The challenge of racism

What is racism? And what are its implications?
Racism is a form of xenophobia. I might be biased saying that it is one the strongest and unforgiving form of xenophobia.
Post-apartheid South Africa society draws a final line about racism being essentially xenophobia. It is clear that the origins are rooted in fear of other people that do not share the same culture and have different set of value. Fear that foreign behaviours that one doesn’t understand can be threats to one’s way of life. The bigger the difference in culture, the wilder the fear is. It has nothing to do with reason or assessment of values it has everything to do with fearing for one’s own riches and invariably one’s wealth.
Racism is unforgiving because it gets imbedded in skin colour.
No matter what you can do or even how rich and successful you can become you will still have the same skin tone. There is absolutely nothing that can be done about one’s genes heritage. This is final.

However racism still finds its real roots in the wealth and cultural differential and most people that are victim of racism seem to understand this at some level.
The amount of German luxury cars driven by black people in South Africa is unbelievable. And this so similar to what is happening at the other side of the world in the Caribbean. People simply seem to buy these very expensive cars to climb out of their general condition and try to be acceptable in higher part of society.
But, and this is a big but, they buy these social status automobiles before actually getting there just to be more acceptable and therefore less threatening to the elite. And some of them are just doing it for impressing the opposite sex!
Nevertheless it remain undeniable that they use symbol of western wealth to try to climb up or at least get more “respect”.
I personally think they are just “jumping the gun” because a car is just going to do so much socially for its owner. The bottom victims of racism are historically tied to poverty and having more wealth indeed does wonders to prevent racism, by itself and better when it is coupled to openness. Lack of money is not the only thing that is historically tied to racism: lack of intelligence and belief in oneself are traits that have plagued victims and have became part of the racism world as well. But the latter came afterwards to victims after years of damage.

Then the main cause of all this comes from inequality in the sharing of money with one group having most of it. And this is actually good news in South Africa where now more people have access to more opportunities, more jobs.
I would bet my entire Canadian credential that this will help people become closer to each other and kill the fear.

Unfortunately, like a lot of things there will be a price to pay and this will be a loss of personal culture as more things will become the same. Is it worth it for living in a world without hate? I guess so.
Equality unfortunately seems to come at a price of more uniformity.

In an hypothetic future maybe we’ll be able to all stand together and we will go back to more ancient values and dare to be different again. However this requires, first, the end of all xenophobia and its ethnical form: racism.


Coming back to South Africa there is a very big divide between rich and poor people in nowadays and therefore racism is still present. But, as said previously, there is now a well-defined path for people to improve their situation and this enables us to tackle racism problems.

Post apartheid South Africa particularly never ceases to impress me by being so similar to other countries that didn’t have its infamous history.
This really encourages me to think that overcoming racism is very possible and is on the way. The people that I have been in contact with are quite wonderful. I talk about black and white people alike.
Blacks are not stuck on the victim speech. It’s been 2 months and I have never heard anyone complaining about history.
White people are very open. I live at a white woman’s house and this experience ended up to be inspirational. I met a friend of hers the other day and I have been repeatedly invited over at her place which is in another province. I accepted her invitation and, with my landlord driving, went there the next week-end!

Really the only thing that stands in the way of true equality, is what I bet started the whole thing that is the economic factor.
This is amazing how it is possible to recover from such a damaging and hateful regime, that great achievement paves the way for a better future for all of us. After all if we all get a chance to work we will be wealthier and richer than ever before and overcome racism once and for all!


My stay at Catherine’s (mu landlord name) was formidable.
In summary: it was difficult to get comfortable at the beginning. After a few weeks of knowing each other everything started to be easier proving that the more you know about the other the less irrational fears survive. Then she invited me and Marco to see her parents in the country side. Her parents are incredibly interesting and nice people and they get along with everybody. I mean not in the drunken kind of way but in a respectful and sincere manner. They don’t mind knowing more about others and sharing there own experiences. On my side I tried to listen and to get past my own fears the most I could and after this visit the last step in equality was made. Getting along with white South African was expected to be a difficult task and thanks to the people I’ve met here I can say that this is a success and it is definitely possible to overcome the barriers between our respective worlds both ways.

Thanks, thanks Sci-Bono, thanks Catherine, thank you South Africa. We are moving forward winning the challenge brought by racism!