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| Sisonke Msimang |
Sisonke Msimang, The Daily Maverick
Yesterday reports were
published of a black taxi driver who was attacked with an axe by an enraged
white male motorist in Johannesburg. The paramedics came to the scene of the
attack and attended to the unharmed perpetrator of the crime, leaving the
bleeding black male victim on the side of the road. When they were called out
on their behaviour, apparently they got angry and left him there bleeding.
‘You literally can’t make
this stuff up.’ I find myself muttering this phrase under my breath more and
more often these days.
Yesterday’s Cape Town
papers headlined with another appalling story, this one of a black man who
works as a gardener in an upscale neighbourhood who was assaulted with a
sjambok by a white man who first tried to run him over. The attack on came just
weeks after Tim Osrin (who is due to appear in court on 27 November) attacked a
domestic worker who was on his street because he thought she was a sex worker,
which of course means that she was deserving of being beaten up simply for
existing.
These incidents come at
the end of an exhausting year in which the Pistorius trial has given the nation
far too much insight into the aggro and silly world of Oscar and his friends.
It was impossible to hear about their fast cars and their petty fights without
wondering how someone didn’t end up dead sooner.
Increasingly, as these
white male inspired dramas unfold on our pages, I find myself returning to a
theme that has preoccupied me since I began writing regularly; the subject of
violent, white masculinities. I write fairly frequently about the violent
conduct of white men; it is such an under-scrutinised topic. I am also
fascinated by the extent to which perverse behaviour – when it is enacted by
white male bodies – is quickly explained away.
In a racist society, one
of the privileges of whiteness is empathy. We are constantly exposed to white
men as full and complex subjects. They are doctors and lawyers, husbands and
fathers. They are capable of immense greed and exploitation, but just as
capable of heart-warming displays of vulnerability and need. They are as richly
layered in fiction as they are in magazine profiles and in everyday media
coverage. They can be monsters, but they can also be sweet little boys.
In other words, white men
– because they own the resources in the societies in which we live - are almost
always given the benefit of the doubt when they mess up. Their transgressions
are seen as idiosyncratic and are seldom attributed to them on the basis of
race. In other words, while black people are almost always seen through the
prism of ‘racial’ characteristics, white men are rarely seen in this light.
When they are, it is usually in positive terms.
This is precisely why
studying the patterns of white male entitlement is so important. When white men
act in violent ways it is often because they have been led to believe that they
can get away with it. They act with impunity because they often do not think
that there is anything wrong with their behaviour. Time and again, violent and
sociopathic behaviour by white men is either ignored, explained away or
commended by other the whites and/or by the institutions that mete out justice.
Those who were angered by
it will recall what my first column for this publication was called. In it, I
suggested that “We all know an Angry White Dude. We see him in the bank, losing
it because the queue is too long. We see him blasting a taxi driver as though
the hooter is a lifeline pumping oxygen directly through his palm. We see him
nose-to-nose with some other Angry White Dude in a bar on Friday night, and we
give him wide berth.”
When I wrote the column,
some people suggested that I was trying to be deliberately provocative and
controversial. Sadly, I didn’t understand enough about social media and the
online world for that to have been the case. I naively thought I was putting
forward a point of view that would meet with widespread nodding and agreement.
The fact that it inspired anger and vitriol shouldn’t have surprised me, but it
did.
It was interesting that
it was mainly white people – friends and strangers alike – who suggested that I
wrote that first AWD column to stir the pot. In part, I now understand that
this was an attempt to dismiss my observations. Dismissing black people’s
experiences of racism is only possible because of white privilege. Not having
had to endure the full brunt of racism means that some white people cannot
accept that the experiences of black people are valid and as painfully real as
we say that they are.
So, suggesting that I
wrote that piece to get attention was easier for some than accepting that white
masculinities are often experienced by black people as violent and threatening.
It relegated my analysis to the trash heap of ‘hysteria’, which is a common
tactic that women and black people must often contend with when they put
difficult topics on the table. We are told that we are so affected by racism
and sexism that we tend to get emotional, which hampers our ability to the
rational about these matters.
The premise of this
argument is so nonsensical that it isn’t worth picking apart.
Suffice to say that I
never write anything for the sake of provocation. I have neither the time nor
the inclination for race-baiting. Quite the opposite; I have found that ideas
shared in order to stoke the fires and cause outrage seldom have a long shelf life.
On the other hand, over and over again, I have seen that ideas shared – no
matter how clumsily – in order to build understanding and challenge convention,
are ideas that stand the test of time.
There can be no question
about it; South Africans of all races (particularly men) are far too quick to
settle disputes through violence. Yet for too many in the broader public, when
these matters are raised, denial is more appealing than discussion. The bottom
line remains this: the contours of male rage aren’t particularly different
across the colour lines and so all male violence (not only the transgressions
of black men) deserves careful scrutiny.
