The great American writer William Faulkner once said: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
This observation seems painfully true for black people when we are told that slavery, colonialism and apartheid are dead and that we must just get over it and move on!
These kinds of attitudes ignore the fact that there has never been material restitution and that the everyday fabric of society continues to be woven in ways that makes black people "the other!" In SA, we never did the kind of work that was done in Germany after the Holocaust. We went to bed in apartheid SA & woke up in a democratic country.
We were suddenly told that we were living in a "rainbow nation" and that "social cohesion" rather than justice and understanding would mean that the past would really be the past.
No-one should tell black people to forget about racism and "move on". Unless you have emotional scars and the inherited trauma of generations that have lived in a world that didn't see them as fully human, you don't have the right to tell black people to "get over it".
One of the many failures after apartheid was the continued indulgence of Afrikaans-medium schools. We all know that Afrikaans was used as a language of oppression during apartheid to exclude certain people. So, racism is still allowed to flourish unchallenged under the guise of "linguistic diversity!"
Most Afrikaans-medium schools have very few, if any, black children, with the teachers and support staff almost all white. The only black employees at these schools are cleaners and security personnel. So, it is clear that blacks are only there to perform menial labour!
This is the essence of Verwoerdian racism. If we miss the opportunity to foster an inclusive and democratic South Africanness in the formative years of our children and for our children to learn about each other, how do we hope to ever be rid of the stench of racism?
Racism is a learned behaviour, children are not born with it but learn it at home and in their communities.
Bushy Green, Kagiso
The end of racism lies with how we raise our children
Image: Thulani Mbele
The great American writer William Faulkner once said: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
This observation seems painfully true for black people when we are told that slavery, colonialism and apartheid are dead and that we must just get over it and move on!
These kinds of attitudes ignore the fact that there has never been material restitution and that the everyday fabric of society continues to be woven in ways that makes black people "the other!" In SA, we never did the kind of work that was done in Germany after the Holocaust. We went to bed in apartheid SA & woke up in a democratic country.
We were suddenly told that we were living in a "rainbow nation" and that "social cohesion" rather than justice and understanding would mean that the past would really be the past.
No-one should tell black people to forget about racism and "move on". Unless you have emotional scars and the inherited trauma of generations that have lived in a world that didn't see them as fully human, you don't have the right to tell black people to "get over it".
One of the many failures after apartheid was the continued indulgence of Afrikaans-medium schools. We all know that Afrikaans was used as a language of oppression during apartheid to exclude certain people. So, racism is still allowed to flourish unchallenged under the guise of "linguistic diversity!"
Most Afrikaans-medium schools have very few, if any, black children, with the teachers and support staff almost all white. The only black employees at these schools are cleaners and security personnel. So, it is clear that blacks are only there to perform menial labour!
This is the essence of Verwoerdian racism. If we miss the opportunity to foster an inclusive and democratic South Africanness in the formative years of our children and for our children to learn about each other, how do we hope to ever be rid of the stench of racism?
Racism is a learned behaviour, children are not born with it but learn it at home and in their communities.
Bushy Green, Kagiso
Racism demeans human dignity on basis of identity
Progressive policies in racially integrated schools will win the war against racism
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