Skin color and South African apartheid
Why race doesn’t matter
Imagine the following scenario: The history books have lied to us about South Africa. It turns out that White South Africans don’t exist. The Dutch and the English never settled there. Rather, they are a black tribe indigenous to the area, one called the Z Tribe. That is the only difference in this scenario.
Apartheid happened. The Z Tribe was elitist and bigoted. They seized control of the nation and enshrined into law a rigid, cruel, two-tiered system. Those forced to live in the lower tier were treated without dignity or concern and systematically denied opportunity to live a good or decent life.
Would this scenario be any different, morally speaking, than apartheid as it really happened? One major difference, one might argue, is that the Z Tribe had some claim to South Africa, as a result of its historic place there, that the immigrant White South Africans never had. But this makes no sense because the Z Tribe had no claim to rule the entire country by force. Their claim to their land doesn’t cover the entire country. Other people and groups live there.
The differences are irrelevant, I believe, because the only meaningful distinction is the impact the two systems have on the lives of those in the second tier. I can’t imagine that the skin color and history of one’s dominator–the person that is treating you as less than human–matters much. If your tormentor has the same skin color and similar cultural traditions as you, that doesn’t make his actions less painful or degrading.
Here’s the point. The international community looks upon the history of South African apartheid as heinous and inhumane, one that if it were ever to encounter again it would rise up against in opposition. But it sees apartheid through this racialist lens and by doing so, completely misses the point.
It’s not that one racial group was subjugating another racial group, but that one group, full stop, was subjugating another group, full stop. Or, rather, even more to the point, the issue was that people were being subjugated and degraded.
We can look out into the world of illiberal states and see the very same thing. Often the dominating group in question isn’t necessarily an indigenous tribe of some sort, but rather a strong-man, a family, or a group of families. Does the fact that the dominating group in question has the same skin color and maybe cultural history as the people they’re dominating matter morally? I don’t see how. In many illiberal countries, the dominating group is a much smaller % of the population than the White South Africans were during apartheid, say, in the case of a ruling family as opposed to a ruling social group. But that doesn’t matter much either, at least not to those at the bottom.
If Mugabe was a white European colonizer, imagine the international outrage. But it would be no different, morally, if he was. Replace Mugabe with any “ruling” person or clique. Imagine if the Sauds–the single family in control of Saudi Arabia–were actually the Tillers, British nobility, who converted to Islam, associated themselves with austere versions of their faith, took over the Arabian peninsula by force, and established Tillerian Arabia. The world would look at this white British family stealing the wealth of this Middle Eastern nation and scream “apartheid!” But that’s no different than what’s happening now.
One response might be that the real evil of the apartheid was not merely one group dominating another group, but rather dominating it on racist grounds. Two responses to that. First, many oppressive regimes are bigoted and racist against the people they subjugate, even if their skin is the same color (e.g. Hutu v. Tutsi). Second, it doesn’t matter so much why you are treated without respect or concern, but rather that you are treated in that manner.
We need to stop looking at the race of the ruling group, institution, or individual (whether it’s the Obama and the US Congress or Mugabe) and examine the justification for their rule and the status of people under their rule.
Though it’s (really) not the point of the piece, this should further complicate the (I believe erroneous) connection drawn between Israelis and Palestinians and White and Black South Africans.
-Jake
Related posts:
- Need an alligator skin HDTV?
- We must save the children
- The Vuvuzela Controversy
- Is it ever ok to discriminate?
- Forgive and forget?
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