DEAR WHITE PEOPLE

I don’t hate you, well not all of you. Some of you are pretty cool and you can sit with us. It’s the rest of you low key and overt racists I have no time for. The way to know that you’re maybe a racist is that you probably defended the two students from the University of Pretoria who painted their faces black and exaggerated the size of their butts. The simple fact that you cannot appreciate why this was offensive is the essence of the problem. You do not understand racism no matter how many times you cry foul over being subjected to reverse racism.

It is different when someone whose privilege comes wholly from the fact that your own race was oppressed by theirs for hundreds of years makes fun of you, makes fun of the role they resigned to filling. Besides it being grossly stereotypical it is detrimental because it shows just how much sensitivity white people are still lacking with regards to these issues.

No, it is also not okay that Leon Schuster’s entire career has been based on painting his own face black and monopolising on some of our desperation to forget we are oppressed. But why is it that we can only believe in the humour of our stories when white faces are underneath even that. His opportunism was not acceptable neither is the resultant norm that he has made comedy at the expense of black people.

There are certain things you will never understand by virtue of being white, even if you are not racist the privilege you have because of those who were before you makes it unacceptable for you to try to bridge the racial divide through inappropriate humour. Yes, everything boils down to race, not because black people made it that way but your race did. Your race institutionalised the chips we have on our shoulders and the uncertainty we have not only in ourselves but in each other. You convinced us we were only good enough to raise your children and tend to your gardens. Don’t tell me now, years later; when that is still happening that it is a joke.

When I say ‘I hate white people’, I’m saying I hate how White people are still convinced that they must be included in the party of oppression that people of colour are apparently holding without them, because otherwise your worlds will end. I hate that no matter how many times I say that White people can face discrimination, or interpersonal racism (being a manifestation of prejudice), or even have stereotypes against them, you will go to your graves shouting ‘WE FACE RACISM!’ I hate how you treat racism as if it is a Girl Scouts badge that you feel you are not being allowed to wear, rather than as a negative, horrible, indescribably painful experience which no one should willingly ask to be subjected to. Even as someone who has faced it, I would never wish it on anyone. It should not have to be tolerated.

When I say ‘I hate white people’, I’m saying I hate that blatant displays of racism against  colour are ignored, considered anomalies and not taken seriously. I’m saying I hate that when racism is acknowledged by white people, it is blamed on people of colour themselves for causing white people to be racist towards them. Whenever White people do anything offensive, racist, or otherwise unsavoury we are expected to look the other way, to get over it, to ‘not take it so seriously’, to not react, to not be angry, to not hold you accountable.

I hate that somehow you can’t be called racist, somehow we can’t infer that the widely accepted attitude from white people towards us is one of hate and disdain and hate that if we even slightly voice offence at your insults, ignorance, slurs, and abuse, we are the racist ones; we are putting things on White people that white people do not deserve, we are oppressing you.

I hate that some of you will jump into my email loudly proclaiming that “not all white people...” which will just further prove my point that you do not understand that you need to be having these conversations among yourselves. Telling each other that this covertly perpetuated oppression is wrong. If you really care that much about how black people perceive you, tell the racists among you that it is disgusting to dislike someone based solely on the colour of their skin. Until then feel free to miss me entirely.

Having attended multi-racial schools all my life I know what it is for your culture to be the one assimilating into white culture, to have people make room for you only if you sound like them and act like them. I know what it is to only begin appreciating the beauty of everything the black people who came before you went through and stood for when you have already missed out on so much. I understand all the shades of racism; it is designed to distract you from yourself.

We don’t need an 800 word column or a choir of black voices to state with certainty that something is racist. It’s racist because you offended me and I say it is.

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