One thing I can tell you about White supremacy is that no Black person is immune from it. No matter how rich, educated, powerful and successful you are, it WILL visit you. A few days ago I found myself near tears while out with my friend Phindi. I was relating to her the story of some White man from the United Kingdom, who has been harrassing me for months, to do lunch with him. I eventually gave in, to get him off my back. We went out for lunch and were having a fairly decent conversation until he started his issue of declaring his undying love for me. Exasperated, I asked him why on earth hed imagine that I want to be with him, given my very public and strong views about inter-racial relationships. He said it doesnt matter, that he likes me with those views. I asked him if hed ever dated a Black woman and he said no. So I asked him what exactly does he like about me, and his response was: Youre different, youre not like other Black people. Youre smart, you can think. You are well-travelled, you read global literature, you write and speak well. Above all, youre fearless. Youre different from other Blacks. I was so shocked that for a few minutes, I kept quiet. I wasnt sure if Id heard this man clearly. I looked at him, and he was sitting there beaming, probably convinced that he had said the most charming thing to me. He was looking at me expectantly, as though what he had just said was supposed to make my heart melt. You see, theres nothing cute about that mans statement. In fact, theres everything diabolical about it. In thinking that hes praising me, he completely undermined and humiliated me and my people. It hit me that hes talking about my very own grandmother, who isnt sophisticated. Hes talking about my friends, about people I grew up with, about my comrades, about many Black people who havent had the privilege to travel, to have resources to buy global literature and as a result, dont use grandiloquents that Malaika uses in her speech and writings. It was never their choice, but the realities of constructs that are not of our doing. To think highly of one Black person and lowly of the rest is to think lowly of Black humanity in its entirety. Mandelafication is the White communitys worst insult to Black humanity. They elevate one Black person, one who fits into their definition of respectability, and project him as an ideal Black person, one whom we should all aspire to be like if we seek White affirmation. The closer we are to being like this type of Black person whom theyve affirmed, the better and more acceptable we are to them. And such a Black person, for them to function within this construct, must necessarily believe that they are indeed above other Blacks, that theyre different, special and unlike all others, and the others are of course inferior. After venting out and crying to Phindi, I concluded that my greatest fear is that in our country, White supremacy is so deeply entrenched that we no longer recognise it. Blacks are actually bigger defenders of Whiteness than Whites themselves. Statements like: Must everything be about race? Apartheid is over, we must move on are more likely to be made by Blacks, in defence of Whites, than by those Whites in defence of themselves. I pause...
Posted on: Tue, 09 Dec 2014 10:36:02 +0000
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