Media Flaws

"I shall not permit you to talk to me like whites used to talk to blacks" is one line I will never forget, once uttered by the outgoing governor of the Reserve Bank / ‘The Guv’ in his interaction with a shareholder.

It is a single line that encapsulates the subtly of racism these days. Racism is no longer about asking for your Pass, erecting ‘No Blacks’ zones and relegating people to the outskirts of cities (although Western Cape Premier, Helen Zille, is hellbent on maintaining this form of segregation in her ‘keep them far’ or ‘there is no space for them’ policies). The problem begins with submissiveness and the capacity to allow people to talk down, patronize and weigh in their superiority complexes upon others. If you allow yourself to be subjectivised you will definitely become the subject of whatever you are going through.

I do not know why people pussyfoot around such matters. Black people must not allow themselves to be treated or spoken to in the manner in which they were spoken to in days bygone. If you are a black student, and a lecturer tells you ‘You won’t make it here, go back to your homeland university!’ what on earth is insulting in that? Why can one not tell the lecturer to go jump off a cliff (because respect evaporated the minute the senile imbecile told you you weren’t worthy) and add that: "I shall not permit you to talk to me like whites used to talk to blacks"?

There is a lack of assertiveness or a lack of confidence in one’s capabilities or humanness. Can someone explain to me how in this day in age an adult can say they are being discriminated against? By who? What exactly is discriminating against you? and why can’t you resolve it or take it up to senior management without breaking a bin or thrashing others in the process? Is it because you believe you won’t be taken seriously?

There seems to be an ingrained mentality, amongst blacks, that white people are superior and that their complaints or utterances always yield better results – whereas a black complaint won’t be taken seriously. There is a failure to understand that this is not a superiority complex matter but rather a mindset that seems to know what it wants and how it will go about getting it. Some call it a sense of entitlement. And I often ask when will black people genuinely adopt a sense of entitlement towards things they own or have paid for. Not a sense of entitlement for things they think or believe they should be entitled to. An example being university. You pay to be here as a student. You pay the salaries of staff i.e: you pay for a service to be rendered. It is your service, your money (loaned or not). You cannot pay so much money to enter a university or shoulder a massive loan only to think that you are less entitled to what the university has to offer.

So I’m sorry that I do not understand black people on campuses who moan about being treated unfairly or are subjects of discrimination. We need to emancipate ourselves from these Biko defined mental prisons and start realizing that indeed we live in a country of equal opportunities. Yes, I know some are more equal than others. But now you have to realize that practicing your rights will not lead you into a jail cell. Now try tell that to a black student and they will tell you if I moan or raise a complaint, the lecturers will ‘fail me’or lower my marks. It is an unassertive mentality beset by the fear of unfounded repercussions. What nonsense is it for a student to fear their marks will be lowered should they speak out against being discriminated?

Even better nonsense doing the rounds at universities is the so called ‘50% black mark zone syndrome’. There exists a general feeling amongst black learners across the country that they are always relegated to the between 50 and 60 percent mark zone regardless of their efforts. I’ll admit I too was once stuck in this zone. But that was in first year only. In second year the 70 percents started coming in. This was overcome by merely asking classmates who got better marks to share their marked essays with me, because our conversations suggested that we’d given the same responses to the same question. I’d read, compare and see that the differences were not so much in content but in presentation or ways of articulating a point clearly.

If however one is in the Maths / Science department and feels they are being undermarked. Then you can compare scripts and question why your “1 + 1 = 2” was marked incorrect and the white student’s “1 + 1 = 2” was marked correct. Instead of fulminating and ruminating in one’s res room and planning to burn down the whole Maths building for this injustice they could have easily approached the right people and had the entire matter resolved. It is when you are uncertain of your claim that you waver in your actions and start searching for fellow aggrieved geese, who will only lead you into a deeper pool of frustration that will guarantee your drowning. Who ever told one that if you are black and have a complaint you will not be listened to? Who said that? And where? A sad fact of life I have come to learn is that if you plant carrot seeds, you will inevitably see carrots growing. Not spinach. If you expect to find racism wherever you go, you will find it. If you expect to be discriminated against or spoken down to, then that is exactly what is going to happen to you.

Transformation politics are no longer about getting numbers right. It’s about ways of thinking. Not cultural riff raffs either. We will never be the same. That we must just accept. But we can all be assertive and confident in our roles here. Harbouring victim mentalities needs to go. No one is here to feel sorry for anyone. No one is of lessor being than the other. No one should enter universities to mope around expecting sympathy. This is a university goddamnit, not kindergarten. Blacks in universities need to sort themselves out. Decide exactly what it is they want to get out of being at universities and decide whether or not they are going achieve it or drop it.