Unvoiced prejudices are the deepest and most harmful

Do we debate symptoms so loudly because we want to avoid dealing with the actual causes? The jail sentence handed down to a woman who hurled racist abuse at a traffic officer has triggered reactions we have come to expect.

People whose race ensures they will not be insulted by the words she used are more likely to claim that the punishment was harsh. Those who have been called these names and fear they may be called them again are more likely to welcome the sentence.

As always, people’s tolerance for particular types of racism depends on whether they are likely to bear its brunt – it is always easy to defend “freedom of speech” that does not hurt you. However, while the debate’s heat shows yet again that race remains the issue that divides South Africans most, it is still about symptoms, not causes.

The racism that is open in its contempt for black people — the sort that prompted the jail sentence — is deeply hurtful to many. It should be stamped out. It is not, however, the most important racial bias the country faces, nor the sort that does most to hold us back.

As disgraceful as they are, the bigots who use offensive words or liken black people to monkeys are easier to deal with than the biases that keep both the country and most of its people from reaching their potential. The prejudices that do the most damage are those that never speak their name — at least aloud in the way in which obvious bigots do.

They are usually so deeprooted that those who hold to them do not see them as prejudices at all. And yet they shape the way in which the economy, the professions and centres of education and culture continue to operate in ways that keep alive the racial barriers of the past. They come in many forms, but perhaps the common thread is that all insist we must value “merit” rather than race.

While that sounds reasonable, they all assume that what is and is not merit must be decided by the minority who benefited from apartheid. And they tend, without much thought, to assume that apartheid’s beneficiaries have merit unless the contrary is proven and that its victims lack it unless the contrary is proven.

Its most damaging effect is to undervalue or ignore the talents, capabilities and potentials of black South Africans in both the public and private sectors.

The details of the damage it causes vary but one cost is to make it far harder for most South Africans to reach their potential. Another is to foster distrust between people that makes co-operating for the common good far less likely.

The cost to the economy and society is far greater than that of many of the other ills we tend to blame. Dealing with this prejudice is more difficult than debating whether people who call others racial names should go to jail. And so we talk more about the obvious expressions of bias than about those that matter more.

We may well yell at each other about the obvious because we don’t know how to handle the forms of racial bias that are so deep that they influence many who see themselves as people without prejudice.

This does not mean we should ignore the many examples of open prejudice that scar our country, and the bigots who express it.

It does, however, mean that, as we do that, we need also to summon up the courage to tackle the racial biases that do not stare us in the face but that will continue to hold all of us back until we find the courage to tackle them.