Can collective memory be a monopoly?

In the film Liberty Heights, the Kurtzman family lives in a suburb in Baltimore. One of the Kurtzman children — a boy in the clutches of puberty — is in love with a “negro” girl.

The movie, which is set a decade after the end of the Second World War, has a scene I found funny and tragic. It is Halloween and the boy comes down the stairs wearing a costume that mortifies his parents. They scold him and ask him to go and change.

What is the boy wearing? He is wearing a Nazi uniform and, to make sure there is no confusion about who he is supposed to be, he has a neat Hitler-like moustache stuck to his upper lip.

In another film, The Believer, a Jewish boy becomes a neo-Nazi who advocates the killing of Jews. Is he anti-Semitic? Can a Jew be anti-Semitic?

I laughed when the Kurtzman boy came down the stairs wearing a Hitler Halloween costume. I laughed because, like other scenes in the movie, it was hilarious.

Was it anti-Semitic of me to laugh? Did Jews laugh at this scene? Was it anti-Semitic of them? Or, as we say in isiZulu, was it a case of kuyahlekwa

noma kufiwe (we laugh even when we are in mourning)?

This scene says something very serious about the nature of historical memory and collective memory.

We cannot rule out the possibility that the Kurtzmans of Liberty Heights knew people, or of people, who had perished in the death camps of the Holocaust. And the fact that this boy chooses a Nazi costume means he is not completely ignorant of the Holocaust. Is his memory of the Holocaust shaped by how stories of the Holocaust were passed down to him? Is he too young to understand the import of his choice of Halloween costume?

It is possible, of course, that the boy is making a serious point himself — one his parents perhaps appreciate, but understand that neither their son nor they are in control of as it gets interpreted in collision with historical and collective memory.

A few months ago, a blogger wrote an angry piece about white men. The piece appeared in Huffington Post and the editor lost her job because the piece was written by a white man posing as a black woman.

With this act, the fake blogger “exposed” two things: reverse racism and weaknesses in the editorial process. But he also exposed a third thing: his own racism and denial as a white man.

Some black people felt ashamed of their initial response when they realised the author was white, as if they had falsely accused white men of racism. This sense of shame blinded many of them to the racism of the fake blogger. The less said about the our-editorial-processis-better-than-thine-brigade the better.

This brings me to the Talk Radio 702 Walk the Talk tweet. While you were walking, someone used the official 702 Twitter account to connect the dots between being broody, “makin’ whoopee”, black babies and dogs. In the tweet, the author posted a collage of black babies and dogs. Obviously, the black babies were with their parents and the dogs were with their owners.

I suspect, though, that the author would have seen nothing wrong if the collars were around the necks of the black babies.

Moved by the pictures of the black babies and dogs, the author writes about how this makes her (perhaps the generic her) feel broody. As you can imagine, she collided, head-on, with historical and collective memory.

There was a time when Jews, blacks and dogs were banned at certain establishments. There was also a time when black people were accused of breeding like dogs. In memory of these painful times, historical and collective memory decided to vent its anger on Twitter with accusations of racism pointed at Talk Radio 702.

Xolani Gwala and Eusebius McKaiser condemned the tweet on their shows. What was interesting about Gwala’s editorial is that he did not invoke racism. What was interesting about the tweet was the fact that, contrary to the assumptions of most listeners, the perpetrator was a young black woman.

Can blacks be racist? Can blacks be unintentionally racist? Should black people use words such as “n **** r” and “k **** r”? Is racism not racism when the perpetrator of a racist act against black people is black?

Is it ever excusable for a black person, in his or her use of words and images, to mimic the grammar and actions of white supremacy?

The reason I ask so many questions in this column is because I do not want to be provoked or to provoke you into easy answers.

This young black woman is a good example of the gap between collective memory and historical distance. Blackness is not what it used to be.

THERE WAS A TIME WHEN JEWS, BLACKS AND DOGS WERE BANNED … THERE WAS A TIME WHEN BLACK PEOPLE WERE ACCUSED OF BREEDING LIKE DOGS