On Racism (Again)

One of the major problems with racism in South Africa - and elsewhere - is that, for the time being at least, race is inextricably linked to class, and racism is therefore inextricably linked to classism.

The reason this is such a problem is that many common rationalisations or "arguments" used by racists, adjusted to reference class and not race, become little more than statements of demographic fact. "Lower-working-class people are more likely to resort to violent crime as a form of income" is a perfectly neutral and demographically accurate statement.

But people who have conditioned themselves to see people in terms of race and nothing else - which shows serious and chronic disempathy, for starters - see something entirely different. Because of the links between class and race, they see only the race, whether it's Africans here in South Africa, Latinos and African-Americans in the USA, Romani in Europe, or anything else...

So they blame race, failing to realise that precisely the racism they are perpetuating is to a large degree responsible for the social status which is perpetuating their racist ideas.

It's really rather sad...