Part 13 (2/2)
Furthermore, the native differentiates hiro in his carriage and theto pattern the aimitation thereof
The native has standards, ideas, and ideals that perfectly satisfy hi by thousands of years The consciousness of this reflects itself in his outward bearing He does not shuffle; he is not either obsequious or ies the white man's divinity and pays it appropriate respect, he does not lose the poise of his oorked-out attitude toward life and toward hi these people primitive In the world's standard of measurement they are primitive, very primitive indeed But ordinarily by that term, weInstead of being at the very dawn of human development, these people are at the end-as far as they theinal racial impulse that started them down the years toward development has fulfilled its duty and spent its force They have worked out all their probleed the world and its phenomena in a philosophy to their coists tell us, for thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, just as we find them to-day From our standpoint that is in a hopeless intellectual darkness, for they know absolutely nothing of the e Frohest DESIRABLE pinnacle of hued Their custoions, and duties have been worked out and io; and nobody drea either their wisdom or their imperative necessity They are the conservatives of the world
Norat thee is, from his standpoint, lazy and idle
His life is laid out reat e he performs his every act in accord with prohibitions and requirenorance does not divert consequences He must observe them all; in pain of terrible punishrave; and the plants that spring up from it s before venturing to harvest a crop On crossing the first stream of a journey he must touch his lips with the end of his wetted boade across, drop a stone on the far side, and then drink If he cuts his nails, he s into a thicket If he drink from a stream, and also cross it, he must eject a mouthful of water back into the stream He must be particularly careful not to look his mother-in-law in the face Hundreds of o may modify actions, as, on what side of the road a woodpecker calls, or in which direction a hyena or jackal crosses the path, how the ground hornbill flies or alights, and the like Heto their occurrence If he does not notice them, they exercise their influence just the sae a distrait oes far to explain otherwise unexplainable visitations Truly, as Hobley says in his unexcelled work on the A-Kae native is a coed round by all sorts of rules and prohibitions, the infringement of which will probably cause his death, if only by the intense belief he has in the rules which guide his life”
Custo the different tribes I a
For these rules and custoive a reason They are; and that is all there is to it A mere statement: ”This is the custom” settles the ht even, of finding any logical cause The matter orked out in the mental evolution of reent and Standpatter, Conservative and Radical fought out the questions of the day, and the Muckrakers swung by their tails and chattered about it Those days are all long since over The questions of the world are settled forever The people have passed through the struggles of their forhest perfection of adjustment to material and spiritual environment of which they were capable under the influence of their original racial force
Parenthetically, it is now a question whether or not an added impulse can be communicated from without Such an impulse must (a) unsettle all the old beliefs, (b) inspire an era of skepticisle of ideas between the Insurgent and the Standpatter, and Radical and the Conservative, (d) in the meantime furnish, froht-world and in the object-world, for building slowly a new set of custo for ourselves This is a longer and slower andthe native to wear clothes and sing hyin; but it is what must be accomplished step by step before the African peoples are really civilized I, personally, do not think it can be done
Now having, a hundred thousand years or so ago, worked out the highest good of the hu to them, what must they say to themselves and what must their attitude be when the white man has come and has unrolled his carpet of wonderful tricks? The dilemma is evident
Either we, as black men, must admit that our hundred-thousand-year-old ideas as to what constitutes the highest type of hu, or else we must evolve a new attitude toward this new phenomena It is human nature to do the latter Therefore the native has not abandoned his old Gods; nor has he adopted a new He still believes firs, but he acknowledges the Super is possible Only our Superman is an idea, and ideal The native has his Superman before him in the actual flesh
We will suppose that our own Supers that apparently contravene all our established tenets of skill, of intellect, of possibility It will be readily acknowledged that such an individual would at first create some astonishment He wanders into a crowded hotel lobby, let us say, evidently with the desire of going to the bar Instead of pushi+ng laboriously through the crowd, he floats just above their heads, gets his drink, and floats out again! That is levitation, and is probably just as siet thoroughly accustoer vastly astonished, though always interested, at the varioususing the marvellous wireless, aeroplanes, motor cars, constructive machinery, and the like that make us confident-justly, of course-in that we are about the smartest lot of people on earth And if we see red, white, and blue strea the zenith at noon, we do not manifest any very profound aain,” we oing to do now!”
A consideration of the above beautiful fablethe supposed native stolidity in the face of the white ht a balloon to Nairobi The balloon interested the white people a lot, but everybody was chiefly occupied wondering what the natives would do when they saw THAT! The natives did not do anything They gathered in large nuo up, and then went horeat extent So also with locoraphs-any of our enuities The native is pleased and entertained, but not astonished
”Stupid creature, no i off is a wee bit hurt
Why should he be astonished? His mental revolution took place when he saw the first match struck It is manifestly i one small stick When for the first time he saw it done, he was indeed vastly astounded The ied The law had been transcended The iical sequence, his ism If the white man can do this impossibility, why not all the rest? To defy the laws of nature by flying in the air or forcing great masses of iron to transport one, is no ht Since the white man can provedly do one, what earthly reason exists why he should not do anything else that hits his fancy? There is nothing to get astonished at
This does not necessarily mean that the native looks on the white man as a God On the contrary, your African is very shrewd in the reading of character But indubitably white ic, uncertain in its extent
That is as far as I should care to go, without much deeper acquaintance, into the attitude of the native mind toward the whites A superficial study of it, beyond the general principals I have enunciated, discloses e contradictions The native respects the white man's warlike skill, he respects his physical prowess, he certainly acknowledges tacitly his ht to command In case of dispute he likes the white man's adjudication; in case of illness thehand Yet he almost never attes His own savage customs and habits he fulfils with as ering Meht the white skin or the black skin the more ornamental ”You are not white,” he retorted at last ”That,” pointing to a leaf of my notebook, ”is white You are red I do not like the looks of red people”
They call our speech the ”snake language,” because of its hissing sound
Once this is brought to your attention, indeed, you cannot help noticing the superabundance of the sibilants
A queer eonholes of an African's brain led with clear estimate of intrinsic character of individuals and a satisfaction with his own standards
Nor, I think, do we realize sufficiently the actual fundamental differences between the African and our peoples Physically they h they actually belonged to a different species The Masai are a fine big race, enduring, well developed and efficient They live exclusively on cow's rain; just that and nothing more Obviously they must differ from usIt is a well-known fact that any native requires a triple dose of white man's medicine Furthermore a native's sensitiveness to pain is very much less than the white man's This is indubitable For example, the Wakamba file-or, rather, chip, by means of a small chisel-all their front teeth down to needle points, When these happen to fall out, the warrior substitutes an artificial tooth which he drives down into the socket
If the savage got the same effects from such a performance that a white e stoicisained byexamples
Every African traveller can recall a thousand
Incidentally, and by the way, I want to add to the milk-and-blood joke on dietetics another on the physical culturists We are all familiar with the wails over the loss of our toe nails You knohat I mean; they run somewhat like this: shoes are the curse of civilization; if ear theer we shall not only lose the intended use of our feet, but we shall lose our toe nails as well; the savage e ot much interested in their toe nails, because I soon found that our own civilized ”imprisoned” toe nails were very e nues have hardly any toe nails at all! Whether this upsets a theory, nullifies a sentimental protest, or uess But the fact is indubitable