Just had a brief foray into politics this afternoon, when I joined and was within the hour kicked from a South African political discussion group on Facebook (the group shall remain unnamed to protect the innocent). To make a long story short: since I did not swear or say anything racist, I must conclude that I was banned for the heinous crime of proposing that peace and co-operation between races is a two-way street (and not solely up to those who have the mysterious and ill-defined attribute of being empowered). Whereas some regular contributors who seem to use white and european (intentional lower case e) as swear words, support genocide against the Jews, and wish to rape their political opponents and consign them to Hell, were allowed to stay on. Hilariously, this group claims that racism and hate speech are not allowed on their page. Although the sheer failure of logic and rhetorical ineptitude of the rabid ideologues on the group was highly amusing, the experience left me with a more serious thought. In South Africa, those of us who are white are supposed to be in such a perpetual state of self-hatred that the mere suggestion of racial equality, coming from us, is characterized as racism and supremacy and what not. And judging by the public discourse (at least when clowns like the EFF are involved), this is not only the state of affairs on isolated internet echo chambers populated by genocidal maniacs, but its how a lot of people seriously think about the world. In such a situation, how is any form of constructive dialog possible? How do we proceed from here, if society is polarized to such a degree? I honestly dont know the answer to that.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 16:34:44 +0000
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