On the soft violence of tolerant spaces.
It was on Monday the 18th when I ran into one of my friends in front of an apartment complex on my way to campus. I had not seen him for a while, so I thought it best to use the time to catch up — since I would possibly not see him for a long time, what with exams and all.
Lo and behold, a young woman exists her car (inside the complex) to tell the security guard to tell us to move away from where we were standing because we looked “suspicious”. The guard told us these words, with no hint of irony or embarrassment because, he probably did not have enough time to euphemise the sentiments expressed or he felt that we needed to hear the truth — his reasons for doing so notwithstanding, I salute him. We obliged, and indeed moved closer to the road. After all, what did we expect? Two young black men wearing hoodies in middle-class suburbia at dusk must surely be criminals, no?
Naturally, this did not faze me. Because once you have lived in Pretoria for as long as I have, you learn very quickly that these incidents are commonplace and you grow numb to most of it all. However, the one thing that kept gnawing at my mind as I lay awake at night was the fact that there was very little my friend and I could do to ensure that what happened to us would not happen to someone else in future.
And that is when it hit me. There was very little we could do. Let’s face it, inasmuch as we robustly and critically engage with mostly white students (and even then, having to constantly explain and defend our humanity) about race, racism, privilege and societal power relations in our very ‘ivory tower’ like ways, there is actually very little we can do to end racial prejudice.
We, being on the outside, will never be able to change the perceptions of others about who and what we are. The real work is there — around dinner tables, around the braai, where stereotypes are invoked in order to explain the gargantuan failures of government, where “these people” are said to be (to quote a Facebook friend) “savages incapable of adapting to civilisation” —that is where work must be done, and that is where the real change will happen. And until those who have access to these spaces take it upon themselves to do the hard work, nothing will change.
That being said, I have chosen to remain silent above everything else. Because silence is golden. And because, as Toni Morrison once said, racism is a distraction.
“It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. […and] None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
It is equally exhausting — mentally, physically and emotionally. But there is one thing that I will do, though. I will absent myself from spaces where I am tolerated. Where my entire existence has to be ‘put up’ with. Because my humanity is not an accident of biology, but a deliberate and purposeful act by whoever created me black.
Never subject yourself to the soft violence of tolerant spaces. Always surround yourself with people who both recognise and celebrate your humanity.
