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Why black American culture is flowering I have to say, I prefer black people. Perhaps this is a result of outsize curiosity, or whatever, but like every suburban 14-year-old with an imagination, I want to be black. They are a burst of warm energy in my chilly WASP world, with all its many and various internal rules and external restrictions, and endless procession of hoops to jump through until one (decorously) dies. I envy their close knit and tempestuous families, their ease of access to and acknowledgement of the importance of, emotion. I would die without black music, which plays in my house sometimes to the point where both Jack Russells periodically decide to pack their stuffed animals, camp in the forest and live on psilocibin mushrooms. And this from a woman who grew up with a classical pianist mother who burst into tears when she moved to Vancouver and heard the insufficiencies of the Symphony. I remember in Bermuda, finally meeting the woman who had been working with my then-boyfriend to build an addition to the Montessori School. I had been dreading the encounter with what I pictured would be one of those dishwater blond committee women with compressed lips and censuring eyes, and when she turned out to be radiating warmth, and black, I near threw myself into her arms. Plus the beauty. Ohmygod, the beauty. A London friend had a child with a black pop star 10 years her junior, and he used to show up at the decommissioned match factory in Outer Holloway, where she lived with that child. He and his cousin would unfurl themselves from their Mercedes and walk into the house and we'd all faint from the excess of beauty there displayed. So I say more black people please. And if you, in some sort of twisted liberal way, think I'm being racist, go ahead and bite me twice. I just don't care. This isn't benighted nostalgie de la boue; most of the black people I know are successful and middle class. Besides, race is culture, to my mind, not biology, and culture- wise, they are exploding. They are a super-race as an advertising whacko genius Manhattan friend informed me in all seriousness once, and they are probably the future. Their production of literature, music, dance, art, design, theory and film is awesome and I challenge any one of you to prove me wrong. Now I'm not Pollyanna, and I know about the poverty, violence, drug addiction and desperate ghetto times that disproportionately affect American blacks. Some of their music is racist, and so sexist it takes one's breath away. The elevation of street life to the most glamorous of adolescent fantasies has the sting of a nasty joke. But you know, this is a blip in the inexorable progression of a potentially great culture aborning, with all attendant pains. Lotsa problems, lotsa solutions. Black Americans were slaves fewer than 150 years ago. Now they are among the most powerful people in the most powerful government in the world. Some of their advance has been indecorous. Handouts and playing the race card, have triggered a new kind of racism among shut-out whites. Which is why affirmative action must stop -- it is divisive. So, given all that, should we give Africa US$64-billion?? Or more correctly, another $64-billion? The average African is measurably worse off today than he was 30 or 40 years ago, and most thinking people project 20 years into the future and see the Middle East today as a teapot tempest compared to what might happen in sub- Saharan Africa. In fact, even in the vast right-wing conspiracy, a call to save Africa, has everyone, even the most hard-bitten conservatives and most military people -- active- duty and veterans -- saying "Where do I sign up?" Yes, where? The United Nations reports that in 1991, US$200- billion or 90% of sub-Saharan Africa's GDP was shipped to foreign banks. Any aid money left was squandered by crooked governments in ill-conceived projects. There has been electoral theft in Zimbabwe, and the constitutions of Malawi, Namibia and Zambia have been subverted. In Sierra Leone, children have had their arms lopped off by rebels. South Africa is so besieged by rapists that celebrities are making public-service ads asking young men to stop. In Zimbabwe, the government has declared war on white farmers who produce most of the food for the country. In nation after nation, warlords and rebel generals harass and murder by the thousands -- motivated by no discernible ideology except clannish ambition, cruelty, and greed. Now I know about NEPAD, the "New Partnership for Africa's Development" and its calls for peer review and self-assessment. Self- assessment. Don't make me laugh. As the Durban conference last summer made clear, most of these thugs embrace a post-colonial philosophy of tribalism based on some kind of black Third World unity, functioning in opposition to the great devil of all time, the West. Stealing from the West, to these guys, is noble. We have more important things to give than money and those are the institutions that have ensured the flowering of black American culture. Secure property rights, the rule of law and mechanisms for contract enforcement. An independent central bank, vital for monetary and economic stability, as well as to staunch capital flight. An independent judiciary, crucial for the enforcement of rule of law, protection of property and to end rapacious plunder. An independent and free media, to facilitate the free flow of information, to expose criminal wrongdoing, and to disseminate ideas. Neutral and professional armed or security forces, to protect life and property and ensure law and order. Is the Prime Minister going to insist that these Western institutions be imposed on this continent of gangster states? Otherwise, we might as well throw that money away.

© 2004 Elizabeth Nickson The material at this website is available only for personal non-commercial purposes, and it may not be reproduced without permission.