Change in mind must match change in our history

MUSI Maimane is right. We do have to talk about “white privilege” and we do have to talk about what many black people feel about a specific kind of privilege – the kind that exists when a special advantage has become attached to a particular group of people.

The kind of privilege we must explore, and from which we must free ourselves, arose when a particular social categorisation was created centuries ago and remains today in the psyches of both black and white South Africans.

Maimane’s comment was vital socio-economic relevance.

The fact that all but a vociferous few want South Africa to be a country where true equality is taken for granted does not eliminate remnants of our dark history of segregation.

If I look at myself with a strong desire to know who I am as a white person, I know that I do perceive the of essential oneness of all people and have no wish to be privileged at anyone else’s cost.

But I also know that being white gave me privileges in the past, and that both white and black people continue to carry ancestral and personal memories in the unconscious, even when we have consciously accepted that we are all just human beings together. White people are no longer politically privileged, nor are black people now politically underprivileged.

Quite a number of white people are now also living in poverty, but a high percentage of our black fellow countrymen live under intolerable circumstances in townships situated too far from cities and crippled by devastating poverty and lack of basic amenities.

Both black and white South Africans need to understand Maimane’s intention, instead of inventing meanings that suit their personal politics.

Underprivilege became reinforced by increasingly unjust laws, sapping the self-belief of many black people, who were helpless before the law. No one can deny that creating a feeling of inferiority was a potent and cruel factor in those laws. A long history of being denied ordinary human rights continues to leave scars, even after people become politically free.

Lingering anger at the slave trade remains a potent factor among black Americans, even though slavery was abolished by the 13th amendment in 1865, and had earlier been abolished in Britain and its territories.

Old hurts linger, even when generations have passed. It is all too understandable that one might finally see oneself as having been labelled inferior if one’s basic practical and emotional needs were ignored generation after generation, and one’s life torn asunder by legal injustices as though one simply did not matter.

White people have in general consciously got over the fiction of seeing themselves as superior, for the simple reason that we are not superior, although a small number might carry the illusion out of fear.

Any remaining sense of privilege is largely unconscious and is rooted in the security of a past where white rights were seldom questioned, whereas most black people are continuing to live in a world where their economic realities have not yet caught up with their political rights.

Many consequently feel underprivileged, because that is their daily lived experience. White people who are poverty-stricken can also feel underprivileged.

This feeling became especially evident among middle-class Boer farming families who had been rendered poverty-stricken owing to having lost the South African War (1899-1902) and many of whom, having lost their farms, homes, equipment and animals owing to a ruthless British “scorched earth” military policy, were reduced to forming “poor” white communities in emerging towns. The bitter feelings that resulted lasted for many decades, and remnants remain.

Residual anger can linger because one’s forebears, and in many cases oneself, were unjustly trapped in an inferior socio-economic position that was entrenched by law and embedded in an enforced way of life that was increasingly punitive.

People can still feel condescended to because that was how it was for centuries. These feelings are not eradicated from the unconscious, or from living memory, merely because times have changed.

When one considers the tragedies of our unequal past, South Africans actually get along rather well together. The consequences of that past will fade only when the lived reality of our people is matched by a general recognition that we are one people, including migrants, refugees and all who continue to suffer discrimination, poverty or prejudice. What is perceived as “white” privilege does not necessarily have to do with people thinking they are “better” than anyone else.

The truth is that we have all been scarred by our South African past. We have to acknowledge lingering attitudes that we do not want to have, but might still have at an unconscious level. We therefore need to observe our thoughts and our spontaneous feelings very closely.

The shadows of past wrongs will not just dissipate over time. The legacy of our history is that whites tend to have a personal sense of social security that many black people are not yet in a position to experience, especially those whose lives remain painfully deprived, with little reason to hope that this will change soon. The brutality and violence we are now seeing comes from feelings of desperation.

Interested readers should look up an excellent online Daily Maverick article by a writer on social justice, Berenice Paulse. She points out that “white privilege means never having to contend with assumptions about your integrity, intelligence, competence, achievements, ability to pay… simply because you are black”. It could not be said more succinctly.

We South Africans cannot ignore assumptions that were nurtured over generations. We have to acknowledge that old assumptions have a lingering presence of which we are often largely unaware. Courageous acknowledgement will help eradicate them.

We have to be kinder to one another, because we need one another. We have had our miracles and our disasters. So let’s choose together to go for another miracle.

Bell is the retired director of the publishing department at Durban University of Technology, author of nine non-fiction books, and editor of The Animal Angle magazine