Focusing more on racists’ actions distracts from real problems
Black people should pay more attention to architecting their own liberation
In 1975, African-American feminist activist and author of Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved, Toni Morrison, delivered an address as part of a public lecture series on the American Dream. It was a reflection on the ways in which narratives about black people by white supremacist media are designed to distract black liberation and creative initiatives.
In it, she contends that this mainstream media offers anti-black news and opinions that have no intellectual or moral integrity. Black people are then forced to respond to the falsehoods. They focus on explaining rather than on freeing themselves. An excerpt from the address reads: “The function, the very serious function of racism, is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.
“Somebody says you have no language and you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is.
“Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
A week ago, as the story about the white student who urinated on the belongings of a black student at Stellenbosch University made headlines, I found myself thinking about Morrison’s address. While it was nearly five decades ago, in a different geography, its relevance to post-apartheid SA is deeply pronounced.
The actions of the racist white community in SA are identical to those of the racist mainstream media Morrison was reflecting on. They too are fundamentally rooted in distraction. They force black people into a space where we are constantly negotiating and explaining the legitimacy of our humanity instead of developing creative and meaningful ways of fighting for our collective liberation.
Morrison wasn’t implying that racist white media should be ignored. In fact, she recognised that the media plays an instrumental role in shaping not only public discourse, but also beliefs and perceptions that society holds.
Like Morrison, I’m not implying that the actions of the racist white community in our country should be ignored, for they have direct consequences on the lives of black people. Racism is not only dehumanising and decivilising, it is also disenfranchising and depriving.
Racism is responsible for generational poverty and unemployment. It’s responsible for the embedded structural inequities that make SA one of the most unequal societies in the world. So, ignoring it only reinforces these constructs.
But giving racist incidents too much airtime defocuses black people from the work of architecting our liberation. We spend so much time reacting and responding to incorrigible racists that we end up becoming exhausted. The white community in SA is largely racist.
This racism isn’t expressed only by those who urinate on black students’ laptops. It’s everywhere and it’s woven into the very fabric of SA society. Dealing with it demands organising pockets of resistance in every space we occupy – all of them geared towards total emancipation.
That way, we won’t have to react to every provocation from racists, because the emotional and intellectual labour that we invest in those responses is psychologically haemorrhaging. We can only protest and respond so much.
We must start doing the difficult work that dealing with racism demands: organising. Anything less will have us talking for weeks the next time another white person dehumanises us. And as sure as the sun rises from the east, it will happen again.