Zimbabwe on rasistinen maa

New York Times kertoo tänään siitä, miten Zimbabwe johdon puheet ovat muuttuneet yhä rasistisemmiksi sitä mukaa kuin maan ongelmat syvenevät, mutta miten toisaalta rasistinen valkoisia demonisoiva propaganda ei enää pure Zimbabwen kansaan:

This Sunday is the 30th anniversary of Zimbabwe’s independence from white rule and President Mugabe’s rise to power. Back then, Mr. Mugabe was hailed as a liberator and conciliator. “If yesterday I fought you as an enemy, today you have become a friend,” he told nervous whites at the time. For a long while he was true to his word. By the mid-1990s, Zimbabwe had become one of the most stable and prosperous countries in Africa.

But in 2000, within weeks of losing a constitutional referendum to entrench his power, Mr. Mugabe began the catastrophic land invasions that resulted in the eviction of almost all the country’s 4,500 white farmers and the ruin of what was once a model post-colonial African country. Ever since, the narrative of Zimbabwe has been one of race.

Zimbabwen johtavan puolueen kannattajat puhuvat ruandalaisesta ratkaisusta:

Rare is the speech in which Mr. Mugabe does not rail against whites, colonialists, imperialists or the West. Members of his ZANU-PF party have spoken of a “Rwandan solution” for Zimbabwe’s whites.

Ruandalainen ratkaisu viittaa siis siihen satojen tuhansien ihmisten kansanmurhaan, jonka Ruandan hutu-hallitus toteutti tutsi-kansaa kohtaan sen jälkeen kun YK-sotilaat oli vedetty maasta.

Valkoisten krooninen syyllisyyden tunne siirtomaa-ajasta - ja toisaalta valkoisten kuvitelma että kukaan muu ei voi olla oikeasti rasisti paitsi valkoinen - on sumentanut Euroopan ja USA:n valkoisten kyvyn ymmärtää mitä Zimbabwessa tapahtuu:

Westerners have simply accepted this narrative of blacks and whites pitted against one another. But, in doing so, they have missed the inspiring story of what has actually been happening in Zimbabwe over the past decade. After years of mass unemployment, mutant inflation, chronic shortages and state violence, Zimbabweans simply don’t care about skin color. In fact, Mr. Mugabe has managed to achieve the exact opposite of what he set out to do in 2000: the forging of a postracial state.

New York Times kertoo, miten Mutaressa - Zimbabwen kolmanneksi suurimmassa kaupungissa - kansa juhlii valkoisen Brian Jamesin valintaa pormostariksi:

Brian James, a white farmer who had been evicted from his property years earlier during President Robert Mugabe’s seizure of white-owned lands, found himself surrounded by a throng of black Zimbabweans in downtown Mutare, my hometown. The 50-strong crowd danced, sang and chanted political slogans for more than 20 minutes before Mr. James was finally able to raise his hand, thank them for their support and announce that he was honored to have been elected mayor of the country’s third-largest city.

Zimbabwen kansa ymmärtää intuitiivisesti, että Afrikka tarvitsee valkoisia. Vanhanen ja Lynn väittivät kirjassaan IQ and Wealth of Nations afrikkalaisten lasten kehittyvän jopa älykkäämmiksi, jos he saisivat elää eurooppalaisten luomassa ja hallitsemassa ympäristössä kuin jos he kasvavat mustien luomassa ympäristössä:

The problem of relative contributions of environmental and genetic factors is made more difficult by the principle of genotype-environment co-variation. This states that the genes for high intelligence tend to be associated with favorable environments for the optimum development of intelligence.

Intelligent parents normally provide their children with high quality nutrition because they understand the general principles of what constitutes healthy diet, and a healthy diet is a determinant of intelligence. Intelligent parents are also more likely to give their children cognitive simulation...

The same principles apply for national populations. Those [nations] with high intelligence provide their children the double benefit of transmitting favorable genes to their children and providing them a favorable environment with good nutrition, good health care, and education, that possibly enhances the development of their children's intelligence...

Thus it is problematic whether the poor nutrition and health care that impair the intelligence... should be regarded as a purely environmental effect or as to some degree genetic effect....

Thus, when Africans are reared in approximately same environment as Europeans the [black-white] IQ difference is approximately half that of Africans in Africa."