SIR,—Mr. Garry Allighan knows 'that at least eight out of
ten Bantu workers are instinctively dishonest and congenital liars.' SIR,—Mr. Garry Allighan knows 'that at least eight out of ten Bantu workers are instinctively dishonest and congenital liars.'
Biologists, psychologists and Christians know that all men are instinctively dishonest and congenital liars.
Is it not slovenly thinking to suppose that we in- herit moral concepts? It would be a psychological error to think that a Bantu baby brought up in a white family would not adopt the mores of its adoptive parents. The contrary idea is as absurd, as the story of the simple English couple who, while adopting a French orphan, began to learn French so that 'they could talk to it in its own language when it was old enough to speak I'
Genetically absurd as it may be, I fear that ignor- ance of the 'nature-nurture' principle is the cause of much sincere nonsense from those who are con- vinced with Mr. Allighan of the stone-age back- wardness of the African peoples.
I do not think the 'back-room boys' of apartheid are ignorant of psychology. Their determined control of the African's environment is perhaps a cynically purposive conditioning by educational, economic and political means.—yours faithfully,
Roseacre Lane, Bearsted, Kent
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