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I’m too proud to bend and too poor to break, I wear the mask that grins and lies

3 Feb 2022

The construct of race neutrality feeds white nationalist victimhood by positing the notion that any policy protecting or advancing non-white SA towards equity is ‘reverse discrimination’.

I have been reading a most fascinating book by Ibram X Kendi, How To Be An Antiracist, which of course conjures up many similarities between racism in the US and here back home in South Africa.

He identifies a number of situations in which racists thrive and how we as anti-racists should respond to these in our everyday lives. It made me realise that amid all the focus on corruption, State Capture, fraud, racketeering and so much more, the ordinary person out there remains subjected to all forms of racism and racists.

The construct of race neutrality feeds white nationalist victimhood by positing the notion that any policy protecting or advancing non-white SA towards equity is “reverse discrimination”. That’s how racist power can call affirmative action policies and BBBEE policies that succeed in reducing racial inequities, problematic. This is partly also linked to why the DA has such problems with the deployment policies of the governing party.

The reason why “race” was created was because it creates new forms of power, the power to categorise and judge, elevate and downgrade, include and exclude. Kindi says race makers use that power to process distinct individuals, ethnicities, and nationalities into monolithic races.

So, how do we as black South Africans cope with such ongoing racism? In steps Maya Angelou, with her spoken-word poem, We Wear The Mask. In her adaptation of the poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, she, I think, provides the answer as to how we as blacks cope with ongoing racism. It goes something like this:

We wear the mask that grins and lies.
It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes.
This debt we pay to human guile
With torn and bleeding hearts…
We smile and mouth the myriad subtleties.
Why should the world think otherwise
In counting all our tears and sighs.
Nay let them only see us while
We wear the mask.
We smile but oh my God
Our tears to thee from tortured souls arise
And we sing Oh Baby doll, now we sing…
The clay is vile beneath our feet
And long the mile
But let the world think otherwise.
We wear the mask.
When I think about myself
I almost laugh myself to death.
My life has been one great big joke!
A dance that’s walked a song that’s spoke.
I laugh so hard HA! HA! I almos’ choke
When I think about myself.
Seventy years in these folks’ world
The child I works for calls me girl
I say “HA! HA! HA! Yes ma’am!”
For workin’s sake
I’m too proud to bend and
Too poor to break
So… I laugh! Until my stomach ache
When I think about myself.
My folks can make me split my side
I laugh so hard, HA! HA! I nearly died
The tales they tell sound just like lying
They grow the fruit but eat the rind.
Hmm huh! I laugh uhuh huh huh…
Until I start to cry when I think about myself
And my folks and the children”.

And so, through the condescension and the patronising guile, we wear the mask. But every now and then the mask is taken off, we get so gatvol, we have to vent our anger and frustration. The past July protests and looting is one such occasion. Continuing to avoid, not engage with this very crucial historical matter and wanting our focus to only be on the failures of us black people, in the form of corruption, State Capture, stealing. All of these are very important matters and yes, we must act decisively against the perpetrators and wrongdoers, but this does not take care of one of our most important issues, the “national question” (race).

Maya Angelou continues:

My fathers sit on benches,
Their flesh count every plank,
The slats leave dents of darkness
Deep in their withered flank.
And they gnarled like broken candles,
All waxed and burned profound.
They say, but sugar, it was our submission
that made your world go round.
There in those pleated faces
I see the auction block
The chains and slavery’s coffles
The whip and lash and stock.
My fathers speak in voices
That shred my fact and sound
They say, but sugar, it was our submission
that made your world go round.
They laugh to conceal their crying,
They shuffle through their dreams
They stepped ’n fetched a country
And wrote the blues in screams.
I understand their meaning,
It could an did derive
From living on the edge of death
They kept my race alive
By wearing the mask! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

The sense of entitlement among our youth, the cries that we who participated in the anti-apartheid Struggle, including Mandela, have sold them out because they have no economic emancipation to date.

The racist policies around private property rights and section 25 of our Constitution contribute to this disenfranchisement. These are all matters that we must address soonest because the wearing of the masks might not last. To the youth I say, “but sugar, it was our submission that made your world go round”.

There is also racism that plays out with regards to this phenomenon of African foreigners and their employment in the country. I disagree with the EFF, Patriotic front and ActionSA and their misguided approach to this issue. I argue that besides the fact that by employing black South Africans you risk the possibility of them joining a union as permitted by law, there is also a healthy dose of racism involved.

Given our history in this country, I think it’s very difficult for whites to employ South African blacks because you will have to face up to misconceptions such as stupidity and incompetence, you will have to engage your employees as equal citizens with rights.

This is clearly proving too much for many white restaurant owners. So, they mention nonsensical arguments such as “they don’t have a good command of the English language” or they don’t have the necessary qualification and skills etc.

I’m not sure what exact sophisticated skills one needs to carry a plate of food or bring someone a cup of coffee.

I’m not arguing we should not employ foreign nationals but let’s be clear there are racist undertones that also inform this situation, especially in the hospitality industry. The Zondo report, the SIU Report and every other report or investigation are critical to protect our democracy, but we should not be fooled that for many whites this is also taken as reinforcing their racist beliefs and attitudes. After all, what did you expect from these blacks, it was just a matter of time.

Kendi makes the point, and I agree, “the gift of seeing myself as a black instead of colour blind is that it allows me to clearly see myself historically and politically as being an anti-racist, as a member of the interracial body striving to accept and equate and empower racial difference of all kinds”.

We all have a long path to traverse still, black and white in this our beloved country. DM

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