Contact Me
Subscribe
Posts
Comments
Search
Followers
Blog Archive
- ► 2012 (246)
- ► 2011 (708)
- ► 2010 (847)
About Me
- A Stuijt
- Retired South African medical journalist, ex-Sunday Times of Johannesburg.
Black racism or black prejudice and bigotry?
15:30 | 
Posted by
A Stuijt |
From August 14th, 2009 article by legal expert Pierre De Vos on his blog “Constitutionally Speaking”:
De Vos, holder of the Claude Leon Foundation Chair in Constitutional Governance at the University of Cape Town, writes a weekly blog dealing with social and political aspects of South African society - mostly from a constitutional perspective.
He writes: “Black racism is no less real than white racism,” writes Eisebius McKaiser in this morning’s Business Day, challenging the view that black people cannot be racist. He states:
“Not only can particular remarks and actions by black people easily meet the low standards of racism, it is actually disrespectful to suggest that we cannot be racist. The temptation and capacity to injure others is a human trait. I want my capacity for evil to be recognised. If you deny me the ability to be racist, you are essentially claiming that I am intrinsically good. I cannot help but be a good guy. I am like a rock or a plant or chair — lacking the animation of a being that is fragile but recognisably human. It is hardly complimentary to exclude black people from the full range of human potentiality.
“You are only morally praiseworthy for desisting from racist behaviour if, through reflection, you recognise that racism is immoral and decide to act in accordance with such moral reasoning. If we as blacks cannot help but be non-racists, then we can never get moral praise for our innate non-racism. We would simply be like toasters that work well, designed to produce warm and fuzzy feelings in others. After all, moral praise can be given only to creatures that have the capacity to act in differing ways.
“By condemning Hlophe’s remark [that he will not shake the hands of a white man] as a racist assertion, we are thereby fully respecting his humanity and holding him morally accountable. By denying him the right to be judged in our game of tough ethical relations, we would implicitly be placing him outside the moral community. Even the Justice for Hlophe Alliance would not want that, surely?”
Vos comments: “At first glance this argument seems compelling. Who among us would be able to dispute that the capacity to injure others is a human trait that belongs to us all regardless of what race we might claim to belong to? Who would deny that it is deeply demeaning to argue that because of a person’s purported race, he or she either has moral agency and can do only bad, or has no agency and can only do good?
“However… “ read the rest on his blog: http://constitutionallyspeaking.co.za/?p=1313
Labels:
0 comments: