“Can
I get you guys anything else? No thanks, just the bill...Oh, I’m
sorry, I just assumed…you know…”
This
is an extract from a conversation I had with a waitress-who just
happened to be Black and works at a certain restaurant where people
with a taste for life dine. When she placed the bill in front of my
White friend instead of me, even though I who had requested it. Even
though smiling and making light of it at the time, after getting home
it struck me that even though we the people of South Africa are said
to live in a ‘free, fair and democratic country which has cast off
the shackles of Apartheid’ this is so far removed from the truth
that one could count to infinity before any viable case could be
formulated to established to defend the above statement.
The above
extract is also a perfect example of what is referred to as
‘totalizing moments’: at once your entire meaning and being is
conferred upon you, leaving no room for you to construct your own
identity, or worse to be unlike the identity created for you, hence
why you are never a
Black
or a
White,
but rather the
White
or the
Black.
You bear the weight of your race's history, culture, traditions,
behavioral and thought patterns. Put differently, you are immediately
responsible for your race's essence.
South
Africa is a country in which the foundation of one’s being is
founded upon what race one belongs to, or in the case of non-White
people, what race one has the misfortune to be cast into. Apartheid’s
grip on society is still as firm as it ever was; the White is still
thought of as the ‘true’ South African, whilst the Black is that
individual who strives to be as much as like his White counterpart as
possible. That is to say that the Black’s sole motivation is to be:
intelligent, well educated, beautiful, well off and, most
importantly, accepted. Put frankly and bluntly, those born White in
this all encompassing rainbow nation of ours are better than those
not so fortunate to have less melanin in their genetic code.
In
a racist society there is a large extent to which we are treated as
though the essence of one's being is determined by what race they
belong to or, as Frantz Fanon puts it in his revolutionary book Black
Skins, White Masks,
we find ourselves as “objects amongst other objects” with the
freedom to choose from a range of options available to us limited by
the colour of our skins. Being White in South Africa immediately
places one above; above in the sense that one has that one aspect of
being which all Blacks yearn to posses, Privilege, or rather, ‘White
Privilege’ and its unconscious psychical and somatic habits,
constituted by ‘mental and physical patterns of engagement with the
world that operate without conscious attention or reflection.
Some
would argue that these are pretty bold statements to make and I
concede that they are. However, I believe that I have ample
ammunition upon which to hold my position, due to my claims being
founded upon of the works of some of this century’s most insightful
philosophers (and plain common sense), the majority of which happen
to be Black-the irony is rather amusing- namely Frantz Fanon,
Jean-Paul Sartre and Steve Biko, who developed this idea. Blacks all
over the world, but more so in South Africa- a country in which ones’
self is so thoroughly saturated by histories of oppression and/or
privilege- have this notion that, as the esteemed philosopher Paul
Taylor describes, the way the White sees the world is the way it
should be. The way the White gets around the world just is the right
way to get around. This is what Fanon and Biko take greatest issue
with, looking at those whom have been ‘duped’ (the Black) into
believing such, and at those who ‘dupe’ (the White and
self-loathing Black) with a sympathetic yet contemptuous gaze. As
Biko puts it in his highly illuminating book,
I Write what I like:
It
is not as if Whites are allowed to enjoy privilege only when they
declare their solidarity with the ruling party. They are born into
privilege and are nourished by and nurtured in the system of ruthless
exploitation of black energy.
From
this quote we are able to see that it is the system, or rather, the
pattern of behavior and thought, which is truly at fault. South
Africans, Black and White, are so inundated with trying to ‘make
things right for all’ that they have forgotten the most important
aspect of this, whilst not impossible but highly improbable task,
that being to begin with oneself. The black has to release himself of
the shackles confining him in the beliefs that the White deserves
better service/treatment simply because he is White, whilst the White
is under obligation to cease believing and demanding differential
treatment due to his being White.
Does
this mean that Whites should feel guilt or ashamed for this privilege
they enjoy? Yes and no. As Samantha Vice so very eloquently phrases
it in her thought provoking paper How
Do I live in This Strange Place,
“ shame is a response to having fallen below the standards one sets
for oneself, whether moral or not…guilt [is] a reaction to what one
has done,
not primarily to who one is.
Why? The mere fact that one is White automatically means that one
will receive preferential treatment and benefit from White privilege
whether conscious to the fact or not. This is an unavoidable
injustice, especially in South Africa, and feelings of guilt can only
be but appropriate.
In
closing I hope that this piece has done that which it strove to, that
being to invoke feelings of anger within both White and Black
readers, for as history has shown us from time immemorial, ‘tis
only when anger is awakened (the Roman slave uprising led by
Spartacus) that the turbines which generate the winds of change can
be started and set into motion…Oh, I also hope that it has shown
that the bill should be placed in front of he who requests it…
