To: all
As ought to be obvious from the original post, I'm in fundamental agreement with everything said so far.
Last night I spoke with an old friend, Raimi Gbadamosi, in England. Ours has been and still is an argumentative relationship, and we've argued about everything under the sun; art, sex, politics, his relationships, my relationships - I was once deeply enamoured of his former girlfriend, the ever-wonderful Natalie, while she was still his girlfriend. But it was borne in upon me during last night's conversation how much many of my views and opinions have been changed by my time here.
Listening to him tell me his responses to this article, I saw just how fundamentally we had been in agreement over many issues and values, particularly relating to race, values that are an unquestioned commonplace of the European Left. Values I once thought were intrinsic to my view of the world because I believed them to be right.
Unless Raimi were to do as I have done and live in what is a deeply socially deprived area of Richmond, live cheek by jowel with its depraved inhabitants for close to three years, he could not remotely grasp how or why I have come to feel as I do about the various types of American Black that I've encountered in my time here. And there is absolutely no way in which I could explain my transformation to him so that he could understand.
Raimi, as he stated explicitly, believes that all hatred - especially racial hatred - derives from fear. The idea that there is something intrinsically contemptible about a particular racial type, or sub-groups of that type, is anathema to him. While I worked at my last job I mingled with Whites, Blacks, and Latinos. i came to respect all of them as decent working people who wanted to make their own way in the world. There were some of all these types whom, as individuals, I disliked for one reason or another. But I could respect them as, in general, decent people.
The Blacks who inhabit the area of the South Side of Richmond in which I live are the polar opposites of the Blacks with whom I worked. Almost invariably they live from a combination of welfare and drug trafficking and are intent on ripping off anyone they can whenever they can. While there are some whom I can like as individuals - chief among them being Pinky, our neighbour - there are none whom I can respect. And what I could never have grasped or understood before I came here is that this is not something isolated among aberrant indviduals but is typical of a particular sub-group of a racial type, the American Black. There is a name for this subgroup (which, to save the tender sensibilities of fellow JUsers, I will not use) but it begins with the letter 'N'.
America has shown me - has in fact forced upon me - the realisation that there are real differences between racial groups, and that some of these differences are properly deserving of contempt and disgust.
I hope that one day in the not too distant future I and Raimi will be able to meet again, and continue our long arguments over many topics. But race will not be one of them. he would be as shocked by my present point of view as I was when Sabrina first attempted to explain her opinions on the race question in America. I value his friendship too much too threaten it by indiscreet discussion of ideas and opinions that I know in advance will deeply offend him. It saddens me in a way. But somethings can't be explained, they can only be experienced.
