Penny, Adam, and white spaces

We need to talk about whiteness and space.

We need to talk about Penny Sparrow and Adam Katzavelos. But the South African Human Rights Commission can probably do most of the talking on what to do with their individual acts. But both those incidents that went viral happened within the context of a particular racial and racist imagination of space which does not require an overly racist rant to become manifest, and in fact seldom manifest itself in an overtly racist rant while determining almost every hour of our lives. Condemning the rant is easy. Transforming the space that gave rise to the rant is the work that concerns us all.

Let’s start with the basics. Apartheid was many things.

Yes, it was a form of settler colonialism – meaning that those who colonised this space connected our identity more to this space than to Europe – one reason why the call to “go back” sounds to strange to many white South Africans, and also why waves of racially motivated white immigration was not to Europe (some kind of “original homeland”) but to whichever white space will allow a continuation of existence in white space.

Yes, it was a form of racial capitalism, politically and racially structuring society so that those who are white will form the elite within a capitalist economy, and occupy the vast majority of professional positions within that economy, while being able to rely on dirt-cheap black labour.

But apartheid was also an imagination of separation fundamentally restructuring South African space according to race. We know this. You can take all the laws away, but we intimately know exactly where the line between “white” and “black”, “black” and “Indian”, is found in every little town. Even if the lines change, we know where the new lines are informally being drawn. Every square meter of South Africa was formally or informally marked as “black” of “white”. Most of it still is.

And let’s be very clear about this: we did not change things that much in the last 24 years. Not only does the same racial patterning persist in the same places, but we’ve reconstructed vast sections of urban space into gated community or RDP development in ways which quite simply perpetuate the very same racial imagination of space.

I’m not going to argue that disrupting this spatial imagination will in itself undo the myriad of legacies of apartheid, colonialism and white racism. It won’t. I’m not going to argue that white people are the only ones today maintaining this spatial organization. We’re not, but we do play a very particular role in doing that work, and need to take very particular individual and corporate responsibility for undoing it. I’m not going to say that it will resolve economic inequality, and particularly the racial nature of this, overnight. It won’t, but it is actually key to disrupting this. Oh, and no, this cannot be reduced to questions of land ownership, but it is probably impossible to change this in any meaningful way without changing patterns of land ownership.

Also, I’m not going to be blind to the risks of attempts at resolving the racial patterning of space in South Africa. White people have historically related to the spaced we occupy within this racialized world in two ways: either imagining space as exclusively (or at least clearly predominantly) white, or as spaces which we can control regardless of the demographics. Most white South Africans of the latter half of the 20^th century was part of the former, but the exceptions usually of the latter – think of missionaries who did indeed learn to live in places which is not exclusively or predominantly white, but only on condition that they controlled those spaces. Undoing this spatial imagination will require (at least) undoing both these things: the actual demographic of white spaces, and the implicit or explicit control of all space. White people moving into black neighbourhoods in attempts to save (in whichever way) these neighbourhoods will most probably perpetuate, not disrupt, this imagination.

The point is really quite simple: the question being put to white South Africa through numerous things bubbling onto the surface is (at least in part) this: are we willing to live within this country as humans with other humans. Are we willing to live as white people in space without the ongoing process of remaking and retaining spaces as exclusively or predominantly white, or as spaces clearly controlled by white people? Or perhaps more importantly: are we willing to commit to the active work of disrupting this spatial imagination, of undoing the racial and racist organizing of space in South Africa, and to live with humans as humans.

Obviously this is a question about national policy. It involved questions around urban planning and rural planning. It involved questions of land reform. It will impact on and will be impacted upon by policies on education and economic empowerment. And let’s be clear, the way in which attempts at introducing policies which will change this spatial reality has been repeatedly blocked is something that require some scrutiny. But it is also quite specifically personal and individual. It involves the millions of choices made on where to live and where to send my kids to school. Where to live and where to send me kids to school. No, that’s not a typing error or accidental repetition. We need to say to that repeatedly, because these two choices will have a profound impact on whether our children will be able to live comfortably and without tension in the country of their birth, or whether they will also feel the need to lock themselves up in ever-shrinking white enclaves, gated communities, or Perth. Will we raise another generation of white kids who remain convinced that the level of melanin or lack thereof in bodies on beaches determine their own presence on that beach, and their own experience of that beach?

Yes, I know you get afraid, sometimes terrified, when the number of black people in a particular area exceeds a certain percentage, or simply when you find yourself in a space which in your own imagination is marked as “black”. If not afraid, then deeply uncomfortable. I’m not denying what we white people often feel. I am saying that there is a particular history behind these feelings, that we risk reproducing these experiences if we continue to invest huge amounts of energy and money in retaining certain spaces as white (whether in number of bodies or in the bodies that control), and that these experience is not in any way inevitable, but can and does change if we commit to and learn how to live in local spaces which reflect the demographics of this country.

And yes, I know that you can choose not to do this. I suspect that you will continue to be able to make that choice for many years to come. I am saying that raising voices about racist rants or attacks in Spur restaurants which draw from a particular spatial imagination cannot happen without the deeply personal commitments to change that imagination and the very concrete and material organizing of space that allows this to be perpetuated. I’m saying that we need to do the active work of resisting the ongoing formation of white enclaves of whatever kind.

Let me be quite clear on this however: we are not hero’s or a radical if we commit to moving our white bodies in a different space, or moving your bodies through space in a different way. As a friend one day uttered in ultimate wisdom: “you do not get points for living with people!” You do not get points if your community, the school you or your children attend (and its teachers), the church you are part of, the holiday resort you relax at or the shopping centre you buy food at reflect the demographics of the country. Don’t post a photo on Instagram. It’s called being human. Being human with other humans. But given the amount of energy and resources that has gone into teaching us how to destroy our own humanity and the humanity of others, being human actually takes some work and commitment.

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Am I a racist?

The article started appearing on my timeline last night sometime. I use facebook’s subscription options generously, which helps me to see that which I actually want to see. This allow me to bypass most of the blatant racist rhetoric on news24 comment sections.

It’s an article which I usually would have skipped, were it not for the friends who shared it. I know these people. They are not the right-wing type. Many of them aren’t even the “good-ol’ middle-of-the-road, let’s love our neighbours and not get involved in all this political mumbo-jumbo Christian”-type. Many of them are active voices for the acceptance of Belhar. They are people for whom church unity is non-negotiable. They are the people whom I want to spend the future of this church with. So when they share an article titles “I am a racist”, particularly if 3, 4 or more of them start sharing the same article, I follow the link.

My father had a fascination with etymology. He has one of those “Etymological dictionaries” next to his computer, and like to check random words in it. My Greek lecturer told us etymology cannot really provide you with the meaning of words (if I remember that class correctly), since meaning is constructed by how words are used in the present, not by finding some pristine untainted past meaning. Nonetheless, sometimes etymology is interesting. And when someone claim that, mostly due to the actions of the ANC, “the word racist has lost it’s original meaning and now only get’s used to describe a white person doing something a black person doesn’t like”, one have to wonder about etymology and the meaning of words.

What exactly is this “original meaning”. Truth be told, few people walk around with etymological dictionaries wondering about the “original meaning”. And I doubt that the author is actually concerned about the fact that the word ‘recently’ started moving away from its Nazi roots, insisting that ‘racism’ should remain used only as it was originally intended: as a system of scientific thought which had the intent to proof that those of European descent were superior due to biologically reasons.

Truth is that, although this kind of scientific racism was active in South Africa, that was never the most dominant approach and sometimes actively rejected (read Samual Dubow’s brilliant analysis on this topic). Apartheid and Nazism might show certain similarities, but they were not the same.

But I don’t think that the “original meaning” the author refers to is apartheid either. Making racism and apartheid synonymous (something which is not uncommon in South Africa), imply that racism is a legalized system of classification and exclusionary laws privileging those who are categorized as “white”. Is that the problem, that we dare use “racism” in any way apart from such a definition?

Many who are comfortable with the author’s thoughts, will shout out against DJ’s and FHM models who dare call someone a “kaffir”. Although derogatory names is obviously not the same as a legalized system like apartheid, we easily recognize their use as “racism”.

Here is our problem, I think: Beverley Tatum tell the story of the response of a white teacher when she was asked how it would feel if someone called her a racist: “She said it would feel as though she had been punched in the stomach or called a “low-life scum.”” We have found a general consensus that racism is wrong. In particularly more liberal circles (and I think also most Church circles regardless of theological position), we have found a general consensus that racism is not only wrong, but that it is like calling someone a “low-life scum”. For those white people who actively oppose Nazism and apartheid, who like Obama and Mandela, who might even have had a black person sleep in their guest bedroom (or even been in the Black Sash and written the first article on the death of Steve Biko) to be called a racist is like being punched in the stomach. But we don’t know what the word mean.

The author doesn’t really define racism. Or does she? It seems like the author concern racism to be any kind of action which someone doesn’t like in which the one doing it clearly stated that aspects of these categories which we call race influence this action. So if a company states that they will hire a black person rather than a white person, because they want to get their BEE scorecard right (not a very good reason in my mind, I would prefer if people do stuff for ethical rather than legal reasons, but let’s leave that for today), then it is “racism”. When UCT set different standards for entry into courses depending on race, then that is racism (honestly, the comparison between the white student who had 8 distinctions and was refused and the black student who barely passed is getting a bit old, the UCT example is somewhat more realistic). I do believe the author would agree that if someone actively states that they refuse to hire black people that would also be racism.

But if me and my black boss, who frequently travel together, and have both read one or two books on racism in the past, point out patterns in how security personnel at airports treat us differently, can we call it racism? The personnel are mainly black, and most probably not aware that their is a pattern where he has to show proof of identification more often than I have to.

And if I continue to have a sense of fear when I get the impression that I’m trailed by a black person in Sunnyside, but I don’t even recognize when I’m trailed by a white person in Hatfield, is that racism?

And if I have different emotions when looking at photos of white squatters than I would have when looking at black squatters, is that racism?

And if I find myself listening more intently to the white speaker than the black speaker, somewhere deep inside myself assuming that the white person know what she/he is speaking about, assuming that they did their research with the required precision etc, is that racism?

And if police (also black policemen) just have a tendency to assume that black people was responsible for a crime, and therefore end up finding more of the black criminals because that is where they look, is that racism?

And when a global economic system and educational system is structured so that is “just happens” that white people tend to have more capital, more businesses, more degrees, is that racism?

One response in a context such as this is to refuse any talk about racism. To insist that any reference to race is not allowed. The article took a different route. Irritated with the difficulty of discussion this topic, the difficulty that we don’t understand what is meant by the term, and the perception that it has become a “political card”, or a vague reference used when no other critique can be brought into an argument, the author attempt to make it absurd by presenting certain situations which would then be “racist” under this absurd understanding. Perhaps its just another attempt at saying: “let’s stop all this talk about racism, it’s absurd” (although their is a message in the article that the biggest problem or racism today is reversed racism against white people, not an uncommon thread in white rhetoric).

Given the fact that their is no real biological grounds for grouping people into the races we do, and even less grounds for pointing out qualities which is inherently connected to these biological markers, some prefer to say that we should rather just stop any reference to race. It doesn’t help us to speak about race at all (says these voices that heard some vague Marxist critique on the topic somewhere).

I believe two things should guide us:

First, what we have as “races” today is something that was constructed historically over the long period of time. Its development is complex, and is intertwined with class, gender, culture, language and many other aspects. I am stuck with constantly being given an interpretation of what it would imply to be “white”. I find myself in a community which consist primarily of those who reinforce this same racialized ideas. To break with it is not impossible, but will take generations of hard work on various levels: on our minds, on our societal structures, on the language we use, on the images found in the media, on the habits deeply ingrained on an unconscious level.

Second, we will have to learn to use the word “racism” responsibly, and to define what we mean when we use it. I think it is am important word. It is a word which remind us of a history to which we never want to go back to. But it is a dangerous word. It is a word that can be misunderstood. And it is a word which the popular use of has lead to various reductions, various attempts at scapegoating while portraying others as innocent.

What is racism? Racism is that which cause me to see that which I identify as “white” as more important, more correct, more trustworthy or more moral, than that which I identify as “black”. Racism is that which cause those who are identified as “black” to suffer more through the structuring of society than those who are identified as “white”.

Am I a racist?

The image which help some of us, is to say that I am a racist like a recovering addict.

I am a recovering racist. I struggle with the ideas I have internalized. I struggle with turning a blind eye towards, justifying, or even supporting policies and systems which end up harming black people more than white people. I struggle with assuming that a white life is worth more than a black life. I struggle with sometimes revolting when I see black and white people in romantic relationships. And my struggle at times become most visible when I want to convince myself and the world that “I am not a racist”. I don’t have a problem.

So I am a racist. A recovering racist. It’s a painful process. And sometimes I need a support group where I can share my struggles, because without this, I find myself either denying that I’m struggling with this, or making jokes or absurd statements about this.

A Generous Orthopraxy?

Yes, that is a play onto McLaren’s well-known book which gave rise to fingers being pointed towards heresy, but this post has little to no reflection on McLaren’s book.

A few years ago conversations on “orthodoxy and orthopraxis” was quite common. The parts of the conversation which I enjoyed basically boiled down to the idea that orthopraxis (“right living”) was more important than orthodoxy (“right doctrine”). Obviously critiques came in stating that orthodoxy shouldn’t be read in such a narrow fashion, not to mention the various critiques from those who believed that the correct doctrine (narrowly defined as the thoughts we have concerning God) was indeed the most important part of being Christian. I generally found myself comfortable with voices arguing that in reading the gospels our lives as followers of Jesus seem to be more important than getting the facts and details right (thus the orthopraxis rather than orthodoxy argument as it was popularly formulated).

In the meantime the conversations has evolved, suddenly everyone went missional, the emerging label died a silent death to a certain extend, we have American’s teaching Africans about postcolonial theology and what have you more. But I experience a certain amount of tension growing with this newly discovered orthopraxis. More and more it would seem like we get a form of Christian boastfulness where some are “more missional” than others. “I feed more poor people than you” seem to be the new scale along which God’s favour for certain groups are to be measured. The idea that “we have found the real radical Jesus while you are still struggling with the old institutional Jesus” end up not very far from the many debated which we’ve seen over the past two centuries where various groups have declared themselves to be the true bearers of the correct faith, only now, the correct faith is equated with the correct way of fixing the world.

Annemie Bosch once shared a story of what David Bosch used to say during Apartheid. She gave permission that I can share it, although she hasn’t read these words, so mistakes in this paragraph are my own, but nonetheless, it goes something like this:

During Apartheid David Bosch would often say that in the struggle against apartheid, and in the work of transforming the mainline church and it’s relation to apartheid, we need to voices of Carel Boshoff, Johan Heyns, David Bosch as well as Beyers Naudé. Those who aren’t able to listen to the one, might listen to the other, and although they are voicing seemingly contradictory opinions, each in his unique way is contributing towards the end of apartheid and a just society.

This is no generous orthodoxy (in the strict popular interpretation of the word), but might rather be described as a generous orthopraxy. Tony Jones wrote a brilliant piece a number of years ago where attempted to describe a broad understanding of a changing orthodoxy where all role-players (I believe in a blogpost on the paper he used the words “from Benny Hinn to the Pope”, although I can’t find it) co-determine the definition of orthodoxy, and we remain open to the possibility that our consensus might change.

Within the complex reality of our world today it might be important to remain skeptical of the person with the “perfect plan for poverty”. Within the broad discussion of those who believe in justice for all we might want to recognize the role played by everyone from American short-term mission teams to Africa right through to Marxist analysts. Working with a fluid orthodoxy assume a robust debate, but it is a debate where we remain generous on who we consider to be a “legitimate voice” within the ongoing discussion. In our quest for justice, for ethics, I’d suggest we remain generous on who we consider to be partners on our quest for “right living”. This will require a robust debate, a clashing of ideas, but it assume that those I differ with are a necessary voice, and more important, a necessary body, in our quest for justice.

Annemie Bosch kindly rewrote the story to better reflect what was actually said, and agreed that I could add it here:

During Apartheid, David Bosch maintained that in order for us to attain justice for all in South Africa, we needed, in the Afrikaans-speaking section of our nation, the voices of Beyers Naudé, David Bosch, Johan Heyns, Carel Boshoff and Andries Treurnicht. Each of them was, in his own way, campaigning for a just society and for true equality and equity. Those who, because of their background and upbringing, could not hear what Beyers said, would perhaps be able to hear what David said – and so on, all along the line, up to the stance which A.P.Treurnicht took. So each one of these people, and others like them, were contributing towards a change in South Africa so that we could have justice and peace for all…. Which, even up to this day, we have not achieved. So once again we need the voices of many people at different levels of “the Stuggle for Justice” in the New South Africa. Let’s not write off those who differ from us in some or other way. Lets rather use our energy to do what our hand finds to do, and do it well. Let’s take hands and stand together against that which is wrong in our society – and especially in THE CHURCH – which is so much bigger than our little part of it!

Edit (3/8/2011)

space: spatial knowledge and whiteness

Continuing from the post on spatial power and whiteness

After noticing how race in many instances continue to mean that white people has the privilege (right) to move anywhere, while black people (and today I use black to refer to all people who are pushed out of the dominant normalized racial position) are in various ways bound to specific spaces, there is a second part which we have to notice:

Because white people in South Africa had the right to move into any space they wanted to, they decided to not move into every space, but limited themselves to white spaces. Because black people had no control over which spaces they moved into, they were forced to move into all spaces, those designated as black spaces, but also those designated as white spaces.

The apparent contradiction rests on the distribution of money and work. White people controlled (and in South Africa continue to control) the financial resources, which in many instances meant that they controlled the working environments. In it’s ultimate form it meant that they had the ability and privilege of appointing someone to work in their homes as cleaners. Black people thus had to learn the knowledge of moving into these designated white spaces in order to gain access to money and work.

This meant that black people gained knowledge of “both sides” of the Apartheid world because they didn’t have the privilege to control money and resources, while white people because of their privileged position, learned knowledge only of those spaces which they had control over. Black people had the ability to translate between these spaces, while white people did not.

Whether my assumptions about black people is correct I cannot say, but I see this with white people. There is this whole world which white people don’t know how to navigate. Think of the townships, the public transport system, and yes, today I guess the inner-cities as well. Most white people I know carry no natural knowledge which can help them navigate these spaces. But at the same time black people have been moving into and our of those designated white spaces (suburbs, malls, business) and they know the rules, both written and unwritten, by which these spaces are governed.

Thus, in spite of my argument that the decision to move into various spaces is already a reminder of the privileged position I am in, it is making exactly the decision which we have not been making thanks to the privileged position our racialisation has ensured white people. And with this, it is making the decision which causes the discomfort of not knowing: Not knowing the unwritten, and many times the written, rules of this space I am moving into. This does not take away the important critique that my move can also reinforce white privilege if it is used to “take back the city” – to broaden the “area of control of white people”, which it can become, even for those coming with good intentions (mission history should teach us at least this).

What it does help me with is understanding that experiences of discomfort because of my lack of knowledge is caused by my own privileged position and the ways in which it was unpacked and used in the past. The task is therefore not on black people to do things in such a way that I don’t experience any discomfort because of my lack of knowledge, but on myself to work through these moments in which I am confronted with the fact that my past has kept me in exclusively white spaces.

maybe Apartheid wasn’t so bad?

In Steyn’s work, Whiteness Just Isn’t What It Used To Be, which I’ve been writing about in the previous two posts, all the narratives she identified accepts that Apartheid oppressed black people, and that what happened to black people under Apartheid was in some way wrong. Even the hardliner colonial approach (probably the most vocally and blatantly racist in her spread of white narratives) she describes as acknowledging this:

Whereas a nod is made to the deleterious effects of Apartheid on black South Africans (“they were definitely MORE affected”), the major effect of Apartheid was to provice nurturing ground for the innate spitefulness and vengeful nature of the “others” (p60)

However, as I’ve mentioned last week, I believe things have changed since Steyn did her research, and one of these is that I experience a growing group of people who seem to deny the atrocities of Apartheid, and a group that are describing the current government as much worse for black people than Apartheid. Maybe these can be called a hard and soft form of a similar trend, both denying that Apartheid was really as bad.

As time seem to pass, it would seem that white people, at least a certain group among them, seem to reconstruct their whiteness by making the current government and the international press the culprit in depicting the Afrikaners and Apartheid as much worse than they were, and furthermore by implying, or stating out front, that continued Apartheid would have been a much better deal for black people in South Africa.

Maybe this is a trend only among younger people who talks from total ignorance. But it would seem that a group that is even more hardline than what Steyn described seem to be growing parallel with the hybridization that is also becoming more and more common among white people. It’s worrying trend, and a reminder that simply letting time pass is not necessarily going to guarantee reconciliation.

The hope that a next generation would automatically become “color blind” is totally shattered when we find young people that become even more racist than their parents were, and also when we find people over time growing more and more blatantly racist, and appreciative of Apartheid, instead of slowly working through the evil, and bit by bit acknowledging it and actively deciding to move even further away from it.

Auschwitz and apartheid: which do we know better?

I had these two pictures in my sermon yesterday, and asked the congregation to recognize them.

I wondered whether anyone would recognize the first. But within a few guesses one of the high-school girls had it: Auschwitz.

Later the second was shown. But no matter what, no one could recognize this. My colleague, had to point it out: The Apartheidmuseum.

We seriously need to get in touch with our own history…

White theologian in a semi-post-Apartheid South Africa

Apartheid ended in 1994. Yes, I know. And the voices who reminded me in the past that I must remember that things were much worse under Apartheid, and not downplay this by making as if nothing has changed have a point. But to say we are post-Apartheid, fails to recognize that neither our hearts nor our systems have gotten rid of this legacy completely. Much has changed, and we can thank God for that. But much didn’t change for many South Africans.

I am white. Sibitiwe might have complimented me with a black heart. But I remain a white theologian in Africa. Less and less European as the months go by. More and more being baptized in the water of Africa as transformative experience after transformative experience, as relationship after relationthips, and relationships over time, is deepening my experience of this country, this continent. With all it’s problems and questions. I don’t want to be anywhere else. This is my home. I am from Africa.

My church may be irrelevent, in spite of the examples of really good works of development being done, for which we also thank God, and should not consider futile. I know that for the bigger part of South Africa we won’t be missed when we are gone. They might miss our help, but in very few circumstances will they miss our friendship. There are exceptions, but they are exactly that: exceptions.

The journey that Dutch Reformed congregations will have to go on is a long journey I know, it’s a difficult journey, and we will require a lot of help. But it is a journey which some of us are willing to commit to with everything we have.