Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

8
THINKING BLACK
those sheep-tracks found across the Welsh mountains.
Described at greater length anon, here at the outset it is
absolutely necessary to point out how in this serpentine
path we have the strategic key to the citadel of the black
brain. " Thinking black " this, verily. It is the African's
way of doing things as well as his way of walking, and
mentally Mr. Negro spends life carving out for himself a
theory that will fit the facts of this corkscrew path. Take,
for instance, the necessary monotonous Indian file this
same narrow trail of ours involves : there is a whole
negro philosophy of *' follow your leader" meaning in
this. For as we saw, see, and shall see, the negro's ** way "
of doing a thing is merely to do it as the man who went
before him did it. The slaves of precedent, they dog the
steps of a thousand ancestors, and such is the tenacity of
the negro type that to this day their whole outfit of the
twentieth century a.d. can be found perfectly reproduced
on Egyptian monuments of the same century B.C. Hence
the Bantu song :
" A well-worn trail is a very good thing,
It must lead up to a very great King;
And 80 with customs of days of yore.
We do what millions have done hefore."
That is to say, precedent, not principle, is their black
law. And any African dictionary tells the whole tale, for
around this germinal word "path" there constellate a
dozen ideas like law, prohibition, transgression, plan, etc.
Thus glorying in this long Indian trail of antiquity,
the Bantu tribes boaat the identical Egyptian kilt, mortar.