosely. Dear reader you can overstep letter ‘G’. It only repeats the preceding insinuations but type the question in respect to letter ‘H’. The menu has the questions; why are Africans homophobic and Hungry always. During my experiment, anxiety gripped me on this question of homophobia. I pressed enter to access the hyperlink. I only got articles by writers from the Western world accusing African leaderships of being homophobic because of the strong and firm stand against colonialism and sexually disordered behaviors like gayism, lesbianism, bisexualism, paedophilia and fetishism. The articles point out that African political stand against these vices is redolent of abuse of human rights. Now dear reader, this ‘H’ backdrop must make us go beyond the flibberty-gibbeties of digital imperialism and pose the following question; Between an African who prevents a behavior of gender disorder and a judicial system that didn’t find any fault in the murderous nervousness of George Zimmerman the killer of Martin Trayvon, who is homophobic ?
Hallo! Are you still there? If you are then let us keep on our experiment. Type again your question by observing the alphabetical order to end with letter ‘I’. The drop down menu is the most strange of all. The questions on the menu are; why are Africans immune to malaria, inferior, IQ is so slow and lastly why are Africans intelligent. During my research, I selected this last question for search. But instead I did not get any material on why Africans are intelligent. But instead I ended up in a Pandora box containing theories of Dr. Watson on why Africans are less intelligent. The touchiest of James Watson’s arguments in an addition to his DNA discovery is the argument that he was inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa because all the social policies are based on the fact that Africans’ intelligence is the same as white men’s – whereas all the testing says not really. There was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but people who have to deal with black employees find this not true. Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an assumption that black people were as clever as their white counterparts when testing suggested the contrary. The genes responsible for creating human intelligence are poorly distributed among the people of Africa.
Anyway, Dr. Watson may be correct or not but my argument will go in tandem with that of one person from Nigeria who argued in relation to Watson’s hypothesis that; ‘A man of intelligence recognizes genuine criticism against him and takes steps to improve himself in order to prove his critics wrong. But for us blacks, our reaction is to abuse the man who expresses worries about our backwardness’. So it calls for emotional intelligence to appraise Watson. In a similar stretch other western scholars that positively attest to the above tenets of scientific racism are Dr. Boyce and another one is Charles Murray who authored The Bell Curve. This book associates American class structures with race and intelligence. But caution, let not science end up in a eugenic miss-measure of man.
Back to the track; flip your next coin in our experiment. You can even throw two of them. Both J and K. In respect of ‘J’ the menu drops following questions; why are Africans always jumping the broom. But in relation to ‘K’, the resultant items on the menu list are; why are Africans killing one another and why are Africans keeping on having babies. However, dear reader, when you go ahead to put M at the end of the question. The pop downs are; why are Africans muscular and why are Africans mean, miserable in regular mumbo-jumbo, usually mad and why are Africans married to more than one mistress.
I don’t know, but a recent research carried out by a research firm in Kenya revealed that Africans react differently to anti-African racial attacks. The West Africans, especially Nigerians and Senegalese, are usually provoked to intellectual activism by anti-Negro comments. South Africans and Diaspora Africans are provoked to violence. North Africans to the sentiments of Islam. But East Africans will instead recede back to cocoons of tribal and ethnic chauvinism.
Ergo, let us continue with our experiment. Type your question again in the engine. End with letter N. The variables to come down are; why Africans are not innovative and why Africans are notoriously religious. The item of why Africans are less innovative drove me crazy. I selected it and I came face to face with the vindictive Bigfive.
Bigfive points out that in virtually all the scientific spheres Africans trail the others. This is despite the resources, endowments, and relatively highly educated populace in some countries and rapid integration into the global scene. The apologists like Walter Rodney in his landmark book on development, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, have tried to put up a case for Africa’s poverty and backwardness in scientific advancement as being the result of imperialist domination. There have been apologists, historians and scholars who have spent a lifetime explaining our predicament. There is the excuse that Westerners stole our science and patented it. But that does not trash the most important question of the moment: What happened to Africa? Innovation after innovation, we have been left behind. We never invented the wheel, we never invented gun powder, combustion engine, airplane, computer, nor did we manufacture goods to sell to the other continents like Britain. Were it not for the fact that the myth is tinged with racial prejudice against the African race, it would be taken as true but it nevertheless captures one of the many presumed reasons why Africa goofs on the road to scientific development as the rest of the world rolls out new innovations every other minute. There is another reason though, but it is more observable than it has been researched. Africans consider anything mechanical as dirty or beneath them. The other reason is that Africans do not support homegrown innovations. They would rather spend a few more dollars and import anything from Europe, America, and China. But then one cannot solely blame the consumer. The so-called innovators are their own worst enemies. They like to sell their goods at very exorbitant prices. They hide any hint as to how they made their inventions.
Lastly, Africa is doing injustice to her younger generation. Instead of emphasizing science as the most important thing, Africans are showing their youth the most important things are football, politics and entertainment. Virtually every other youth in an African hamlet or suburb wants to become a musician and not an innovator. Worse still, the fastest growing industry in terms of new registrations is the marriage industry and not the patenting of new inventions. This is quite pathetic for a continent that suffers lack in virtually every sphere. A scientific and innovation culture will only be developed if these areas are projected in our nation’s traditions and culture as the most important aspects in life.
Are Africans really afraid of dogs? My question has come out of my further experiment with Google. When I typed our question into the search engine and ended with O. The resultant questions on the menu list were; why are Africans afraid of dogs, ostensible, obstreperous, and why are Africans devoid of worthwhile oeuvres. Can you also try yours on your gadget? But before you try, be aware that when you carry out your experiment with the letter P, the tags will be why Africans are poor, petty and why are American Africans pugnacious. Letter Q has nothing for you, dear reader, but, but R has a rude shock for you. The pertinent items to your experiment in relation to letter R are; why are Africans rude, racist, retarded and rapscallions. A rapscallion is a rascal, a disreputable person.
Letter S in relation to our experiment has more verbs that describe an African. The menu gives the following questions; why are Africans so ugly, so stupid, so fast, starving, so violent, so black, so poor and so stunted in their physiques. At this juncture I chose to select the question why are Africans stunted for my search. The answers were captivating stories posted on the United Nations website. They reported that Africans in countries like Mali, Kenya, Malawi and many others are stunted because they practice open-defecation. Those neighborhoods without toilets and latrine pits have a positive correlation with human stunted growth. Letter T has more derogation. Some are why are Africans timorous and why do public speakers refer to Africans in a thingamajig. The questions worth of noting under letter U are; why are Africans uncivilized, ugly and why are Negroes uneducated Americans. Letter V now is the piper that often calls the tune. Under this letter you will get two interesting questions; why are Africans violent and why are Africans vulnerable to enslavement. My interest about vulnerability to slavery took me away like a man with the wandering disease in Burning Grass, a novel by Cyprian Ekwensi to Race in North America by Audrey Smedley.
Audrey Smedley argues that race is an ideology that says that all human populations are divided into exclusive and distinct groups; that all human populations are ranked, they are not equal. Inequality is absolutely essential to the idea of race. The other part is that the behavior of people is very much part of their biology. And then the idea that all of this is inherited. People don’t only inherit their biological features, but they also inherit their moral, temperamental and intellectual features. Not only are all of these features inherited, but they are not transcendable. You can’t change. Racial populations, individual races, and individual people cannot change their race. So there’s no way in which you can transcend this identity. Once you are identified as a socially low-status race, you remain so forever. Race wasn’t invented because it is a set of beliefs and attitudes about human variation. It has nothing to do with the biological variation itself. You can have many societies with great diversity in physical features without the idea of race. Race represents attitudes and beliefs about human differences, not the differences themselves.
Dear readers, then we finally come to the end of our experiment with letters W, X, Y, and Z. My Google experiment with these letters in regard to Africans tickled me with the following questions dropping down on the menu; why are some Africans white, why are South Africans xenophobic, why are Africans yarpies and why are Africans in Zimbabwe.
But now, let us also try the same experiment by typing in the Google such engine; why Americans are, why Russians are and why English men are without putting at the end any suffix from the alphabet. I have tried already and I got a barrage of bamboozling niceties; why are Americans patriotic, why Americans are arrogant and why Americans are not allowed in Cuba. Then for the case of Russians the question options that came out were; why are Russians so tall, so tough, so rich, Russian women so hot, so good at chess, so badass, so bad at dota 2, so scary, so smart and so bad at driving. You can ignore The Canadians, but flip your coin lastly for the English men. You will get this Google regard; why are Englishmen so attractive?
List of References
Audrey Smedley; Race in North America
Bigfive; Why are Africans less innovative
Charles Murray; The Bell Curve
Cyprian Ekwensi; Burning Grass
Walter Rodney; How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
Water Dewey James; Genetics