Let’s be honest with ourselves about racism

American dictionary Merriam-Webster will change its definition of the word “racism” to include not only just a “political or social system founded on racism”, but a system which oppresses people based on their colour.

The revised definition comes after an engagement with a young black woman, who told publishers the definition of race had to be moved beyond “oh, I just don’t like someone”.

Coming, as it does, in the global turmoil around the death of George Floyd and the prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement, the tweaking of the definition of racism might help people realise that even when they, personally, are not acting in a racist manner, the system in which they live is built upon a foundation of oppressing a race.

That is true for SA, which was always a country in which one race dominated others. Denying that fact – or launching into long diatribes of “whataboutery” concerning the evils other races do – serves only to muddy the waters and to evade acknowledging the past.

Accepting the wrongs of the past will help South African whites, especially, to go a little way down the road to understand their compatriots. It will also, hopefully, allow them to open their ears and their minds to the suffering of others.

Perhaps, the process may even help them recognise the reality of white privilege – the situation where, even now, a person believes (from centuries of their own race experience) that they are, somehow, better than others.

Very, very few of those people, by the way, who deny the existence of white privilege, would swap places with a black person.

That tells you something.

If we want to build a country with a future for our children and grandchildren we have to, first and foremost, be honest with ourselves.

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