In South Africa the dominant elite and their attachments like to invoke the notion of non-racialism. It is the undefined/unrefined thinking that race and racism can be neutralized if a state/society adopts a policy posture that claims the absence of race malice/discrimination in its wide functions.
The imposition of non-racialism is not new. Its antecedents arise from similarly problematic notions such as multiracialism and multiculturalism.
In any of these theory designs the assumption is that state and society is a progressive force toward a larger good (a decidedly liberal delusion) .
That good assumes unfettered inclusion via state sanctioned identity markers. But those markers are not innocuous labels. They are in fact historical markers that contain/describe the baggage of race and racism.
That baggage cannot just be wished away or even willed away, ever. Not inside of a racialized state for sure.
So why then is it so hard for white elites (and the black ones they create and promote to keep whiteness viable) to accept that their place in the racial state, even the post-apartheid one, is always contentious?
White people and the systems and values they create and sustain is whiteness in short. It becomes real and imposing because it was sanctioned by violence and normalized by structure. And it remains so.
In this context, South Africa is a whiteness state and society. We live and interact on a value hierarchy drawn from whiteness. No aspect of the lived experience is exempt from race, racialism, racialization and racism inside of a whiteness state and society.
And, even where white people are absent it does not mean that whiteness is similarly absent. In Nairobi I was amused to see black lawyers and judges sitting with white wigs like those drawn from its colonial past six decades ago.
Black and independent people playing dress rehearsal and value(s) make-up for a Eurocentric system that is assumed to be normal and universal.
The African National Congress has a checkered history of adopting Eurocentric concepts and trying to manipulate its application to draw relevance for a black wannabe class of ass kissers.
When Mandela stepped over the blood of millions of people whose lives were destroyed by colonialism and apartheid he and his movement allowed whiteness to dictate what the post-era must look like.
And it is here where I am stuck again today and under different but very tired pretexts/suppositions.
Today I was one of two people in a room who cannot claim to be both black and African in post-race marking of the non-racial kind. The other person was white and a senior academic with substantial power over many inside the room including myself.
The presentation we were attending was about Afrocentrism in higher education but not the kind that Temple University's Molefi Asante may privilege. Rather the question under research discussion was why the South African academy remains so white/Eurocentric in terms of what is taught and how it is taught (pedagogical superiority).
It is a contentious debate and not one that can avoid race or its historiography.
Still, the lone white participant wanted everyone to know that she was offended by the reference to white people and whiteness and apartheid.
"Does anyone here realize I am white and that these discussion offend me and hurt me and victimize me?" she argued vehemently.
This she did by referring to me and my point that capitalism has been adapted to normalize race and its racist practices and that the new black elite who adopted whiteness values were in fact part of the erasing of blackness, particularly its horrid history under colonialism and apartheid.
"This is not critical thinking. This is a political agenda. People here act like academics but they are really just wanting to replace white superiority with black superiority," she complained.
What utter rubbish. If the assumption is that white people/society create values free of socio-political and economic agendas then they should revoke her doctorate was my unspoken thinking.
How does one talk about the past in South Africa and critically analyze what must be done to rehabilitate the destruction that apartheid caused in pressing its version of whiteness if the very terms that have become our reality must be suppressed?
It is impossible and white people should not expect that just because Mandela and company handed them a get out of jail free card that they have the right to be exempted from their past and its present excesses.
I find it a hollow cop out for white people in general, and white South Africans in particular, to claim that this era must be negotiated in terms that do not speak to what apartheid and whiteness created.
The past is not in the past in these terms. And just what exactly happened to all those white racists who drew the privileges they now have from the oppression of black people? Is there even one left in South Africa who is honest enough to say we f*cked you over?
The doctoral student making the presentation put it best when he said that if she wanted to know what she inherited from the past all she had to recognize was that when she was still sleeping in the early hours of this morning almost two-thirds of employed black people were making their way to work.
"And it has been like this our whole lives. We were forcefully removed from where white people live now and where the jobs are. We sleep on buses and trains and work from day to day and it stays the same from generation to generation. And when we raise our voices to speak and ask why our stories are not being told in the universities we are scolded for pushing a selfish political agenda," he said.
The same student interviewed my father on Robben Island in early 2003. He remembered how my father told stories about Sobukwe's house and walked him through the courtyard as the process to memorialize that house was underway (now stalled).
I walked alongside my father on Robben Island for a week listening to him relay what that time meant to those who gave their lives for another view of life.
The young man remembered those interviews. He recorded them and pushed to have it made part of the African Studies curriculum where he studied. He failed.
I taught courses both undergraduate and graduate on Pan-Africanism and Robert Sobukwe in the US. I challenge you to find such a course anywhere in South Africa.
Our past is being manipulated toward erasure. In fact, in the terms the white woman might want it would be more comfortable for her if black people existed only in the manner that whiteness imagines them.
"It was not until I got to Howard University in Washington DC where Ridwan studied and taught did I realize that people were listening to me and my people. Here in South Africa I am still absent. Asleep on the buses and taxis going and coming," the doctoral student said.
At the end of this year he will get a doctorate from my old alma mater. I expect that he will push on as he has but I also expect that many white academics and their attachments will resist (this is the business of racism).
A big part of that resistance will be the insistence that we must set aside blaming white people for the past and rather adopt new categories of analysis that nonetheless still allow folks like the woman to remain in positions of power and privilege and to dictate its terms.
It is an old story. One I have not been able to run from no matter where I have worked (India included).
And it is for this reason that I have preferred to exist in my head rather than inside of my life for too long.
When I walked out of the meeting I was immediately confronted by several sistas and a brutha who are my colleagues.
"How can you just resign and walk away from this fight. You are needed now more than ever. We don't have the credentials to fight people like that but you can help us get there. You owe it to your country. So many have suffered to be abused. We must stand together Ridwan. Don't let it happen to you and don't let it happen to us."
I looked down at my shoes. My feet have been very cold and odd of late. I miss the driving force of my father and his patient hands and I am seeking to get lost in the mundane.
I am tired of fighting whiteness and so I have been thinking about me a lot lately. About my hands and knees and heart. And about my mother. She gave years and years for the ideal that seems even further now than ever.
The woman stormed out of the meeting at its close and the doctoral student came over and said "the struggle continues ne Ridwan. See you in the morning when we most likely will face race harassment and hostility charges."
I want to say bring it on heffa but my hands are frayed and too tired (right now) and my house is just about packed to go. Again.
And we are not free.
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