It’s time for white people to be part of the healing process and to listen when people speak about their experiences, writes Melanie Verwoerd.
There is a time to talk and a time to shut up.
I acknowledge that the Bible states it slightly more eloquently in Eccleciastes 3, but I think if the writers of the holy document lived in South Africa they might have put a few stronger adjectives in there.
This week, three things happened that made me think a lot. The first was Pat Symcox and Boeta Dippenaar’s reaction to Lungi Ngidi’s statement that the Proteas should discuss their support for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.
The second was a series of old photos from a book that a former MP distributed on a WhatsApp group. The photos showed white colonial masters hanging black people from a tree in Zimbabwe (they called it a Christmas tree), a white colonialist sitting in an armchair with a black child acting as a foot stool, two white girls posing with a little black boy in a bird cage and photos of a fair where white people played a game where they threw balls at black babies for fun. Horrific images!
The third was a book I read called Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race by Reni-Eddo Lodge.
Lodge published a blog in 2014 under the same title which started with:
“I’m no longer engaging with white people on the topic of race. Not all white people, just the vast majority who refuse to accept the legitimacy of structural racism and its symptoms.”
She continued: “I can no longer engage with the gulf of an emotional disconnect that white people display when a person of colour articulates their experience.”
Frustration
Lodge powerfully described the frustration black people feel when trying to talk to white people about their experiences. “Their eyes glaze over or widen in indignation. Their mouths start twitching as they get defensive. Their throats open up as they try to interrupt, itching to talk over you but not really listen because they need to let you know that you’ve got it wrong.”
This accurately describes the reaction from certain quarters after Ngidi carefully spoke about the legacy of apartheid and why he wanted the Proteas to have a discussion about BLM.
By expressing his views, Ngidi was inviting discussion. What a wonderful opportunity for white people in particular to get some understanding of what black people (and particularly young black people) all over the world are feeling and dealing with.
If only we would shut up and listen.
Instead, Symcox and Dippenaar took to Twitter and – among others – questioned the ideology of the BLM movement as Marxist (the old rooi gevaar – sigh!) and insisted they will only support Ngidi if he also focused on farm murders and rebranded his attempt as “All Lives Matter”.
Although many disagreed with them, others supported their position and by doing so dismissed not only Ngidi’s request as illegitimate, but also rendered his life experience invalid – which, as Lodge reminds us, black people constantly have to deal with when trying to talk to white people about race.
The irony is that of course “All lives matter” is exactly what the BLM movement is all about. It is exactly because the lived experience of black people around the world is one that reflects whiteness as the norm; because they have to live in a world where – with a few exceptions – the majority of political and/or economic power is still held by white people, that they cry out: “Black lives matters too”.
It is exactly because as a black person the chances of ending in poverty, getting raped or arrested, having a lesser education or less access to medical services is infinitely higher than that of a white person, that they say “we matter too”.
Surely, it is blatantly obvious that even though in this instance the focus is on black lives that doesn’t mean that those who support BLM deem farm murders, femicide or the killing of gay people as less important. When AfriForum talks about farm murders, they don’t feel obliged to also say: “Black lives matter” or “Stop gender-based violence” even though presumably they believe those things too.
The same is true of Black Lives Matter.
Structural racism
The systemic or structural racism that the vast majority of black people experience daily has gone on for centuries as those photos of colonial times so powerfully remind us.
The physical, economic and psychological scars left by centuries of horrific abuse (including the decades of apartheid) haven’t been wiped out after 26 years of freedom in our country. This, according to my understanding, is what Ngidi (and others in South Africa) want to talk about when they say “Black lives matter”.
I am deeply humbled and thankful that people like Ngidi still want to engage with white people about these issues, although I won’t blame him if he has now changed his mind. It must be exhausting to black people to always have to explain to white people why things are racist and defend their experiences as legitimate.
My son, Wian, said to me this week: “Black people have no choice when it comes to engaging with race – because it relates to their daily lived experience. White people on the other hand, have a choice whether – and how – to engage.”
So true.
As white people, we can ignore people like Ngidi or become defensive and patronising like Symcox and Dippenaar – and by doing so inflict more pain.
Alternatively, we can be part of a painful but rewarding process of healing and change. But this can only start the day we are willing to shut up and listen.
– Melanie Verwoerd is a former ANC MP and South African Ambassador to Ireland
See www.melanieverwoerd.co.za
