This is a complete change of subject to what I intended writing, but on my second day sitting at home and ill, I was appalled to read more nonsense about “white genocide” in South Africa shared on social media, so I felt compelled to tackle this subject again.
Let’s explain how I ended up with these views… I grew up in apartheid South Africa. Almost every white person I knew, and in childhood I only knew white people, was racist. Almost without exception, all of them… That is not to say it was always their fault. We were exposed to propaganda all the time. We grew up in areas where black people were not allowed to live, ate in restaurants where they could not, went to beaches where they could not, went to schools they weren’t allowed to attend, and learned from our racist parents. It rubs off. Racism is implicit and racists don’t even realize that they are racists. But they don’t have to stay that way.
I first became aware of apartheid when I was eleven years old. In my primary school, we had a progressive history teacher, who taught us that the history we’d learned up to that point was false. All the nonsense about the land being unoccupied and the white people moving in while the black people moved down to Cape Town from the north, etc. It was all bullshit. This was followed by another progressive teacher in my last grade of primary school.
In high school, I dropped history as a subject as soon as I was allowed. However, left wing teachers were more careful there, presumably because teenagers don’t keep quiet about what they hear in school. By the time I finished school, I had to spend a year in the army because of conscription. They made me sign a form stating I would never support the ANC. Because I was 18 and naïve, I didn’t see through them. To my shame, I was taken in by the rhetoric when they threatened us… when they explained that if I did not sign, it would be held against me and I’d never get a job. In reality and in post-apartheid South Africa, that would have counted in my favour. And maybe those idiots would have kicked me out and I wouldn’t have had to waste a year of my life in the apartheid army.
But it retrospect, I’m glad I signed that piece of paper. It exposed me to the harsh reality that most of my white countrymen were racists. It exposed me to a perverted form of white supremacist Christianity where the religion itself was used to justify racism and the Group Areas Act (the legislation that prevented blacks and whites from living in the same areas). It helped me to see through them. I still see through them. (By the way, I see that same form of perverted white supremacist Christianity is used by Evangelical Christians in the USA today.)
A few years ago, I went to an uncle’s funeral. He was my father’s brother, and while there, I spoke to another family member. Somehow the subject of racism came up, and I mentioned that I couldn’t understand how people could still be racist. He agreed with me, and then went on to say, “I treat all the boys who work for me fairly”. Boys. He referred to grown up men as boys just because they are black. And that’s the way it is – racists don’t know they are racists. It was like I had gone back in time and tried to have a reasonable conversation with my father… impossible.
So this is the way it is, the reality of the “white genocide” of farm murders. Farm murders are real. People are killed on farms just like in the cities and suburbia. People are killed by criminals – drug addicts getting money for their next fix. You are equally likely to be killed there regardless of the colour of your skin, even though you’d think criminals would only target those who have more money, which would be the farmers. (Truth be told, junkie criminals aren’t that smart. They target everybody.) The stats that those who believe in white genocide refer to don’t even mention race.
What’s really happening is this: White racists who were racists before apartheid ended, are still racists today. They have learned to hide it because it’s unpopular to call black people kaffirs to their faces. It will get you into trouble. But they genuinely believe that black people are inferior, and they remember apartheid with fondness. To them, it is unfortunate that apartheid ended, and black people are the enemy. An enemy who now has equal rights and power. An enemy who would want revenge. And when they hear about farm murders, it fits right into their narrative that they believed before apartheid ended – that black people shouldn’t be given rights because they will be incompetent in everything they do (because they are inferior), and that they will seek revenge. This belief in “white genocide” is thus a manifestation of the fear of these racists, the fear that what they thought would happen, would happen. It’s not happening. It’s not real. But try telling that to these right wing loons.
The right wing in this country is all about that sort of view, a view twisted by racism, held by people who mostly are not even self aware enough to know that they are racists. And of course some who do. That’s why I despise them. That’s why I call them racist scum and white trash. Because that’s what they are.
Skeptical Exaddict 