Beating SA’s social challenges

It is one of the symptoms of our soundbite-obsessed, status-updating, tweets-and-comments society that major issues become polarised into two sides. This is useful for most issues – gender-based violence, for instance. Or racism. Violent crime. It makes sense to assume a categorical position against these.

However, I can’t help wondering whether essentialising even issues such as these makes it harder to understand them, and to ultimately get rid of them.

Take racism, for example. We can all agree that racism is deplorable and we should remove it from our society in all its forms. However, here we are 26 years into democracy and racism persists in corporate spheres, in the hair codes of schools, in our sport, and in the minds of many.

It’s interesting that almost no one admits to being a proponent of racism. The racism is systemic, subconscious, oblivious. My white compatriots and I, we might do things that are racist without even thinking about it. We might be simply implementing policy, oblivious functionaries of a racist system. We may have inherited values that are racist, and never actually questioned them.

We need to start questioning these values that we help to support, and which become part of us. Only then can we undo racism. So racism is simple: we oppose it. However, its workings are complex and nuanced.

White supremacy may so deeply infest an economic system that a black police officer in a black country may be deployed to enforce racist policies against other black people. There might certainly be racism at work, but there are no racists visible at the scene of the crime.

Taking a stand against something is not the same as really understanding it. It is important that when we retweet a hashtag, or post an update on an issue, or take a knee during an anthem, we also do the work to understand that issue. Hashtags are great. Messaging needs to be clear and powerful.

Slogans and symbols have incredible power. But it is real understanding that will ultimately help us overcome our major social challenges.

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