‘Break myths white people believe in’
RACISM in South Africa was structural, institutional and economic, and required that some myths that white people believed in be broken.
Academic and businesswoman Theresa Oakley-Smith said the common myths were about the existence of a rainbow nation, that white people had been forgiven, and that the lives of black people had improved. Other myths included that white lives had been reduced to nothing and reversed racism was to blame, and that there was no white privilege in the country.
“There is also the fallacy that if we do away with racism there will be no racism, and that is not true,” she said.
Oakley-Smith was on the panel of the Great Race Debate on the final day of Unisa’s Research and Innovation Week.
She sat alongside Unisa visiting Professor Nelson Maldonado-Torres, EFF national spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi and author Eusebius McKaiser.
Ndlozi called for black people to stand up and claim their rightful place in society, saying they did not have to apologise for being black because black was what they were.
Maldonado-Torres spoke about his experiences during visits to the country, and said racism was selective and often depended on whether people were middle class or higher.
The middle class was most racist because they saw the emerging black person as a threat to their life of privilege. “They use racism to maintain power and to keep as many of the apartheid structures alive as possible,” he said.
McKaiser addressed the definition of racism and racialism, and said while apartheid had died, racism was still alive.