Outcomes of segregation

The killing of nine African-American worshippers in a South Carolina, US,  church  has brought to the fore  uncomfortable questions regarding race relations in that country, especially in the wake of much-publicised incidences of police brutality directed against unarmed black men.

Scores of images have been found on a hate-filled website of the accused, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, holding the Confederate  flag and posing at slavery museums.

The website also contains a nearly 2500-word manifesto criticising blacks as being “inferior” and filled with racist ranting.

This week demonstrations erupted in the US and protestors burnt the Confederate flag, deeming it a symbol of  “state-sponsored racism” and demanding it be removed from public. For the black minority, it would appear, the land of the free is not so free.

An American white man I met in Cape Town two weeks ago shared a chilling story regarding how problematic race issues are in his country. He told me his black friends had confided that they were raising their sons with an awareness of the possibility of one day being confronted by an aggressive white policeman who may not hesitate to pull the trigger if he felt provoked.

So they taught their children that if arrested to immediately raise their hands and address police officers with extreme deference, so as  to make it clear that they posed no threat. In his view many law-abiding black American males felt targeted by the authorities and lived under the stigma attached to criminality.

America evidently still has a very long way to go to mend the fractured relations between whites and blacks.

For South Africans one of the most disturbing things about the US church killings was the association of between Roof and apartheid South Africa. A photograph emerged of him with the old South African and Rhodesian flags displayed on his jacket.

The authenticity of this photo is now disputed by some organisations who claim the image was photo-shopped.

What does not seem to be in dispute is that the killing of the nine people in the Emanuel Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church  was motivated by racial hatred.

That begs the question of why hatred exists for people who look different to oneself?

It was former president Nelson Mandela who said no one is born hating another person because of the colour of their skin. He said hatred is learnt whereas  love comes more naturally to the human heart.

Roof was evidently socialised and indoctrinated with race hatred.

I believe there are similarities between this incident and what is happening in some communities in South Africa.

For instance, the recent case of a Gauteng school in which a parent captured a video of children being separated according to race while on a school outing.

While the school claimed it was separating the pupils based on language spoken, surely such actions serve to accentuate racial distinctiveness rather than building unity.

In the book Race Relations Ezra Roberta Park says the term “race relations” is only useful in communities where people are conscious of their racial difference. He suggests that “race relations, in this sense, are not so much the relations that exist between individuals of different races but between individuals conscious of these differences”.

Bearing in mind that many white children grow up seeing black people in subservient roles as gardeners, domestic workers or petrol attendants, surely it would be better to teach children to focus on their commonalities, than on differences?

Apartheid’s lesson is that separation is the seedbed for distorted ideas about racial superiority.

And once such ideas are internalised they are very difficult to change.

It is then that incidents happen such as the one in which a young man sat for an hour among people in a routine Bible study  and then opened fire, killing nine of them.

However distorted Roof’s views were, he may well have believed his actions were a service to his race – one which he perhaps felt was no longer enjoying superior status.