How do you know what is racism and what is not? Anti-racist orthodoxy is bewildering and constantly changing, so that yesterday’s words attacking racism might become today’s words supporting it. If you denounce a racist by quoting him, you might be accused of racism yourself.
A good example is the absurd case of Prof Adam Habib, formerly Vice Chancellor of Wits University and now Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. John Kane-Berman has written an excellent piece on it for the Daily Friend. I’d like to enlarge on the SOAS’s nonsense. During a Zoom meeting with students at SOAS, Habib was asked to clarify his position on racist speech. He said, ‘if someone used the word “nigger” against another staff member, then it would violate our policy and action would be taken’. For this he, himself, was condemned as a racist, and asked to step down while an investigation was made into his sin.
I have been reading in succession, Stalin: 1878 – 1928, by Stephen Kotkin, pub. 2015, and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass, pub. 1845. The first describes life in Russia in the early years of the Communist Revolution, the second the life of a black slave in the USA in the 1830s. Which was worse, to be an ordinary Russian under Lenin’s tyranny in 1921 or a black slave in America in 1831? It was probably more horrible under Lenin, where there was famine and cannibalism, but being a black slave was horrible enough, and Douglass describes the horror in some detail.
Suppose I made two public observations about his book. In the first I said: ‘Douglass describes how, as a little black boy, he watched a black woman slave, having missed some dust with her broom, being stripped by the white slave master and brutally whipped on her back and head, while she screamed for mercy and the blood gushed out of deep gashes on her back and face.’
As far as I can see, that would be fine. I should not be denounced as a racist.
In my second observation I said: ‘Douglas describes how, when he was a little black slave boy, the white slave master called him a nigger.’
In that case I should be howled down as a racist, forced to kneel, repent and attend a Critical Race Theory workshop, and probably be fired from my job. The present rule seems that you are allowed to describe the deeds of the white racists but not their words.
There was a similar incident in 1999 in Pretoria over a teacher’s use of Herman Bosman’s famous, haunting short story, Unto Dust. It is surely the most telling story ever written on the folly of racism. It was set in the 19th Century somewhere in the Transvaal. There was a battle in the hills between a group of Boers, led by a big white man, and a group of Africans, led by a big black man, who had a little yellow dog, which followed him about. The Boer leader was killed and fell to the ground. Another Boer shot dead the African leader, who fell on top of him. In the confusion, everyone dispersed. Months later the Boers returned to recover the body of their leader for burial in their dorp. They came across a pile of bones bleached white in the Sun. Two skulls, two spines, four legs, four arms. They couldn’t tell which was which. So they guessed and took one skull, two legs and so on. They buried them in the graveyard of their church. A while later, a Boer passing by in the night saw a little yellow dog sitting on the grave. The teacher set this story to his mixed pupils. He was fired, and had to resign from teaching, because he had quoted the word ‘kafir’ as spoken by one of the characters in the story.
Anti-racist fashion changes quickly. Next year perhaps this schoolteacher would be celebrated for striking a mighty blow against racism. Perhaps Unto Dust would become a compulsory setwork for all schools. Next year perhaps the London SOAS establishment, with Marie Staunton CBE as its chairperson, would itself be denounced as racist and Habib hailed as a black victim of British Imperialism. Something like this. ‘Is there no end to the anti-Asian racism of white racists in London, grieving for their fallen empire? For centuries they plundered India and regarded Asian people as sub-humans. Now because some cheeky Indian has the courage to expose the racist language used by their white master race, they persecute him and force him to step down. Excuse me, Memsahib Marie Staunton, Commander of the British Empire, but don’t you realise that your miserable British Empire has gone, and you can no longer treat Indians like your teaboys!’
Habib, who suffered real racism under apartheid, was a brave VC of Wits. I hope he remains brave under this stupid persecution by the London elite, even if they do have imperial medals.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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