Don't Look Away

Racism is an open infected wound that we dare not touch unless personally confronted by it. Similar to a funeral we don’t comprehend its intensity and pain unless the funeral as it our house. Yet lately people are prone to have open discussions about it, thanks to social media, a very brutal platform where any one can voice out their opinion regardless of how fact based that opinion is. When I first began school in 1995 our democracy was still young and fragile and my grandmother insisted that I go to a multiracial school despite our financial situation being overbearing. I remember our classroom photo in grade one, there were just 5 black kids in the class and the rest where white, yet two years later my grade three class photo revealed a totally obscure image. There were nine white kids in my class and the rest you can now imagine for yourself.

I didn’t pay mind to that as I, just like our democracy was still young and fragile. My first ever real encounter with racism was when a fellow student of mine Gareth called me a kaffir in grade five, I remember the loud roars that came from my other class mates as he dropped that grenade on me. A friend of mine was quick to pounce on him with his fists and I was sitting there stunned by the whole incident… like I said, I was fragile. Our teacher Mrs Hackney walked in to the rowdy class room to find a brawl between Tumelo and Gareth. After she broke up the fight she proceeded to ask what the fight was about, the whole class in unison said ‘’Gareth called Toka a Kaffir”. Her eyes popped out and she immediately went red in the face, but to my surprise her first words where ‘’ so Tumi, why are you the one fighting with Gareth?’’ Not Gareth that is disgusting, how dare you say that?

This incident ended in both Gareth and Tumi in detention that afternoon and that was the last we heard of it, well formally. My black classmates and I began to resent Mrs Hackney for not addressing the racism Gareth expressed in his moment of anger towards me.

The issue of racism was still heavy in the air at that time and our parents would constantly try relate to us, but being kids I guess it never really got etched into our brains until that year, well for me at least. From that day forth I viewed the world differently and started observing how black people react around white people (mind you racism isn’t exclusively a black and white issue). Round about the same time Senyaka and Gamazu released a song called Fong Kong, addressing the level of counterfeit products that were being shipped into the country from China at the time. As witty as the song was, in retrospect it was blatantly racist. And a Chinese classmate of ours Wing Lou got the backlash of this song because each time we saw him we would call him Fong Kong and sing the song, unbeknown to us we were utterly being racist.

My observation of black people’s behaviour around white folks became an obsession that I carry till this day, my grandma is a verbose individual and having worked as a domestic most of her life she has this notion that white people are somewhat superior, although this is all subliminal because she is one person who would constantly tell me that white are people are pretentious and I should be very careful around them. Given her history I understand this subtle racist remark or is it just race related? I am not entirely sure, the line often becomes blurry when it comes to those two topics. However my grandmother would do anything to please a white person whether she knows them or not or even go as far as saying  e sale re fumane tokoloho re sentse dintho tsa makgoa ( ever since we have gained of freedom we have ruined white peoples things.) In reference to either corrupt politician or a mall utterly packed with black folks of course on a random weekend. The first time I heard this sentiment was when Tony Yengeni was trialled for fraud, my grandma said, “You would never see this shit from white people. Black people we are like this vele” I was astonished at how she is in limbo with this whole race issue.

One day I was chilling with a group of my black friends (I had to be specific) at a kospotong in Newtown, we were waiting on another friend of ours who was going to introduce us to her new white boyfriend. We were having drinks and conversing both in English and our mother tongues, since we are young cosmopolitan black youth. Refliwe arrived with James her new lover and suddenly there was a huge change at the table, despite the obvious. My other black friends started speaking really deep English for lack of a better word, they even went as far as developing “bru” (a black guy who only has white friends and sounds black but weirdly white. Oh they like rugby shorts as well… that’s racist or profiling I am sorry) accents in their enunciation. You’d swear these township born and raised darkies we on auto-pilot Victorian English. The night was epic and we drank our guts out. However I was constantly troubled by that sudden change and what was more troubling was how our black waiter paid more attention to us now that we were in the presence of angelic James.

This systematic self-hate and white praise is padkos that we carry in our journey to a racist free world yet it’s the same starchy padkos that delays us from getting there. With our white counterparts also making their contribution to it by also assuming that white is right and black needs prove worthy of this righteousness. Black people have become more racist to ourselves over the years due to the lack of self-worth that was instilled in us when we were oppressed, yet it’s baffling to find young black people still practising this unworthiness. It’s expected from white people none the less to look out for their own first and there is nothing wrong with it because automatically we are more inclined to relate more with people who have a lot in common with us, however the issue starts when this relation becomes prejudice. Like the other day a white women bumped into a friend of mines car, she humbly acknowledged her fault and they started exchanging numbers. Whilst doing so a white traffic officer who was driving by pulled over to assess what was happening. When arrived on the scene first thing he did was ask for my black friends drivers licence despite being told what had occurred. Not once did he ask the white lady where her licence was, nor did the white lady call him out on his racist behaviour.

Which brings me the question of why do we remain silent in the face of racism, why can’t we call out our own people for being racist but quick to scorn a person of a different race when we even see glimpses of it. Do we tolerate our own racism or do we even recognise it as such. Why do we have to wait for one of us to slip in public like Penny Sparrow before we can hear the sentiments of liberal white people? Yet actively racist people like Steve Hofmeyer’s concerts are sold out and our Afrikaner colleagues tell us how epic it was but don’t tell us what they did when he sang “Die Sten” at the same gig. (That’s how he is man you know he is crazy like that). Is what they say to brush off the subject and continue to tell you about the girl they went home with after the concert? Black people aren’t an exception either, we sang along to Fong Kong and gave it airplay without thinking twice, and we walk around calling Indians: lezi eza makula. After all we have this arrogant fallacy we believe in that black folks can’t be racist, because racism is economic, social and political power which enables you to mistreat and control other races. The ignorance in this statement is tear jerking because we have exclusively given racism to the affluent black folks of this country or the world alike. So only Obama and Patrice Motsepe can be racist, an oxymoron of note because regardless of how poor a white person would be ie ( in white peoples words) white trash, as soon as they say something racially unsettling we are quick to call them racist, forgetting the parameters we have set for what is or who can be racist.