WHAT'S IN A NAME

"It is not what you call me, but what I answer to, that matters most"

African Proverb

(in "Capitalist Nigger - The Road to Success", by Chika Onyeani)

Picture: Kongo Mask

Here’s something to READ and HANDLE with care:


Extracts from Chika Onyeani’s CAPITALIST NIGGER – THE ROAD TO SUCCESS – A Spider Web Doctrine

FOREWORD

"CAPITALIST NIGGER is a no-holds-barred discussion of the Black Race. It combines a powerful punch because the author believes that there is no better time to openly debate the state of the Black Race than now. The book asserts that the Negroid Race is a non-productive race. “We are a consumer race”, the author insists. “We produce nothing and consume what others produce.” The author scores the bull’s-eye when he lays the blame for the present state of the Black Race on the fact that his people don’t possess what he calls “the killer-instinct of the Caucasian Race” and their lack of “whatever it takes” attitude.

CAPITALIST NIGGER is purely and simply about making money in any way possible; about changing the attitude of the Black Race.
Onyeani’s espousal and advocacy of the “Spider Web Economy” doctrine is bound to revolutionize economic thinking for years to come.

CAPITALIST NIGGER is a book no person other than Chika Onyeani could have written. It is a testimony of his life-long courage. It is an anguished cry to the Black Race to move from being a Consumer Race to a Productive Race. It is compellingly required reading.


INTRODUCTION


POWER OF A WORD


“IT IS NOT WHAT YOU CALL ME, BUT WHAT I ANSWER TO, THAT MATTERS MOST.”
An African Proverb


According to Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition, the word “Nigger” has now come to rank as “perhaps the most offensive and inflammatory racial slur in English….. it is otherwise a word expressive of racial hatred and bigotry.” Ordinarily, according to the same dictionary, the word itself refers to a black person, having been used by such considered writers like Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain and William Shakespeare. This word has caused all kinds of invectives between Blacks and Caucasians. Caucasians think by calling Blacks (Negro, Blackman, African-American, mulatto) “Niggers”, they are putting them down and putting them “in their place”, which would anger most Blacks. Blacks on their part have always obliged the Caucasians by doing exactly as they have anticipated.

“We are creatures of habit. We like to take advantage of every situation. And Caucasians have been taking advantage of the Black Race in every situation from the enslaving of Africans and plucking them to America to the present time of trying to demean us by the word Nigger. What is really in a word? We make it what we want it to mean. By accepting what others want us to believe a word means, we are invariably giving them the satisfaction of feeling superiority over us. But when we hardly notice such an appellation as meaningless, it not only makes the user of the word totally stupid, it also takes away his feeling of superiority.”


EXTRACT


In October 1960, Nigeria received its independence from Britain. By then, Ghana the former Gold Cost had been independent for three years under the great Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah. It was a time for celebrating Africa’s coming of age, as more and more African countries received their independence either from Britain or France. It was especially a poignant time for Africa, as then British Prime Minister Harold McMillan articulated his now famous “winds of change” sweeping Africa. We had high hopes for Africa, for the Black race, that the insidious imposition of foreign rule on us, the looting of Africa’s natural resources by our colonial masters and the disrespect and disdain that these colonial masters accorded us would be things of history.

That is more than forty years ago. Unfortunately, the promise of independence has not been fulfilled. Today, Africa has become more desolate; there is more starvation, diseases and non-provision of essential services than when we got our independence. There are all kinds of wars in Africa and millions of lives have been lost. There are more dictators in Africa than the rest of the world put together. The majority of so-called African leaders want to stay in power until the day their bodies are put in the grave. Through buffoonery, utter mismanagement and downright stealing of the wealth of the masses, these leaders have so impoverish Africa that we are now nothing but a beggar continent. We beg for everything; we are more dependent on our colonial masters than when we received our independence from them. Africa owes the West more money than we and our generations to come can repay.
I arrived in America in December of 1967 as an official of what we believed was going to be a dynamic African nation – the young Republic of Biafra. But Biafra was defeated and Nigeria remained one, as a giant of Africa. In that last 32 years, I have watched with horror and outright helplessness as the downward slide of the African race continues to escalate. But rather than address the problems, we resort to blaming the Caucasians, Asians and others for our misfortune. We are not men enough to accept responsibility for our actions.

Africans blame either the British, French or little Portuguese/Spanish for their problems. Africans in America blame the Caucasians for all their problems, or any other ethnic group they have allowed to take over their neighbourhoods, a frequently recurring phenomenon. Africans blame the IMF, the World Bank, the G8, the former colonial masters for the abject poverty in our respective countries. We blame the wars ravaging several African sectors on the interference of our former colonial masters on “our internal affairs”. Ha! – some kind of independence!

In the 32 years I have been in America, I have never had a discussion with any of my brothers or sisters without it resorting to the African (Black)/Caucasian (White) relationship. If we go to a restaurant, we blame the Caucasian or Asian for sitting us at the back, near the kitchen, or too much in the front, because he doesn’t want to antagonise his Caucasian clientele. When we decide to buy a house in a Caucasian neighbourhood, we blame the people for refusing to sell to us because of their belief that we spend more time and money on visible luxurious and ultimately worthless items, than in maintaining our property, which to everyone but us is a major part of their investment and retirement portfolio.

The blame game has become a permanent part of our lives to the exclusion of any other solution that could be more viable in solving our problems. It has become the most productive part of our lives, because without it the African cannot really point to much that they are in charge of producing. It is better to blame others than to confront the truth of our being responsible for whatever has happened to us as an African race.

I decided to write Capitalist Nigger to open a debate on the state of the African race. But in doing so, my intention was not to treat my own contribution to the debate with kid gloves. It is to tell it like it is, the truth and nothing but he truth. My observations are bound to infuriate a lot of my people. Even the title of this book is bound to make a lot of people angry. Many people will be angry, to say it mildly, when I question the intelligence of my people compared to the Asians (Indians, Pakistanis, Malaysians, Filipinos) and others who attained independence at the same time as most African countries. If the book generates the kind of dialogue, debate or argument for or against the position I have taken, so be it. But it would even be more relevant if in the process, solutions are offered to help extricate Africans from being a consumer to a productive race.

I decided to write Capitalist Nigger also as a doctrine of making money and creating wealth. I am not ashamed to say that I am also purely motivated by the same greed that motivates Caucasians with “killer-instincts” and “devil-may-care” convictions. I see myself as an Economic Warrior for my people and not a victim, I have decided to confront the truth of my misfortune and when I see the mirror I see the culprit standing right in front of me – it is me. As the saying goes, truth shall set you free. The Truth in being a Capitalist Nigger is that it sets you free. The Truth in being a Capitalist Nigger is that it sets you free. Being a Capitalist Nigger puts you in control of every aspect of your life – you are in charge and nobody else.

You want your children to have good grades in school? Then practice Capitalist Niggerism because then you will not blame the teachers for failing your children or blame the nationwide testing services for using non-black questions in their testing. You will be in control because you will totally understand that everything that happens to your child at school is a result of the learning environment you have provided him or her at home.

If you want to have a good job, practice Capitalist Niggerism, because you want to beat the people who expect you to fail because they believe you are stupid. You will succeed because you work harder and twice as hard as the average Caucasian. You will not gripe or whine about it because you are a Capitalist Nigger, you know you are in charge in every aspect of the process. Because of your belief in Capitalist Niggerism, you set out to learn about your job and excel and shame everybody else. I remember in the early seventies when I joined Endo/Dupont, the pharmaceutical division. There was not another African in my division and to the amazement of the Regional Managers, I was always the number one winner when it came to sales contests. But the British Divisional Manager who recruited me knew that I could do it because the only question he had asked me at my interview was whether I was Igbo from Nigeria and I had replied in the affirmative.

You want to create wealth, join Wall Street. Don’t make excuses that Blacks don’t know how to invest their money. Go after the Caucasians. Use their guilt to your advantage.

Another important point which I raised in this book concerns the long study I have conducted regarding the economic behaviour of East Indians and Pakistanis. It is an economic doctrine I have christened the “Spider Web Doctrine”, because I believe we all understand how spiders behave. They build a web, and if an ant or fly dares enter the web, they are not allowed to come out. The spider closes its web. That is exactly how the Indians have employed the spider web doctrine to become a major economic force worldwide. The Indians have created a virtual economy in the communities they live. When a dollar comes into the community, that dollar does not leave the community. They reinvest it by buying from other Indians.

Indians have studied the art of being a major economic force in America without antagonising any particular group. You don’t see them in hostile neighbourhoods, where they could be held hostage by the anger of that group. They are mostly in business which caters to every group – newspaper retailing, taxi/limousine, gas station ownership, and motel/hotel operators.

The Jews have used to some extent this “Spider Web Economic” doctrine, but not on the scale of Indians. The Indians are its best ardent practitioners. It is the only and best economic method I have seen which can easily catapult an economy like ours out of its indolent state.

I feel totally liberated. I feel free. I feel I am in charge. I am in control. From here on, whatever happens is because I allowed it to happen. I have made what I believe is my own major contribution to the debate on the state of the Black Race. Whether you agree with me or not is immaterial. The only important point is that we must stop the blame game and accept responsibility for the present state of the Black Race. Truth shall set you free, it has set me free."

***

P.S.: I've decided to include here an extract from my participation in a discussion on the "Negritude Movement", at Black Looks, for its relevance to the main theme of this book:

"First, I think that the answers to all these questions hinge on whether the n-word stands for Negro, or for Nigger. I must say that in my own research I never came across a description of Negritude as “Niggerness” and I suspect this may have a lot to do with the translations of the particular publications we read, or how we ourselves translate the original words written in French by the “founding fathers” of Negritude.In my recollection, they use the words Negre/Noir=Negro as the racial archetype equivalent to Caucasian, hence its acceptability in academia. In this sense, Negro/Noir has no pejorative or “denigrating” connotations: it’s used just like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, for instance, have used it. In Portuguese, as in French, Negro/Negre/Noir is the acceptable term to refer to the so-called “negroid” race, whereas Preto=Black can have derogatory undertones and can be understood, depending on the context and intention of its use, as the equivalent to “Nigger”,which I believe was invented in the States to have exclusively racist connotations…From there, I found that the Negritude movement’s main claim regarding the “Negro Essence” is that, contrary to (still) prevailing stereotypes, the Negro is not a “lesser” human and by no means “less intelligent” than the Caucasian or any other race, s/he just has a different approach to understanding and conceptualising their surrounding universe. Hence Senghor’s famous phrase, which encapsulates much of the essence of Negritude: “The reason is Hellenic and the emotion is Noir/Negre/Negro”, by which he meant that the Negro rationality was founded on and derived from the human senses and its profound interaction with and dependence on nature, whereas the Caucasian one was primarily based on abstract (from nature) calculation…"

"It is not what you call me, but what I answer to, that matters most"

African Proverb

(in "Capitalist Nigger - The Road to Success", by Chika Onyeani)

Picture: Kongo Mask

Here’s something to READ and HANDLE with care:


Extracts from Chika Onyeani’s CAPITALIST NIGGER – THE ROAD TO SUCCESS – A Spider Web Doctrine

FOREWORD

"CAPITALIST NIGGER is a no-holds-barred discussion of the Black Race. It combines a powerful punch because the author believes that there is no better time to openly debate the state of the Black Race than now. The book asserts that the Negroid Race is a non-productive race. “We are a consumer race”, the author insists. “We produce nothing and consume what others produce.” The author scores the bull’s-eye when he lays the blame for the present state of the Black Race on the fact that his people don’t possess what he calls “the killer-instinct of the Caucasian Race” and their lack of “whatever it takes” attitude.

CAPITALIST NIGGER is purely and simply about making money in any way possible; about changing the attitude of the Black Race.
Onyeani’s espousal and advocacy of the “Spider Web Economy” doctrine is bound to revolutionize economic thinking for years to come.

CAPITALIST NIGGER is a book no person other than Chika Onyeani could have written. It is a testimony of his life-long courage. It is an anguished cry to the Black Race to move from being a Consumer Race to a Productive Race. It is compellingly required reading.


INTRODUCTION


POWER OF A WORD


“IT IS NOT WHAT YOU CALL ME, BUT WHAT I ANSWER TO, THAT MATTERS MOST.”
An African Proverb


According to Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition, the word “Nigger” has now come to rank as “perhaps the most offensive and inflammatory racial slur in English….. it is otherwise a word expressive of racial hatred and bigotry.” Ordinarily, according to the same dictionary, the word itself refers to a black person, having been used by such considered writers like Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain and William Shakespeare. This word has caused all kinds of invectives between Blacks and Caucasians. Caucasians think by calling Blacks (Negro, Blackman, African-American, mulatto) “Niggers”, they are putting them down and putting them “in their place”, which would anger most Blacks. Blacks on their part have always obliged the Caucasians by doing exactly as they have anticipated.

“We are creatures of habit. We like to take advantage of every situation. And Caucasians have been taking advantage of the Black Race in every situation from the enslaving of Africans and plucking them to America to the present time of trying to demean us by the word Nigger. What is really in a word? We make it what we want it to mean. By accepting what others want us to believe a word means, we are invariably giving them the satisfaction of feeling superiority over us. But when we hardly notice such an appellation as meaningless, it not only makes the user of the word totally stupid, it also takes away his feeling of superiority.”


EXTRACT


In October 1960, Nigeria received its independence from Britain. By then, Ghana the former Gold Cost had been independent for three years under the great Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah. It was a time for celebrating Africa’s coming of age, as more and more African countries received their independence either from Britain or France. It was especially a poignant time for Africa, as then British Prime Minister Harold McMillan articulated his now famous “winds of change” sweeping Africa. We had high hopes for Africa, for the Black race, that the insidious imposition of foreign rule on us, the looting of Africa’s natural resources by our colonial masters and the disrespect and disdain that these colonial masters accorded us would be things of history.

That is more than forty years ago. Unfortunately, the promise of independence has not been fulfilled. Today, Africa has become more desolate; there is more starvation, diseases and non-provision of essential services than when we got our independence. There are all kinds of wars in Africa and millions of lives have been lost. There are more dictators in Africa than the rest of the world put together. The majority of so-called African leaders want to stay in power until the day their bodies are put in the grave. Through buffoonery, utter mismanagement and downright stealing of the wealth of the masses, these leaders have so impoverish Africa that we are now nothing but a beggar continent. We beg for everything; we are more dependent on our colonial masters than when we received our independence from them. Africa owes the West more money than we and our generations to come can repay.
I arrived in America in December of 1967 as an official of what we believed was going to be a dynamic African nation – the young Republic of Biafra. But Biafra was defeated and Nigeria remained one, as a giant of Africa. In that last 32 years, I have watched with horror and outright helplessness as the downward slide of the African race continues to escalate. But rather than address the problems, we resort to blaming the Caucasians, Asians and others for our misfortune. We are not men enough to accept responsibility for our actions.

Africans blame either the British, French or little Portuguese/Spanish for their problems. Africans in America blame the Caucasians for all their problems, or any other ethnic group they have allowed to take over their neighbourhoods, a frequently recurring phenomenon. Africans blame the IMF, the World Bank, the G8, the former colonial masters for the abject poverty in our respective countries. We blame the wars ravaging several African sectors on the interference of our former colonial masters on “our internal affairs”. Ha! – some kind of independence!

In the 32 years I have been in America, I have never had a discussion with any of my brothers or sisters without it resorting to the African (Black)/Caucasian (White) relationship. If we go to a restaurant, we blame the Caucasian or Asian for sitting us at the back, near the kitchen, or too much in the front, because he doesn’t want to antagonise his Caucasian clientele. When we decide to buy a house in a Caucasian neighbourhood, we blame the people for refusing to sell to us because of their belief that we spend more time and money on visible luxurious and ultimately worthless items, than in maintaining our property, which to everyone but us is a major part of their investment and retirement portfolio.

The blame game has become a permanent part of our lives to the exclusion of any other solution that could be more viable in solving our problems. It has become the most productive part of our lives, because without it the African cannot really point to much that they are in charge of producing. It is better to blame others than to confront the truth of our being responsible for whatever has happened to us as an African race.

I decided to write Capitalist Nigger to open a debate on the state of the African race. But in doing so, my intention was not to treat my own contribution to the debate with kid gloves. It is to tell it like it is, the truth and nothing but he truth. My observations are bound to infuriate a lot of my people. Even the title of this book is bound to make a lot of people angry. Many people will be angry, to say it mildly, when I question the intelligence of my people compared to the Asians (Indians, Pakistanis, Malaysians, Filipinos) and others who attained independence at the same time as most African countries. If the book generates the kind of dialogue, debate or argument for or against the position I have taken, so be it. But it would even be more relevant if in the process, solutions are offered to help extricate Africans from being a consumer to a productive race.

I decided to write Capitalist Nigger also as a doctrine of making money and creating wealth. I am not ashamed to say that I am also purely motivated by the same greed that motivates Caucasians with “killer-instincts” and “devil-may-care” convictions. I see myself as an Economic Warrior for my people and not a victim, I have decided to confront the truth of my misfortune and when I see the mirror I see the culprit standing right in front of me – it is me. As the saying goes, truth shall set you free. The Truth in being a Capitalist Nigger is that it sets you free. The Truth in being a Capitalist Nigger is that it sets you free. Being a Capitalist Nigger puts you in control of every aspect of your life – you are in charge and nobody else.

You want your children to have good grades in school? Then practice Capitalist Niggerism because then you will not blame the teachers for failing your children or blame the nationwide testing services for using non-black questions in their testing. You will be in control because you will totally understand that everything that happens to your child at school is a result of the learning environment you have provided him or her at home.

If you want to have a good job, practice Capitalist Niggerism, because you want to beat the people who expect you to fail because they believe you are stupid. You will succeed because you work harder and twice as hard as the average Caucasian. You will not gripe or whine about it because you are a Capitalist Nigger, you know you are in charge in every aspect of the process. Because of your belief in Capitalist Niggerism, you set out to learn about your job and excel and shame everybody else. I remember in the early seventies when I joined Endo/Dupont, the pharmaceutical division. There was not another African in my division and to the amazement of the Regional Managers, I was always the number one winner when it came to sales contests. But the British Divisional Manager who recruited me knew that I could do it because the only question he had asked me at my interview was whether I was Igbo from Nigeria and I had replied in the affirmative.

You want to create wealth, join Wall Street. Don’t make excuses that Blacks don’t know how to invest their money. Go after the Caucasians. Use their guilt to your advantage.

Another important point which I raised in this book concerns the long study I have conducted regarding the economic behaviour of East Indians and Pakistanis. It is an economic doctrine I have christened the “Spider Web Doctrine”, because I believe we all understand how spiders behave. They build a web, and if an ant or fly dares enter the web, they are not allowed to come out. The spider closes its web. That is exactly how the Indians have employed the spider web doctrine to become a major economic force worldwide. The Indians have created a virtual economy in the communities they live. When a dollar comes into the community, that dollar does not leave the community. They reinvest it by buying from other Indians.

Indians have studied the art of being a major economic force in America without antagonising any particular group. You don’t see them in hostile neighbourhoods, where they could be held hostage by the anger of that group. They are mostly in business which caters to every group – newspaper retailing, taxi/limousine, gas station ownership, and motel/hotel operators.

The Jews have used to some extent this “Spider Web Economic” doctrine, but not on the scale of Indians. The Indians are its best ardent practitioners. It is the only and best economic method I have seen which can easily catapult an economy like ours out of its indolent state.

I feel totally liberated. I feel free. I feel I am in charge. I am in control. From here on, whatever happens is because I allowed it to happen. I have made what I believe is my own major contribution to the debate on the state of the Black Race. Whether you agree with me or not is immaterial. The only important point is that we must stop the blame game and accept responsibility for the present state of the Black Race. Truth shall set you free, it has set me free."

***

P.S.: I've decided to include here an extract from my participation in a discussion on the "Negritude Movement", at Black Looks, for its relevance to the main theme of this book:

"First, I think that the answers to all these questions hinge on whether the n-word stands for Negro, or for Nigger. I must say that in my own research I never came across a description of Negritude as “Niggerness” and I suspect this may have a lot to do with the translations of the particular publications we read, or how we ourselves translate the original words written in French by the “founding fathers” of Negritude.In my recollection, they use the words Negre/Noir=Negro as the racial archetype equivalent to Caucasian, hence its acceptability in academia. In this sense, Negro/Noir has no pejorative or “denigrating” connotations: it’s used just like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, for instance, have used it. In Portuguese, as in French, Negro/Negre/Noir is the acceptable term to refer to the so-called “negroid” race, whereas Preto=Black can have derogatory undertones and can be understood, depending on the context and intention of its use, as the equivalent to “Nigger”,which I believe was invented in the States to have exclusively racist connotations…From there, I found that the Negritude movement’s main claim regarding the “Negro Essence” is that, contrary to (still) prevailing stereotypes, the Negro is not a “lesser” human and by no means “less intelligent” than the Caucasian or any other race, s/he just has a different approach to understanding and conceptualising their surrounding universe. Hence Senghor’s famous phrase, which encapsulates much of the essence of Negritude: “The reason is Hellenic and the emotion is Noir/Negre/Negro”, by which he meant that the Negro rationality was founded on and derived from the human senses and its profound interaction with and dependence on nature, whereas the Caucasian one was primarily based on abstract (from nature) calculation…"