Why is Africa Africa?: A response to E. Michael Jones

I recently listened to the debate between Jared Taylor and E. Michael Jones and was somewhat disappointed in it.  Dr. Jones argued from first principles whereas Mr. Taylor argued from evidence.  There’s certainly a time and place for both.  After all, morality ultimately derives from believing things as intrinsically bad, not simply due to their results (and even results-based morality ultimately hinges on believing those results are intrinsically bad).  Likewise, if your principles are to offer any sort of predictive effect, then they need to be testable and therefore evidence is necessary.  However, first principles versus evidence in a debate simply means the two sides will speak past each other. 

I could discuss the various issues with Jones’ argument (such as his fixation on religion, even though the Jews he dislikes are atheists, the fact Christianity has been with Africans longer than most Europeans, his claim that there is no such thing as Polish DNA, etc) but the purpose of this article is to fixate on one particular aspect of the discussion Taylor and Jones had.  Jones asserted that “race” is a category of the mind, which he uses to mean that it is a fiction. He never responds to Taylor’s evidence based arguments like the one that asserts Christianity had been with Ethiopia as long as with Germany, yet the countries are vastly different. He never explains how race is a fiction. After all, you can use race to make predictions about outcomes. If those predictions are true, would that not mean the category therefore is real and valuable?

At one point (around 2 hours and 3 minutes) Taylor brought up how he had never done an investigation on how Christianity and Islam connect with other traits in Africa and that he imagined that they would be about the same.  This seemingly would serve as a great way to test Jones’ argument. Originally, I was going to correlate both Christianity and Islam against other variables, but frankly, the more Christian an African country is, the less Muslim it is, and vice versa, so I decided just to focus on Christianity.  It is my contention that if the data does not demonstrate a strong correlation between Christianity and the variables examined, then Jones’ thesis must be incorrect.  After all, if Christianity is the thing that lifts peoples up and is why Europe is as good as it is, then African Christians must be better off than their non-Christian African counterparts.

The variables I looked at are IQ, per capita GDP, homicide, and HIV rates.  Things like “social trust” are too mushy to analyze with so many countries. I figured these are probably the best indicators of how a country is doing. I will also cite all the links used so that readers can fact check or possibly comment on the data to let me know that a particular data set is not credible.  Rather than compiling all the data myself, I’m relying on what others have compiled elsewhere.  Here is the list of the countries, the source for IQ, countries by intentional homicide rate per 100000, countries by HIV rate (supplemented somewhat here), and 2020 per capita GDP based on World Bank numbers.  Here is the list of countries by rate of Christianity.

With studying correlation between data sets, it is important to keep in mind that a correlation range is 0 to 1 and can be either positive (meaning the more of one variable, the more of the other) or negative (the more of one variable, the less of the other).  Generally, 0 to 0.25 means no correlation, between .25 and .5 is weak correlation, .5 and .75 is moderate correlation, and anything above .75 is a very strong correlation.  So, what does the data show?

There is a -.145 correlation between Christianity and IQ which essentially means there is no correlation.  There is a .048 correlation between Christianity and per capita GDP which again, nothing there.  Interestingly, there is a .302 correlation between Christianity and homicide, meaning the more Christianity in an African country, the more homicide there is.  However, that is still a weak correlation.  The strongest correlation found is between Christianity and HIV at .436.  This is a still a mild correlation that indicates the more Christian African countries are more likely to have HIV. 

Now, does this mean that Christianity is bad for Africa?  Of course not.  For one thing, these correlations are nonexistent to weak.   However, it did make me question whether a different variable connection may exist. What about when we correlate between IQ and the other variables?  IQ compared to GDP has a .228 correlation, which again means no correlation.  IQ versus homicide is a negative .023 correlation, again no correlation.  Likewise, IQ versus HIV is a negative .163 correlation.  Admittedly, the fact that IQ doesn’t have a strong correlation with these things is somewhat jarring.  In one way, this indicates that the wealth of nations can’t simply be boiled down to a single variable whether it be Christianity or IQ, but includes numerous components.  Time preference has been argued to be more important for economic well-being even than IQ for individuals (this unsurprisingly correlates with race).  It is all too alluring to seek simple answers to complex issues. It may also simply be that a certain average IQ threshold is necessary for a society to function well. Regardless, this shouldn’t be taken in an anti-Christian way. Christians should spread the gospel to all nations (which does not entail bringing people from around the world here). However, Christians should not pretend that by merit of believing in Christ, material conditions will inherently improve.  That is simply a variation on the heretical prosperity gospel.

We also should not pretend, as the libertarians do, that reading a book will magically make someone like us.  This is just as true for Locke’s Second Treatise or Hayek’s Road to Serfdom as it is for the Bible.  The world is full of different peoples who are different in all sorts of ways.  These differences make the different nations unique.  Likewise, these differences make the peoples incompatible with one another.  Pretending, as Dr. Jones does, that if all professed faith in Christianity we could all live in the same land is horribly naïve. 

None of this is meant to argue that Christianity does not matter or that we should be more willing to align with people who share genes than people who share faith.  Merriam Webster, as of my writing this, defines ethnic as “of or relating to large groups of people classed according to common racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin or background.”  As a Southerner, Dixian, or whatever demonym you prefer, faith in God, the English tongue, and the personal ownership of firearms are all part of who we are.  Neither a faithless German nor a faithful Ethiopian is a Dixian and any attempts to do the “would you rather live next to a Christian nonwhite or a nonreligious white” are attempts to deconstruct our identity.  This is even more true when we consider that Africans are often “Christian” in name only.