Until white people engage in a real transformation bid, they are no different from the racists of the world, writes Gillian Schutte.
This week we witnessed an outpouring of black rage on social media platforms in South Africa in response to real estate agent Penny Sparrow’s racist comparison of black people to monkeys that are “allowed to be released on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day on to public beaches…”
Her spiteful invective was made in the wake of a flood of racist tweets and Facebook messages on social media platforms.
In them, whites made disparaging comments on the presence and behaviour of black revellers at beaches in South Africa, called black people filthy scum and generally made it very clear that they are not human in their eyes.
This exposed the enduring and repugnant racist attitudes of white South Africans, and black tweeters responded in justifiable anger.
Many white people also expressed aversion and distanced themselves from such derogatory and open displays of racism.
As I watched it all unfold I marvelled at the efficacy of social media as a tool to organise dissent and target those who expose their shameless racism on public platforms.
People called for the perpetrators to be fired from their jobs, axed from their political parties and generally disgraced. Companies scrambled to disassociate themselves from the racial outbursts of their employees.
In the Sparrow case, the target was clear, the response was swift and the derision deserved.
But it was the fervent backlash that made me ponder about the lack of this type of formidable counter-attack to the regular occurrences of less obvious racism, which manifests daily on social media platforms and thrives in the corridors of corporates, schools, universities and public spaces.
Why is it that everyday subterfuge racism is seldom at the receiving end of a mass outrage when it is as consistent and as equally embedded in the fabric of our Rainbow Nation as blatant racism?
The racism I refer to is that coded, implicit language that somehow still “evokes” offensive racial stereotyping, but that disturbingly “omits the possibility of modern-day discrimination” as Eduardo Bonilla-Silva puts it in his writings on contemporary America.
Drawing from his work this same linguistic pattern is recognised in the language that developed in a transitional South Africa when it struck the moderate white population that it was inappropriate to speak of black people in explicitly racist terms. In response to political change, whites who harboured racist feelings soon learnt a new linguistic code that was no longer peppered with derogatory apartheid terms or made use of denigrating descriptors about racial groups – at least not in public.
This is the new form of non-racist yet racist discourse which is referred to as neo-racist by theorist Étienne Balibar. In South Africa it has manifested in a colour-blind Rainbow Nation discourse that has a non-threatening tonality, though it is possibly even more insidious and harmful to black people because it is difficult to prove that it is racist even though it may leave the receiver feeling destabilised. It insinuates racism rather than blurts it out.
It is the veiled racism that wears a polite smiling façade and has become synonymous with moderate liberalism. The bearer of this parley is sometimes unaware of the implicit bias inherent in their delivery as they harbour denialism about the feelings of superiority that are deeply embedded in their being.
The superiority subtext is insinuated in their delivery and though intuited by the recipient it is difficult to name.
The question becomes how to monitor, expose and shame an insidious and camouflaged form of racism when it is embedded in the dominant discourse, in ongoing public chatter, in mainstream media, in educational and institutional hierarchies, academic writing, newspaper columns and even advertising and TV programmes, and has generally become normalised and internalised by white society at large.
No sooner do you begin to deconstruct that clandestine smiling-faced, polite, “non-racist” racism and the very same people who are castigating Sparrow for her blatant belittling of black people will band together in clusters of white outrage and call the messenger racist wrong (if black) and aggressive and delusional (if white).
They will go all out to delegitimise anyone who dares to question or even suggest the possibility of covert racism.
While black rage at Sparrow is a given, the fact that whites are so outraged by her has to be looked at more cynically.
Let me go as far as to say that this indignation can only be ludicrous when, for example, white people collectively are not as equally outraged at the blatant lack of authentic transformation in our society two decades after liberation.
Surreptitious racism in the white collective is most exposed in what is “not said” about the plentiful structural injustices that assault black South Africans rather than in the occasional explosion of outrage at the flagrant racism of the loons.
These outbursts provide liberal whites the opportunity to hide in the shadow of the obvious racists and attest to their own non-racism.
But if liberal whites collectively were as non-racist as they claim to be, surely we would be living in a transformed society by now.
The truth of the pervasive nature of racism across the spectrum of different kinds of whites is found in the utter lack of transformation witnessed in every sector of society. It can also be seen in the racialised wealth distribution and economic disparity.
The disingenuous lie about widespread non-racism is also found in the fact that white privilege has become more entrenched in 21 years of so-called liberation.
Previously wealthy whites have grown richer, the positions of chief executives, school principals, heads of departments, NGO directorships, and business leaders have remained largely in the hands of whites as has land ownership.
Yet we have not seen too many whites get outraged about their own unearned elevation and privilege.
In fact privilege denial is much more prevalent than non-racism in South Africa’s white society.
Whites denying undeserved historical privilege is racism-in-practice no matter how many black friends, lovers or children they have.
While the majority waits for whites to let go of the privilege that they claim not to have, transformation never happens.
Non-racism can be nothing more than a falsehood when meaningful transformation and redistribution are blocked by whites who refuse to budge on this issue and instead carry on reaping the benefits of cheap black labour and systemic favour.
It is clearly hypocrisy of the highest order.
If we are not railing against this skewed racial inequity and pro-white, anti-black status quo, then we are part of the problem of racism no matter how much we, as white people, shout at Sparrow.
It may serve us better to hold her up as a mirror to remind us about how much entitlement and privilege are still alive and thriving in the construct of whiteness, instead of obscuring white privilege and complicity behind the likes of outright racists such as Sparrow.
Until we form a mass movement of whites calling for and engaging in authentic transformation, reparations and redistribution of wealth, we are all Penny Sparrows.
* Schutte is founding member of Media for Justice, a social justice and media activist and a documentary film-maker.
** The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Independent Media.
Sunday Independent
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