The late Roland Ongomou Oyogo, a young student in law, had already been inspired by Montesquieu's approach and also by many more historical facts that forced him to think of drafting an article that he intended to get published in an academic magazine. His article was looking to establish the foundations of what he called 'a racial stratification on earth' taking into account the different levels of advancement of different continents of the world. He even convinced me to work with him on the article. His first chapter was a vague incrimination of divine injustice. Roland's wrathful words flared up against a god that might have created some races with a more subtle brain than others. But this could only be a spurious accusation with no consistent basis for scientific demonstration. I had to suggest the dismissal of the entire chapter.
Then, nature. Out of God's control, nature could be a causative factor for some races to fail developing powerful brain cells. And, probably, one of these negative elements could be climatological variation. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche had come up, prior to Roland, with a similar reflection at the time he was at odds with his mother culture-the Deutsch culture-for failing to establish civilisational power in the Western world (Adolph Hitler himself fell in love with and was almost brainwashed by Nietzsche's philosophy about Germany to the point of forcing himself to force the German people to prove how powerful the Deutsch civilisation could be in the world, with such colossal architectural plans and aggressive military campaigns-because this is, indeed, what characterises great civilisations. Hitler was convinced that this was the only way to revert the German civilisational mediocrity as criticised by Nietzsche. Little wonder if we find very much of Nietzsche's words in almost every single one of Hitler's speeches). For example, Nietzsche wrote: 'Most closely related to the question of nutriment is the question of place and climate... a never so infinitesimal sluggishness of the intestines grown into a bad habit completely suffices to transform a genius into something mediocre, something German. The German climate alone is enough to discourage strong and even heroic intestines. [...] Make a list of the places where are and have been gifted men, where wit, refinement, malice are part of happiness, where genius has almost necessarily made its home: they all possess an excellent dry air. Paris , Provence , Florence , Jerusalem , Athens-these names prove something: that genius is conditioned by dry air and clear sky' (Nietzsche, 1889).
Roland and I, too, seemed, at some point, to be getting trapped into that climatological maze in order to make sense of the African Negro's state of mediocrity as observable throughout history. And in accusation against nature, we were more focused on the most obvious as far as Black Africa was concerned: the possible disadvantageous effects of strong solar rays on the human brain. We seemed to grow more and more convinced that cold weather could certainly be the basis of the civilisational strengths of the Western and Asian worlds.
That same argument of the possible negative effects of the tropical heat has, indeed, tempted many more people to draw dramatic conclusions about the situation of Black Africa. For example, Alexandre Biyidi-a Fanghish novelist from the present Cameroon, mostly known under the pseudonyms of Eza Boto and Mongo Beti-tried to ventilate the same sort of perception when he published Trop de soleil tue l'amour in 1998, or 'too much sun kills love'. But we soon found that such a vision would be utterly paradoxical in the light of the realities of the European world where people living in a numbing cold weather are often so excited about the advent of the Summer which, for them, is the perfect period of the year for honeymoons and romantic encounters in a burning sun.
I must say that my long-time friendship with Roland, back from high school, was historical. We had this passion to try and find a way out of anything that could be intellectually disturbing enough to cause a relentless worry. Any philosophical or scientific situation to which we could be confronted was an explosive spark into an infinite search for a sensible, sound solution. We had this obsession to fabricate things, very stupid things at times, to try and palliate our preoccupations. Even mathematical formulae were invented to find a way round difficult equations.
So, when the problem of the backwardness of the Negro began to worry us, we did not know where to start. But to suppose that the tropical heat could be responsible for the civilisational slant of Black Africa could really lead us nowhere, even though there could be some prolific arguments on the advantages and drawbacks of climatological variation. Because, when taking a close looking at Australia or South Africa , we soon realised that they were almost as hot as tropical Africa . And yet, the English, once settled in these places, had been able to surpass the same sort of natural conditions to create there some sensibly advanced societies. This path too was completely stalled. However, Montesquieu's moral hypothesis remained valid. How could we suppose that the Negro African type of species could fit into true self-conscious manhood whilst failing so dramatically to observe the stereotypes of manhood?
Excerpt 2 - Chapter 2 - [Washington's battle] - (pp. 27-31):
[...]
This is why Washington's work appeared extremely noble to me, compared to the artificial forcings of those, like William Trotter, Kelly Miller, William Du Bois and, later, the wave of the activists of the 1950s and the 1960s such as Malcolm Little and Martin Luther King, who rather chose the option of social agitation, seeking rights that did not fit most of the Negroes.
If America proved to be a place where a cowboy was more respected than a prophet, it would be more appropriate to become a cowboy to deserve the respect of the American society, and especially, to equal other cowboys in order to stop undergoing their dominance.
Dr Du Bois-one of Washington's most sworn enemies who accused him of being the traitor of the Negro by trying to expose his weaknesses-also came to make sense of this principle 30 years after Washington's own death, when he said during a conference that he gave at Boston university in 1956: 'Oh Washington!' he exclaimed. ' Washington was a politician! Washington was the man who understood that America was not a temple where to preach morals, but an arena where to fight for dominance. In fact, Washington had no faith in white people. He just knew how to listen to them.' This noteworthy speech was reproduced by John Hope Franklin and August Meier in Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century (1982).
Of course, Washington knew how to listen to white people. However, my own perception is rather, as I put it in my thesis, that Washington did actually not listen to white people. He knew how to listen to a universal call for human survival, advancement and affirmation. In his own case, it was the call for the Negro to be affirmative in order to have a place in America that Washington was listening to. Ralph Ellison himself put it this way in The Invisible Man (1952): 'Unless you belong to the great American tradition of thinker-tinkers, you will not be kin to Ford, Edison and Franklin.' This is, you cannot be a true human being in the image of these three figures that stand as the symbols of the economic, scientific and political excellence of the American civilisation as long as you are incapable of imitating their qualities and abilities. Unless you are like Ford, Edison and Franklin, you will not be a man in America , you will not be part of the American dream: a dream of excellence, success and dominance.
This is surely where one may find the ultimate connection between my study of Washington 's philosophy and work on the one hand, and my debate on the place of the African Negro on the other hand. This is even why I wrote in my thesis, in connection to the contemporary African Negro's place in this world, that, 'if the world were reduced to one single country, the African Negro would find himself in the same situation as the American Negro, at least during Washington's era: incapable of adapting himself to the demands of the world's standard civilised mode of existence-a world marked by excellence, success and dominance. And for this reason, his legitimacy as a true self-conscious citizen of the world would not have any real prospect. He would, therefore, be despised, discriminated and brutalised: left in oblivion as a second class citizen of the world.
Of course, this is his actual condition in the world today. And the main reason that stands behind this condition is civilisational deficiency : his inability to be excellent, successful and dominant in some area of human endeavour; his inability to follow the stereotypes of today's world.
This is how Washington helped me begin to understand the basic reasons for the African Negro's inferior condition in the world today.
I remind myself of Patrick Ndong, a friend of mine from university, who was once presenting his Master's thesis in modern philosophy on Pragmatism-where he borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon vision of that particular philosophical trend, extolling the importance of intuition, promptness of action, inventiveness, realism and dialectic solidarity. After his speech, he was asked by one of the members of the jury - even the president of the jury, Dr Jean Chrysostome Mondzo - to clarify what the contribution of his thesis could be to the African world. To this, the young man unexpectedly came up with a totally displaced answer. He said, very calmly: 'A people that does not know how to imitate is doomed to extinction.'
The answer was completely incongruous, because not only was it not a logical continuation of Patrick's preamble, it was neither a coherent answer to the question. The jury itself was frozen. When asked to explain himself he stated that, because the Negro-African type of species seemed incapable of following the stereotypes of the world, it was not possible to expect what any philosophy would be of any use in Africa, let alone the perspective of inventing a typically African philosophy that could work, which would be much harder than making use of any existing philosophy.
The Negro-African mind just doesn't seem to be able to make it. And this is why not only is the African Negro doomed to extinction as Patrick could foresee it in a much longer time scale, but he is equally doomed to being denied his human fullness as well as the humiliations that are subsequent to this condition, far before his total extinction. The Negro's troubles in this world are, thus, definitely not related to his colour, but to his inability to imitate, perform and compete.
I also remember David Raid, a British politician, delivering a speech that was so well picked up by the media and divulged with a great sense of pride in The Scotsman 's edition of the 22 nd of October 1997-a statement that could well have been taken for racial abuse. 'We are a forward-thinking race ,' he said, and went on, 'anything we do should paint a picture of inspiration; it should be different and challenging. Sometimes we take easy options because we do not want to take the risk of offending other people. But I think that the distinctive things that make us out today are our intellectual skills, the quality of our education, our contribution to philosophy and science and so on.'
My own conviction, in relation to such a statement, is that someone like David Raid would not be prepared to
