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.
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The failure to hold black Africans account-