Keep Blacks Out of Architecture!

When scientific racists get together, one item of evidence to indicate the inferiority of Afro-Americans is their apparent lack of capacity when it comes to the art of architecture.  Quick: name a black architect.

The idea offered is that Americans with some African ancestry are inferior, and the evidence is they had their chance of a million years or so to develop architecture in Africa, but failed to do so.

Let’s pause for a second and consider the Indian mathematician Ramanujan.  As the British Empire spread, it taught the liberal arts with a view to spotting the best and brightest to admininster their newly claimed lands.

Ramanujan, young fellow who was remarkable for his ability to work out solutions to problems, was introduced to the top people back in the UK, by means of some of his calculations.  A top mathematician was reading his solutions and laughing, thinking it some sort of joke, and how childish the calculations were, when bam!, the solution jumped out at the end.

Ramanujan was profoundly talented, in a way termed childish, and he was called to the UK to study, where the food literally killed him.    Before he died, the examiners asked how he came up with his solutions, and he answered a mother-god came to him in his dreams and gave him the solutions.  Not quite the thing, but his solutions were there.

Here is a point from his wikipedia:  

Ramanujan received a scholarship to study at Government College in Kumbakonam, but lost it when he failed his non-mathematical coursework. 

Note he is a world class performer in mathematics, but a failure at the other subjects in a school with a UK curriculum.  He can master math on his own, and become fluent in English, but unable to handle history and geography.  Is it possible that his genius ran to the other fields as well, that he could only master those fields in his own unique way, a way that the tests cannot measure?

When I was pursuing a masters degree in education we studied testing, and the statistics professor demonstrated none of the entrance exams predict success n school, so they are for some other purpose.  And what tests we do have are what the people in education call “white man tests” that is, so replete with certain cultural references one must be steeped in the white man’s culture to pass the test.  Chinese tend to master both cultures and offer the white man his cultural references in reply when a test is indicated.

What we have in the USA is a system that limits the number of desks and the number of professors and strictly controls the content, scope and sequence of what is being taught.  Step outside of that range, you lose.  We have a very narrow definition of knowledge in the USA.

There are people who do step outside, but only after playing the game until their white man qualifications are impeccable.  Thomas Szasz is an example, he a psychiatrist with an unassailable critique of psychiatry as quackery.

Once upon a time doctors were like mathematicians, they advanced based on their results and reputation.  From Galen to Jenner, Jenner no doctor but he introducing vaccination to the west.

Now to architects of some African ancestry, something the scientific racists call “blacks.”

In a recent NPR report, less than 2% of architects in USA have some ancestry rooted in africa, reminding everyone of the argument that is ever-present in state-owned media, and that is the people with some African American heritage are somehow inferior.

Well, that blacks can master “white’ architecture,” if you want to call an unnecessarily narrow range of activity “white,” was well known to southern slaveowners.  It was a point of honor if your ability to select slaves to buy was so good you managed to get ones that could figure out house design, constructions, etc.  Although slavery is never acceptable, and truly some people abused their slaves, at $700 each most slave owners desired to get maximum benefit from their slaves.  Autodidact slaves did architectural work.

African American Antebellum Architecture 

During the revolutionary war, the British offered slaves their freedom if they would support the British, since the slaves were the ones who could actually build forts, dig irrigation, hunt, fish, cook, and handle all manner of arts, at times in their unique ways.  The sharp memory of American slaves supporting the British during the revolutionary war was stark in the mind of Southern soldiers.

With less than 2% of architects having some African heritage working architecture today,  we can say with confidence that people with some ancestry grounded in Africa had more freedom to develop their skills under slavery in USA than in "freedom" if that if what you want to call what we have.

Review the NPR website to see the amazing work of a “black” architect.

As usual read the comments, especially note how many comments have been deleted.  This topic gets people very hot.

Now, if it was a good idea to to protect society by keeping certian groups out of certain fields, then certaily architecture should be off-limits to Swedes.  Here is the result of three years labors of a dozen Swedes in Sweden.

*

And here is the home of a renown mid-century Swedish architect, Roland Terry, in the Seattle area.

We are not talking much progress here.

Here is an African hut, a few days work of a dozen Africans.

And an african girl who lives in a hut.

African girl.

Here is a mid-century home designed by an American with some African ancestry.

Paul Williams design, and American with some African ancestry

Compare the two African rooted homes. You'll perceive the African roots of the USA architecture, just as you perceive the Swedish roots of the Swedish USA architecture.  But which house would you prefer to live in?  

We in the USA do not have freedom, we have a system of tests and requirements that keep the fields of study so narrow few can perform within those narrow boundaries.  This limits who can work in a field, and denies the rest of us the benefits of competition with other cultures.

Let Americans with some African ancestry compete against the Americans with some Swedish ancestry, and let’s see who does best, or more to the point, how many categories of different we get.  Just unregulate the field of architecture.

A system that has fewer requirements to succeed is superior to a system that has more requirements to succeed.

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