HELP! I'm a racist and I didn't know it.
Topics:Rants Politics
Yesterday I saw the following piece of writing pinned up on the wall of a colleague. Being Black in the Work Place
They take my Kindness for weakness. They take my silence for speechless.
They consider my uniqueness strange. They call my language slang.
They see my confidence as conceit.
They see my mistakes as defeat.
They consider my success accidental.
They minimise my intelligence to “potential”.
My questions mean “I’m unaware”.
My advancement is somehow unfair.
Any praise is preferential treatment.
To voice concern is Discontentment.
If I stand up for myself, I’m too defensive. If I don’t trust them I’m too apprehensive.
I’m defiant if I separate. Yet I’m fake if I assimilate.
So constantly I am faced with work place hate. My character is constantly under attack.
Pride for my race makes me “TOO BLACK”. Yet, I can only be me. And, whoa m I you might ask? I am that Strong Black Person… who stands on the backs of my ancestor’s Achievements with an erect spine pointing to the stars with pride, Dignity and respect which lets the work place in South Africa know,
that I
not only possess the ability to play by the rules, but I can make them as well!
Black History 365
P.S. Pass –it on to your black co-workers. Good, Better, Best, Never Ever rest until YOUR Good is Better and YOUR Better is Best!
- Anonymous Author
Now this got me thinking. Am I a racist? Am I making people of colours other than us “pinkies” “whitey” “snowflakes” (whatever other races call us Caucasians) feel inferior? Am I going out of my way to make them feel threatened? Am I belittling them? Honestly no, so that leaves me with another question: Are other white people still doing this in South Africa?
Personally, I don’t know one person who does. Hell, I joke around with my friends at work who are of other races all the time. They joke back and life is good. So. How is it that some people end up with a chip on their shoulder? Is this through the experience of encountering people who are racist and actually have go’s at other people.
If we look at the situation a little more closely, it gets interesting. Who is being down trodden in South Africa and why? Sure, I can understand that we are to be going through a period of transition. As South Africans we are coming upon 15 years of democracy in a couple of years. One would think that this sort of “racism” wouldn't be very out of hand. I'm actually quite hurt by the above poem. Hasn't EVERYONE regardless of race, colour, creed or gender felt put down. Is this due to racism? I'm sure that there are those occasions, but they are the exceptions! Hell, I've had a female boss and a male boss chastise me at one ponit or another. I've had an Afrikaans boss put me down. What you have to realise is that it has NOTHING to do with race. The guy/girl could've just had a bad day! But not. Its racism.
Are the BEE policies of this country actually working? Honestly – most of the “white owned” companies in South Africa are being forced to just “give” a portion of a company over to BEE companies or give shares to individuals of another company purely because of their skin colour. Why? So that other companies will do business with them as per the laws in South Africa. (if your company does not have X number of black people being enriched, you will have to forfeit a portion of your profit to government in the form of penalties. If I have better qualifications, more years experience and a lower asking salary, I will lose my position to someone of another race because the company that is hiring is required to have a certain number of staff members who were “previously disadvantaged”.
Am I racist for thinking that that is racism?
Nearing 15 years of democracy where we have a generation or two who’ve had the time to get into positions and to get education and and and… yet we are still being faced with this forced behaviour. Why is it necessary to still have BEE and AE written into our law books? It’s the rich getting richer and the poor staying that way. It seems the same companies (BEE) are getting bigger and richer by either piggybacking off of deals made with “white owned” companies in a consortium or given shareholdings. Some of the time for nothing. A company I use to work at had a black shareholder who did not pay for his shares. He didn't do any work what so ever. He attended the Christmas function and that was it. It makes me go “Hmmmmmm” ...
What I do find amusing is the fact that we have people of other races (notice I’m not saying black – simply because I’m afraid of having fingers pointed at me for using the word black and being called “racist”) are able to joke about this without being called racist. Dare one “whitey” make a joke. You are a “racist”. The result:
- In front of a disciplinary hearing if you are at work
- In front of a judge being sued if you are in public
Quite frankly the way I see it. We are being scrutinised unnecessarily. There is a lot of hate and discrimination coming through from both sides. Why? Why are people that were graduating from high school in the same year as I did having feelings as strong as I do? Is it because their parents had the misfortune of working for a racist white person back in the day?
To me, the only discrimination I have is against those people abuse the current status quo. If you have a chip on your shoulder because one person treated you badly does that mean all people will treat you badly? NO. Does colour really matter? NO. Does gender matter? NO. Why are we CONSTANTLY focusing on these issues? I have a lot of trouble understanding this mentality. Maybe if the author of the above … poem? article? plea? could please explain it to me. Maybe someone out there on the vast wide internet could explain it to me. Or are people just dumb. I include myself in this category based on the fact that I don’t understand.
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Current Comments // 06
Don't assume that just because you live in South Africa that this poem has anything to do with racism. In essence, this is about someone who believes that they can do better at their job and their life - open your mind and stop assuming racism.
In politics 15 years is equates to very, very little. Integrating two opposing races into one and evolving out from the racist mindset is an extremely lengthly process so do not expect to see BEE fall away anytime in the near to mid. future. You comment on having trouble understanding the mentality yet you yourself assume that it is directed towards white people in the work place oppressing the black.
I wouldnt worry too much, things are starting to sort themselves out. I understand that sometimes people get judged racially, and sometimes women have to work harder to prove themselves than men, but its the people who DO sit around doing and expect everything for free and success to be handed to them on a platter that pull the race card like that.
I have black friends, and they all look at emails like this as stupid. I have heard them comment before.
The perspectives on race in this country have opened huge doors for black people, and all you have to do is get off your arse and educate yourself, dress successfully, and talk business speak (not white speak, business speak, there is nothing wrong with coming across professionally) and the world is your oyster. Every company is looking for professional black people, and they are very often paid more than their white / coloured colleages.
Basically my point is that I think you should type out a response as above and pin it next to his bulletin. Tell him to suck it up and stop looking for excuses, the apartheid is long gone. And if he wants people to judge him racially then he is on the right track, because its people like him that cause judgement by people who would normally not care.
If you dont live in SA, give the thinking process a little space. Racial politics in SA is a very delicate topic, we have very extreme cases that we deal with on a day to day basis. Read the news, some black people firmly believe that "crime is OK if you are stealing from whites". Im not being dramatic, I am just explaining that we deal with a very different monster here.
You said…“It has nothing to do with race”
Huh? Come on Bergy…it has EVERYTHING to do with race. Whether you’re a racist or not. I love my country and sadly it took traveling overseas for me to come to that realization. I often describe SA to people as paradise run by extremists. Because ours is a society of extremes.
Being half blek and half waait I guess I was “privileged” to have a view of both sides of the dividing wall between black & white people in our country, and even though I do not agree with the practices then OR now, I understand that black empowerment is necessary to bring South Africans to that ideal and seemingly elusive place called equality. Why? Well, there are roughly one hundred kazshillion trillion reasons, but I what I CAN tell you is that white people cannot relate to what black people went through during the apartheid era, and black people cannot relate to what white people are being subjected to now. We can only remain sensitive to each others inner turmoil and not seek constant explanation.
As a child, I was not subjected to the pencil test, and you were not licking ice-creams on the beachfront while sitting on a Whites-Only bench Bergy. But we have to be held accountable to a certain degree for the “sins of our fathers”. This will make us a generation that is not crippled by the past, but that is aware of it and in turn we can raise a generation that is truly free in our so-called New South Africa.
Well thought-out, B!!
Love ya.
As for the poem, I have found that many people display things like that, not necessarly because they were wronged by anyone, but just because they were told all their lives that that was their place in the world by their elders. Their own. I mean, hell, women do it all the time. According to most women while I was growing up, all men are pigs, liars, bastards, and want only one thing. Luckily my mother did not feel this way and I was able to live without those views, but if my mom had felt that way too, I would have been screwed. If you have a mother and a grandmother telling you that people treat you differently because you are black, and you are repressed, and you are not respected... a part of you is going to believe that in a big way. Top that off with your friends and their parents who feel that way, and then have one or two whitie people treat you like shit and you have yourself a poem like that on a wall in a workplace.
I just looked up BEE (we don't have that) and holy cow. Could you imagine if they had a WEE? If you are a healthy white man in America, and you start some kind of club about that, omg, lookout. We don't get a "white history month" or "Men's rights" because that would be racist and/or sexist.
I don't believe feeling this way makes me racest or sexist, I belive it means I want TRUE equality. I would love to see a world where NOONE gets a special holiday because of thier race, and noone neeeds to display their sexual orentation on a bumper sticker. We would all respect eachother for who we were and know that EVERYONE has a difficult something or other, and everyone's ancestors went thru some kind of difficult something or other, and everyone deserves respect until they prove otherwise. So what if we have different skin or diffent sex parts and who cares what we all do in the bedroom, really, who cares. Not me. Are you a good person? Are you kind and responsible and respectful? Are you interesting and do you like cheese? Great! Let's be friends!