Perspective: Africa (Sep 2016) Perspective: Africa (Sep 2016) | Page 30

Perspective: Africa - September 2016 lists as white people who were there to tell black people what to do.” Edouard Drumont, the late 19th Century, French anti-Semite described Jews as follows: “That notorious hooked nose, the blinking eyes, the clenched teeth, the jug ears, the nails cut square instead of rounded to an almond shape! The upper body is too long, Jews have flat feet, round knees, extraordinarily jutting ankles, and offer the soft, limp hand of a hypocrite and traitor. They often have one arm shorter than the other… [They have] a disagreeable aroma… which is an indication of their race and helps them recognise each other…” A black student leader appearing on Judge Dennis Davis’ television show, “Judge for Yourself,” sanctimoniously announced that she rejected “whiteness in all its forms.” Apparently, all white people are essentially the same – innately privileged, racist and inherently incapable of progressive thought and action. This assertion is reiterated by intellectually confused, guilt-stricken whites like writer Gillian Schutte who opines that white babies are racist in utero. Of course apartheid gave white people privileges: that was its raison d’ètre. It was the world’s biggest affirmative-action program for whites who were so “superior” that they needed whole professions reserved for them to ensure their economic success. However, it is tragic to see black university students favour reactive bigotry as some sort of solution to the irritating, continued existence of white South Africans and their inherited privilege. It is easy to recognise the absurdity of bigotry when it is directly expressed. However, reactive anti-white racists use history to justify their stereotypes rather than direct conclusions about the innate evil of pale pigmentation. The results are just as irrational. Reactive anti-white racism pairs a Jew like me with the neo-Nazis who would like to see me exterminated; it puts the late, Jewish liberation struggle veteran Joe Slovo and neo-Nazi racist Eugene Terreblanche in the same box – all because of shared pigmentation. Anti-white bigotry reflects one of the negative legacies of colonialism – namely, a defensive refusal to address the reality that black Africans are mostly exploited, abused and killed by other black Africans. This is simply a reflection of numbers. Blacks are a majority so of course they will run governments on the continent and will suffer more at the hands of each other than at the hands of racial minorities. This does not make such suffering any more acceptable. It is of no comfort to a black African to be exploited by a fellow black African; it is of no solace to grieving relatives that at least their loved one was tortured and killed by a member of their own race and nationality. Bigotry is a mode of reasoning: whether it is racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, zenophobia or tribalism, it involves grouping millions of people together based on one common feature – skin colour, gender, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, clan or tribe – and attributing a handful of common negative characteristics to them. It is innately dehumanising because individual identity, values and character simply don’t matter. Any philosophy that is premised on bigotry is a legacy of demented, irrational Europeans from centuries past. While racists fixate on skin colour, they could just as easily have chosen eye colour or nose size as anti-Semites have done with Jews for thousands of years. 29 The failure to hold black Africans account-