Review

Out of America

Richburg, a black reporter for the Washing- ton Post, was initially glad to be assigned to Africa; he hoped to find his "roots." But he did not find them. What he found instead was a hell on earth – which he describes in horrific, starkly honest detail – and a new understanding of America as his cultural "homeland."

Richburg tells of unbridled dictatorship, mass murder, rampant crime (many of his press colleagues were killed in random acts of violence), unspeakable poverty, pandemic disease and widespread starvation. He reports that African dictators pretend to be "pro-democracy" in order to get foreign aid – which they use to build palaces, buy weapons and open Swiss bank accounts. Shockingly, these rulers are given moral praise by Americans, especially by well-known blacks.

Richburg quotes a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote from France: "My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth can enjoy. I confess I had no idea of it myself." Nor, says Richburg, did he – until he set foot in Africa.

While this book makes one recoil in horror at the current state of sub-Saharan Africa, it also makes one nod in admiration to the author himself. He has the intellectual courage to tell the unvarnished truth and to draw the correct conclusions from what he has seen. Rejecting the tribalist premise that has devastated Africa – and is crawling into America – Richburg disavows the multi-cultural idea of race separation and advocates a color-blind society. Evaluating the irrational culture that pervades Africa, he declares: "Thank God my ancestors got out, because, now, I am not one of them. In short, thank God I am an American."

If you want to see an honest, independent mind at work – a rare commodity among today's journalists – this is a book not to be missed.

(257 pages)

This review is courtesy of and copyright © by the Ayn Rand Bookstore.

Books

• Out of America, A Black Man Confronts Africa by Keith Richburg. An honest appraisal of the conditions of living without the rationality of western culture.