Upon the Race Question

SIR H. H. JOHNSTON, the noted administrator, writer and African explorer, tells us that the indigenous tribes of African Negroes exhibit an actual tendency towards retrogression rather than advancement.

...

Sir H. H. Johnson, to whose writings we have elsewhere referred, says, "He is a fine animal who in his wild state exhibits a stunted mind and a dull content with his surroundings, which induces mental stagnation, cessation of all upward progress, and even retrogression towards the brute."

In some respects," says Johnson, "I think the tendency of the Negro for several centuries past has been an actual retrograde one. As we come to read the unwritten history of Africa by researches into languages, manners, customs, traditions, we seem to see a backward rather than a forward movement going on for some thousand years past — a return towards the savage and even the brute.

I can believe it possible that, had Africa been more isolated from contact with the rest of the world, and cut off from the immigration of the Arab and the European, the purely Negroid races left to themselves, so far from advancing towards a higher type of humanity, might have actually reverted by degrees to a type no longer human."

Keane, who quotes this statement from Johnston — in his "World's Peoples" — says of it: "I do not say that this is so, but I give it as the mature opinion of an administrator, who has had a wider experience of the natives of Africa than almost any man living."

* wiki - Johnston was appointed Vice Consul for Cameroon and the Niger River delta area in October 1886 and became acting consul in 1887, deposing and banishing the King Jaja of Opobo -- using very foul means

The ultimate solution of the American negro problem by Eggleston, Edward

Published 1913

Source: http://www.history.com.ng/6/colonial-master-believed-negroes-retrogress-rather-than-adva

blacks on the radar.