Negros in Negroland: A Fascinating Book

I have been spending the past few days thumbing through this amazing 268 page book, written in 1868 by a very racist White Southerner, an unabashed White Supremacist. Keep in mind that back in those days though, White Supremacy was simply normative for nearly all US Whites.

The impetus for this book comes out of the Radical Republican attempts at Reconstruction, which were, it is true, a disaster. Incompetent and uneducated Blacks were put in positions of power over Whites all over the South during this period, with catastrophic effects. It was not unusual to find Black judges, mayors, sheriffs, police officers, supervisors, etc., who could not even read or write. The object here was simply to humiliate the Southern Whites.

Blacks roamed all over the South aimlessly. Many, knowing nothing else, retreated to the plantations where they had been slaves, this time asking for wage labor. Encampments of them on their old plantations were not uncommon. Many others resorted to crime, often stealing only food to eat. There were many shootings by Southern Whites of Black criminals.

The South was in ruins, and Radical policy only added to the chaos. The finest of Southern White manhood was dead, wounded or hobbling around as amputees. Blacks had freedom but had not the faintest idea of what to do with it.

By the time this book was written, 1868, the Ku Klux Klan had just been formed and was beginning already to ride the torched night. Terrorist attacks on Blacks and White Radicals were growing. The North had just fought a horrible war with the South and was full of the dead and hobbling wounded themselves.

The intent of the Radicals was to humiliate the South in the traditional fashion of ancient man in war, exemplified by the Greeks.

It didn’t work.

Violent Southern reaction only produced disgust from an exhausted North. Soon after this book was written, Radical Reconstruction was ended or amended, and most troops had pulled out of the South. The North was washing their hands of the exasperating South and saying the Hell with them, moving on to their own affairs.

In the decades after this book was written, reactionary retrenchment set in, and much of the progressive changes for Southern Blacks were undone. It was not a full retreat to slavery, but it was a reaction back to Jim Crow, merely one step above.

Bearing in mind the era in which this book was written, its thesis is understandable. The author was actually a liberal for his time, as he was a Southerner who had long opposed slavery as a counterproductive and dying institution.

His solution to the Negro Question was Back to Africa, which seems racist to us, but was actually a progressive position at the time, even embraced by Lincoln. The attitude was similar to that of Herzl’s The Jewish State, where he stated that European anti-Semitism was incorrigible due to the behavior of both parties, and a divorce was the only way out.

The Back to Africa crowd had a similar mindset. Black and White in the US were interminably opposed, and Whites would never cut Blacks a square deal.

Back to Palestine in the case of the Jews, back to Africa for the Africans.

The full title of this book is The Negroes in Negroland, the Negroes in America, and Negroes Generally, also, the Several Races of White Men, Considered the Involuntary and Predestined Supplanters of the Black Races, a Compilation by Hinton Rowan Helper, a Rational Republican, Author of The Impending Crisis of the South, Nojoque, and Other Writings in Behalf of a Free and White America.

The book recites a voluminous amount of literature from early White explorers to Africa in an attempt to prove Black (apparently genetic) inferiority. His object in proving Black inferiority is to show what a crime it is to put an inferior race over a superior one in the South, and to show that inferior Blacks will never be able to succeed in America and will only degrade the country.

The various chapters on Africa were selected for the unflattering portrayal of Africans by explorers. I do not think that the explorers were making this stuff up. Indeed, Africans were living in a state of profound and debased barbarian savagery.

But so were many primitive peoples including Polynesians, Melanesians, Papuans and many Amerindian tribes.

The only lesson that can be drawn here is that Hobbes was correct about the barbaric nature of uncivilized man and his short, nasty and brutish lot.

The question arises whether the debasement of Africans was due to their genes or their culture. I suppose the best answer is both. However, reading through this, it immediately becomes clear that no matter how messed up Africa is today, Africa is immensely more civilized than it was 150 year ago. African Americans have gone much further, and do not resemble this picture much at all, although you can see hints of it in many places.

Africans’ genes have not changed much in 150 years, so much of their debased savagery must have been cultural. African Americans have actually changed genetically in the US in addition to undergoing massive cultural change whereby they lost most of their African culture and gained an American one.

One thing that I found interesting what that this very racist man actually quoted many explorers who said that quite a few African women were beautiful, and it would stand to reason that a White man could want one. They even said that African women made good wives. However, they noted that the African woman was coarse and lacked many of the finer civilized nuances of a White woman.

In particular, one notes the casual terror and murderousness of African life, the omnipresence of death and dead bodies, the minimal nature of mourning in which the dead are soon nonchalantly forgotten, the lack of compassion, romantic love and the other finer sentiments.

This got me to thinking as a race realist where US Blacks retain these qualities. In particular, White observers in Africa today remark that Blacks do not seem to have a White understanding of romantic love.

However, I know that Alpha Unit on this site has all of the finer sentiments that any White woman could have, and more so, honestly. The Black commenters on here, male and female, seem to display the finer sentiments of adequately civilized humans.

I was struck on Abagond’s site how similar the educated Black women on there were to White women in their understanding and desire for romantic love. Perhaps it’s a function of IQ or education. At any rate, I do not think that US Blacks in general, or Black women in particular, are in general lacking in the finer sentiments of romantic love vis a vis Whites.

The casualness of death and lack of compassion in these accounts was also striking, as was any lack of a real mourning period after death. This got me to wondering if US Blacks were deficient in this regard.

However, I have seen and heard many older Black mothers on TV and radio who still mourn for their dead or imprisoned children, some years after the fact. I have seen interviews where Black women in their 40’s and 50’s still keep the dead son’s room decorated with his photos and things and weep on camera for his death even 10-20 years after the fact. Although rationally one should argue that humans ought to get over it, extended and passionate mourning is definitely a finer sentiment and a sign of high civilization.

The thievery, wanton dishonesty and shocking amorality of Africans in this book is frightening. Surely, US Blacks are on average less honest, more thieving and more amoral than US Whites.

However, in this book, nearly every African encountered is essentially a laughing, guiltless, casual and amoral thief. That’s not the case with US Blacks. Many are bad, but many others are very honest to a fault, even moreso than you or me. Many US Blacks have highly developed consciences and even strong guilt complexes. I’ve even met some with the ultimate guilt neurosis, OCD.

What I am getting at here is that a lot of this shocking debasement, savagery and barbarianism of early Africa, which might seem at first to be genetic, is largely cultural. I don’t know much about Africans and Caribbeans today, but US Blacks are tremendously more civilized in their personalities and behavior than the Africans of 150 years ago.

The level of barbarism or civilization in a group often has more to do with culture than genes.

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21 thoughts on “Negros in Negroland: A Fascinating Book”

  1. US Blacks average IQ is about 15 points, which is one standard deviation, below whites. The implication of this is that there should be about a 75% overlap, with only intellectually elite whites and the most inferior blacks not having many equals in the other race. This makes sense, as overlap environments like easier college majors (where the 50-75 percentile of whites live), factories and the enlisted military (25-50 percentile of whites) and semi-skill blue collar labor (0-25 percentile of whites) are nicely mixed. It’s only tough college cirricula and ghettos that have no partner.

    A few other points:
    It wouldn’t take much for an explorer to find ANY woman attractive after a few months; manatees probably inspired belief in mermaids, which seems quite a stretch to those of us in a mixed-gender environment.

    US Blacks are the strongest Christians, with commensurate emphasis on departed loved ones.

    Any black person except that bottom 25% of their IQ distribution (i.e. ghetto types) is capable of observing how much better whites live and how their behaviors are part of the reason and hence worth emulating.

    Africa may be more civilized than 150 years ago, but we still get reports about witch burnings, mass rapes by the military, and gay lynchings, which exist only to a trivial extent in America.

    1. Thx for this, Frank.

      I wonder how much of the difference between US Black and African behavior is due to dramatically increased IQ in US Blacks. With IQ of 85, some sort of civilization is feasible and even likely. With IQ of 67, I am really worried.

      I don’t agree with your comments about explorers finding all women good looking. I have been through reports of explorers meeting California Indians and it was quite common to describe them as ugly.

      1. It’s worth noting however that the average white European of, say, 400-500 yrs. ago was not at a much higher level intellectually than the average African today. It’s true that the high culture was higher, but that had little effect on the typical peasant.

        To illustrate, I recall reading a book about the European with hunts/burnings, in which the author recounted the case of one accused witch who was popularly believed to be a penis thief who kept a nest of stolen penii in her hut. I believe there were very similar rumors abroad in some African countries a few years ago.

      2. “With IQ of 67, I am really worried.”

        Robert, I disagree. Don’t get me wrong – 67 is startlingly low. However, in my experience, there is a great deal of variance among the members of any sizable population of animals. Therefore, within any large population of people you will have some individuals with fairly high IQ’s.

        Hence, with the proper institutions in place, I would argue that those high-IQ individuals could experience some financial success and would then reproduce at a higher rate than their low-IQ brethren. With time, the genes that produce these high-IQ people will start to accumulate and the average IQ will creep up. I see no reason why this would not apply to Sub-Saharan Africans. I hope that makes sense.

        It may not have been your intention, but your statement (quoted above) falls into the same line of argument of the WN’s: that IQ’s “regress to the mean.” Frankly, those arguments don’t make much sense – at least from the point of view of an evolutionist.

        Moreover, there is some support for this if you read “The Other Path” by Hernando deSoto, a Peruvian economist. In this book, he details the amazingly complex lending, real estate, transportation, and commerce systems existing in Lima and developed by Andean migrants to the city who were essentially barred from the formal economy. These were people who were generally assumed to be less intelligent and sophisticated than their Criollo neighbors.

        It’s a great read and does not get bogged down with statistical models and such. Rather, he just states facts. But, there are so many great anecdotes and examples that it is a bit of a page-turner.

        1. I would argue that those high-IQ individuals could experience some financial success and would then reproduce at a higher rate than their low-IQ brethren.

          Unfortunately, this is the opposite of how the modern world works. Today, low IQ correlates with reproductivity, because high IQ people with many choices in their lives don’t dedicate it to raising children. There is an almost perfect inverse correlation worldwide between the Human Development Index and the birth rate.

        2. Frank,

          You are confusing different phenomena here. Modern societies tend to experience lower birth rates. Moreover, some studies have shown that, in the US, IQ and fertility rates are inversely related for women only. However, the relationship is weak. Moreover, I would argue this has more to do with government assistance programs which discourage work. Further, the fertility rate is dropping for all groups.

          Hence, there really is not much support for your claim. The ability to process large amounts of information is not easy, but you may start to improve if you continue to practice.

  2. His solution to the Negro Question was Back to Africa, which seems racist to us, but was actually a progressive position at the time, even embraced by Lincoln. The attitude was similar to that of Herzl’s The Jewish State, where he stated that European anti-Semitism was incorrigible due to the behavior of both parties, and a divorce was the only way out.

    The Back to Africa crowd had a similar mindset. Black and White in the US were interminably opposed, and Whites would never cut Blacks a square deal.

    What I’ve been saying all along.

    150 years later, and there is still irreconcilable tension between blacks and whites, now Jews and Palestinians, etc.

    Like I said, I think we just need a nice, long vacation from one another.

    1. However, just so you know, Lincoln didn’t exactly have a ton of love for blacks. He clearly articulated his disdain for blacks and his belief in their inferiority.

      He also didn’t give two shits about the well being of the slaves. He issued the emancipation proclamation as a way to foment chaos within the confederacy.

      But yes, back to Africa, compared to Jim Crow, certainly was a more progressive option.

  3. You have to laugh at these Neanderthals and all white people are part Neanderthals, scientific fact. In fact everyone who is not African is Neanderthals, fact. Every person on Earth came from a black person fact. Every attribute that any human being is capable of came from that black person, fact. All civilization came from the Nile Valley, fact. Neanderthals were never in the Nile Valley. Meaning culture, science, art, religion, music and all on human endeavors straight from black people that you hate. The Bible that you claim to follow straight from black people. And as far as measuring intelligence you have to define something before you can measure it. The I.Q. test is the perfect analogy of white superiority. Anyone with any real intelligence knows you are full of it.

    1. Neanderthals are what made humans human. Neanderthals had bigger brains than the creatures who came from Africa, which is why humans are more intelligent than the creatures still in Africa.

      1. Negroids still have a brain one third smaller than any other race and IQ’s well below any other races norm. The melanin in their skin and make up contribute to violent behaviour such as rape or murder, More than 30,000 white women are raped by blacks each year, that is what is reported anyways. There are also well over one million blacks in prisons across america giving the niggers their million man march each morning for breakfast.

    2. 1 Every person on Earth came from a black person fact
      2 The Bible that you claim to follow straight from black people.
      3 culture, science, art, religion, music and all on human endeavors straight from black people that you hate.
      You crack me up! Thanks for the humor, Keep up the good word Negro.

      1. HALF of Obama.
        All the stupid things he does are his Black half, the smart things, his White half (lolololol)
        “I do enjoy President Obama’s White half- you know, how he talks, and his etiquette, things like that. But all the stupid laws he’s making- he gets that from his n!gger daddy”
        -Uncle Ruckus

  4. There is one reason blacks of the USA are more civilized than their african counterparts and that is because of the close proximity of them living with whites, for left to their own would surely commit to murdering and eating each other.

  5. It is true that Black Africans retain many more savage traits, both physical and mental, than other human races that were more transformed by domestication so to speak, quite in the same way as wolves to dogs, or as wild cats to domestic cats. But that does not make the Blacks less human. A breed of cats by becoming cuter and cuter and tamer and tamer as domestic animals does not turn humanoid, it remains feline, up to the point they are less and less able to catch mice and more and more able to be cuddled and keep the living rooms tidy. We humans tend to like any other animal domesticated rather than wild (except as game) and that included the human species too, that has also been bred by its own ruling groups. Neoteny as the biologists say did not make a human out of a chimp, it made a domestic and pliable human animal out of a savage one. When comparing IQ scores, one has to compare scores between people equally interested by the subject of the tests, like for instance music or history : it just turns out that more Blacks are more naturally turned out by anything that looks like abstract or mathematical. But if you take Blacks and Whites equally interested by for instance geometrical or numerological aspects of things, and there are quite a few among darkest African people otherwise known to be as primitive as the rest (the Dogon for instance), the IQ difference falls down a great deal or even neutralizes : that applies also for Black individuals coming from low IQ, non-mathematical cultures, but who suddenly develop an interest for statistics, for instance, or electrical engineering. I happened to meet a prize-winning Haitian IEEE electrical engineer who became one due to the fact it was the only way for him and his friends to have his derelict village electrified and play the games he liked, and who otherwise is quite happy and unabashed to be more primitive and savage in many other aspects of his personality. All African sub-species of all species, not only the human, are as a rule not or less domesticated : the african elephant, for instance, is in no way more domesticable by Europeans than by Africans. Wild animals in the wild as you all know are by no means more violent than the domesticated race of the same species in the yard, the very opposite is often true with birds and others, provided each one keeps on living in its most appropriate habitat. But in an overcrowded human-made yard or zoo facility, the wilder variety gets the most violent, as one easily surmises. Blacks living in housing projects that even for Whites are far from biologically ideal (the only White superiority to inhabit them is their being better programmed) will of course get more aggressive and destroy their surroundings with a greater probability. The same is true for former wild environments that are turning into frontiers, and that has been the case with Africa since the outbreak of modern era : one recent example is the Congo forest people, they used to live a life quite like American hippies’ communes until the recent times when they all of a sudden turn into war-like gangs. Whites, for the present moment, are well-behaved and school-wise thanks mostly not to intrinsic genius (creative genius is actually far more present among whites, but only within a tiny elite of them, in the same way other forms of genius such as music and sympathetic magic is more present in Africa but only within a tiny group too) but for having accepted and internalized a spiritually stifling mass brainwashing through media control. The media control for whites seems to have been mostly intent on programming them into peaceful, hard-working and studious ways, but that has not always been true, even recently successful attempts like the nazi ideology did turn nearly all of them into wild beasts of prey, the Islamic peoples are oftentimes as white as we are and even prouder to be so, but their behaviour in sex, intellect and economy matters is even worse than Africans’. Two centuries ago, the English street people were just as violent, riot-prone, short-lived, cannibalistic and anti-intellectual as the darker peoples of the South, and the catholic Irish living in London suffered exactly the same prejudices as the Negroes for the very same apparent good statistical reasons. Now the media control for Blacks seems to be dead intent in making them more violent and anti-intellectual that they would be left to themselves without any media (would they spontaneously play gangster Rap? That I doubt judging from the most traditional forms of African musical productions and also from the music they love most to play and dance themselves when there is no money involved, like soukous or rumba), but that had not always been so and can change too.

  6. Just look at Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, New Orleans, Memphis, Richmond, Washington DC, St Louis, Milwaukee and tell me they have on average the same IQ as whites. The Roman Empire had a higher standard of living than most sub-Saharan Africans do today. What does that tell you? Tell me one thing they ever invented that changed the world, improved the standard of living or helped anyone? Somehow they are exalted to an undeserved status in the US by liberals and put into positions they have no business in thus lowering the standards everywhere. The worst employees, neighbors, highest crime rates, entitled, ignorant, impulsive and materialistic people in the world!

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