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""In character and temperament" wrote Lord
Lugard, "the
typical African of this race-type is a happy,
thriftless, excitable person. Lacking in self control,
discipline, and foresight. Naturally courageous, and
naturally courteous and polite, full of personal vanity, with
little sense of veracity, fond of music and loving
weapons as an oriental loves jewelry. His thoughts are
concentrated on the events and feelings of the moment,
and he suffers little from the apprehension for the
future, or grief for the past.
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His mind is far nearer to
the animal world than the that of the European or
Asiatic, and exhibits something of the animals placidity
and want of desire to rise beyond the State he has
reached. Through the ages the African appears to have
evolved no organized religious creed, and though some
tribes appear to believe in a deity, the religious sense
seldom rises above pantheistic animalism and seems more
often to take the form of a vague dread of the
supernatural".
He lacks the power of organization, and is
conspicuously deficient in the management and control alike of
men or business. He loves the display of power, but
fails to realize its responsibility ....he will work
hard with a less incentive than most races. He has the
courage of the fighting animal -an instinct rather than
a moral virtue......In brief, the virtues and defects
of this race-type are those of attractive children,
whose confidence when it is won is given ungrudgingly as
to an older and wiser superior and without
envy.......Perhaps the two traits which have impressed me as
those most characteristic of the African native are his
lack of apprehension and his ability to visualize the
future"
Pg 70 of The Dual Mandate by F. D. Lugard
1926
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