Albert Schweitzer And His Controversial "My African Notebook" Quotes: Setting The Record Straight

(Slightly O/T, but) : As I type this, the elegant and regal Gregory Peck is on the AMC network (yes, the same people who do "Walking Dead") playing the perfect Southern noble white man, in the 1962 film "To Kill A  Mockingbird," which is based on a plotline (white on black rape) that today the Department of Justice itself says has a 36,000-to-one chance of actually happening!

Thirty-six thousand to one chance it'll actually happen, and yet Hollywood as far back as 50 years ago was making this crap required reading in grade schools. Who reading here doesn't remember having to write a book report about Harper Lee and her one and only best-seller?

But I digress somewhat for the purposes of this post, which is devoted to the work of Albert Schweitzer, and more specifically to the cleansing of his sullied name.

Consider this:

We've all heard about the great Franco-Germanic Nobel Prize-winning doctor Albert Schweitzer (1888 - 1965), who much like the now-reviled Dr. James D. Watson (born 1925; awarded Nobel Prize 1962), Schweitzer today is known among the majority of modern audiences such as myself and no doubt the majority of the readership of this blog, not so much for his contribution to the betterment of mankind, and in his case specifically Africa, but rather Schweitzer is known almost exclusively for the "controversial nature" of a few condescending comments towards the Africans he spent his life caring for .

In much the same way that Stephen Jay Gould's 1981 "Mismeasure of Man" became the undisputed refutal of all things "scientific racism" and required reading among college and even high school students for the past three decades, the most "controversial" words of Albert Schweitzer, supposedly extracted from his 1939 "My African Notebook," have been systematically whitewashed, downplayed, and even erased from the record, to the point that over and over again the average online reader will be made to believe that Schweitzer said nothing of the sort, and more significantly, the average person has been made to believe that Schweitzer himself believed nothing of the sort.

The disputed Schweitzer quote is as follows :

"I have given my life to try to alleviate the sufferings of Africa. There

is something that all white men who have lived here like I must learn and

know: that these individuals are a sub-race. They have neither the

intellectual, mental, or emotional abilities to equate or to share equally

with white men in any function of our civilization. I have given my life

to try to bring them the advantages which our civilization must offer, but

I have become well aware that we must retain this status: the superior and

they the inferior. For whenever a white man seeks to live among them as

their equals they will either destroy him or devour him. And they will

destroy all of his work. Let white men from anywhere in the world, who

would come to Africa, remember that you must continually retain this

status; you the master and they the inferior like children that you would

help or teach. Never fraternize with them as equals. Never accept them as

your social equals or they will devour you. They will destroy you."

So are those really the words of Albert Schweitzer? Try googling them for yourself, and you will see that provenance is not only anything but certain, but also there are countless Touré-style postings that attempt to discredit the man, and the veracity of the provenance that links that quote to him.

One standard response to this inconvenient Schweitzer quote from 1939 goes something like this:

Answer: This quote is utterly false and is an outrageously inaccurate picture of Dr. Schweitzer’s view of Africans.  Dr. Schweitzer never said or wrote anything remotely like this.  It does NOT appear in the book African Notebook.  On the question of Schweitzer and race, my own comments from the Foreword to the current edition of African Notebook, are below.  

--Lachlan Forrow, MD
President, The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship (USA)
Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Here's where it gets interesting though: as hard a time as you will have finding the actual "My African Notebooks" quote, you can easily pop over to Google books and see another Schweitzer quote, from another Schweitzer book that is even available in its entirety on Google books, a book entitled  "On The Edge Of The Primeval Forest." It is the story of Schweitzer's first foray into Africa, in 1913, when as a 38 year-old Doctor he set out from Bordeaux France along with his wife and assistant (who goes hardly mentioned in the 1914 tome, which is curious) for the French missionary town of Lambaréné in colonial Gabon, where he practiced in the bush for five years, before returning to Europe and eventually coming back to Lambaréné and establishing his famous namesake hospital, which operates to this day and was instrumental in getting him Nobelled.

From his 1914 "Primeval Forest" we get this quote, which though tamer, sounds very much like the later, 1939 "Notebook" quote, the "they will destroy you" quote which the likes of Lachlan Farrow, Touré, CNN, and the rest of the entire world are trying hard to silence :

Page 130, from archives.org: "On The Edge Of The Primeval Forest" :

cont'd: 

(Source: archive.org, page 130 in the chapter entitled "Relations Between Whites And Blacks")

How is it possible in this day and age of the internet and instant cross-verification of everything, these professional pussy race-hustling HBD denialists like Touré and Skippy Gates can get away even for two minutes with what they get away with?

In a sane society, great men like Schweitzer and Watson - both of whom were no doubt fundamentally melancholic, sentimental liberals at heart (Watson is still alive) - would be remembered as learned men of Europe who contributed greatly to all of humanity.

Instead, they are both only remembered for being hateful racists.

What are the chances that we on the alt-right, would ever even be familiar with the names of these two great men of science and medicine, were it not for their universal condemnation?