Broken Prey (Lucas Davenport, #16)

by John Sandford

American Cultural Imperialism, she asked Mihovil what he thought. He said, “I think what you said is bullshit. No, wait—it’s worse than that. We talk about the black people in Uganda and the brown people in New Guinea, and you say that we push our cultural artifacts upon them . . . You mean, medicine? You mean, TV? You mean, cars? Those people are just as smart as we are. They’d love to sit around a swimming pool and drink lemonade and listen to Eminem and get flu shots when they need them. “You want to keep them in some kind of crazy zoo, hunting with spears, so we can look at them and study their culture. That’s bullshit. I’ve done that. I lived in a zoo, I lived in a tent when I was a kid and drank sewage and had the shits for six years in a row. I’d kill somebody to keep from going back to that. I can goddamn well guarantee if you took one of those guys out of the jungle in New Guinea and gave him some jeans and T-shirts and a good pair of shoes, he’d cut your heart out before he’d let you send him back. “I’d bet you anything that they’d rather live in a nice apartment with a stereo and a toilet and running water that you can drink. So what I think is, you’re arguing that you have to allow the niggers to stay in their place. That’s about half a step from we gotta keep the niggers in their place. Simple racism is what it is.”