Terence, fruit of my loins, is speaking to me on the phone. The call is mine. He visits us sometimes, but phones only when overwhelmed by a rush of filial piety. In common parlance, this is known as feeling sorry for himself because he is a hangdog in the familial dogbox.
Typically, I throw him a metaphorical bone. It takes the form of soothing noises like “it’ll turn out all right in the end”, “yes, I understand”, and “I really don’t think you’re to blame”. I am not sure they really help, but a psychologist told me at a cocktail party fifteen years ago that they show a depth of profound compassion.
I took his words on board, but not the hand that he kept trying to thrust up my skirt. In fairness, his judgement was impaired by strong drink. Were it otherwise, our therapist would not have donned the mantle of the rapist: sensitive as such non-violent shrinks habitually are, he would immediately have appreciated that I am the Penelope of fidelity and a lust-buster par excellence.
“Are you still there?” Terence testily invades my body-snatcher reverie. “I’ve asked you twice whether the professor is still staying with you.”
When I say yes, he muses, “What can he possibly see in you two?” This places me on my mettle, wherever that is, but I am now senescent enough not to rise to the bait. “Don’t be a Twatt,” I say, knowing full well that calling him by this derisory school nickname will rile him up.
“The professor stays with us because he likes us,” I reply. “Besides, unlike most academics, who take a vow of poverty, he gets well fed and watered. The conversation sparkles chez Watt, and at the end of the evening he can slip between sheets of the finest white linen.”
“What’s there to hate?” I end off. Normally, I would not allow so vulgar an expression to pass my lips, but I do have a duty to make the younger generation feel warm and welcome. Fortunately, the professor, a man of elegance and breeding, is not in earshot.
“White linen, eh? Don’t your generation believe that black skins are prone to moult and stain the bed linen irreparably? Landladies in Bournemouth certainly do, or so I am told.” I retch internally and, feeling wretched, berate the wretch externally. “Not funny, Terry, not funny at all. Avaunt, and quit my sight.” Opening the floodgates of vulgarity, as I did, is a practice one can learn to rue.
Uninvited
That evening Terence, uninvited, presents himself at the door. He likes to interrogate the professor, and I let him. Who knows, he might learn something eventually. I tell him that our guest – “our dear invited guest” – had condemned BEE the night before as racialist. I have learnt to use “racialist” to describe conduct that differentiates but does not demean. “Racist” is a term best used to describe white people who think blacks are effing useless and Malema, who wants to make boerewors out of Boers.
“Yes,” says the professor, “I do believe that BEE is racialist. In insisting on demographic representation in every facet of political, administrative and commercial life, it is a system of race-norming pure and simple. Race-based social engineering of this nature segregates as it pretends to integrate.”
“How else do you remedy the effects of the past?” He has his ‘An Inspector Calls’ look on his face, one I have seen before. I squirm a little, knowing that the professor must now repeat what he said before. But I comfort myself by recalling that this is precisely what professors do when, year by year, they give young hearts, who pant for cooling streams, a chance to drink at the font of learning.
“Before you can supply a remedy, you need to discern the harm inflicted. Precisely what harm has the person suffered whose fate you must now decide? A person-by-person evaluation, untainted by considerations of race, is what non-racialism requires – if such be competent. In deciding whether to fill a post, we happily examine the gamut of factors, good and bad, that dictate the merits of the candidate before us.
“Poverty, you will discover, is generally the source of the harm, the ‘mischief’ as we lawyers like to term it. It has a very debilitating effect. To succeed, poor kids, often malnourished, must study by candlelight, late into the night after struggling back and forth to a school scarcely worthy of the name. That the candidate has come so far despite these obstacles reveals a degree of resilience and determination that presages success.
“Equalising measures”
“By all means, allow for this. In addition, do not hesitate to apply equalising measures designed to lessen the social and economic disparities to which societies, ours not least, are eternally prone. They can be implemented at the individual level or by way of general schemes of upliftment. What they cannot be, if we are to be true to the constitutional imperative of non-discrimination, is racially constructed.”
“Can’t we say that blacks are the poverty-struck and so use negritude as a proxy in decision-making?” Terence asks. I am impressed by the quality of the question and the terms in which it is framed. The use of “negritude” might drive some, the woke especially, into paroxysms of rage, but repeated spikes of such emotions are potentially therapeutic and so manifestly “a good thing”. “Proxy”, too: the lad has obviously been boning up on this topic.
“Well, mostly these children will be black, but not always: the vestiges of the ‘poor-white’ problem that blighted the lives of so many Afrikaners remain with us today. But even if the equation were exact, it still is unacceptable to use the proxy when the true concern presents itself in equal measure. Recourse to race when so palpably unnecessary is not just otiose, it is downright demeaning.”
‘Demeaning’ I understand. ‘Otiose’ I shall have to look up, but I think it means ‘redundant’. What I can tell you, without fear of contradiction, is that otiose has nothing to do with the stuff fed to horses. What I can also say, though not likewise, is that the stuff that comes out of the other end is precisely the racist horse-manure that unstable hands feed to us.
“Is there no place for race as a proxy for disadvantage, then?” asks Terence, gently. I see I am often too exacting of him. He has a certain style, my boy.
“There might be. Take this case. Suppose the bureaucratic overheads will make a school feeding-scheme unaffordable if directed at poor children irrespective of race. In such a case, choosing blackness as a proxy for eligibility might just be legitimate. But such instances will be very rare.”
“Role models”
“What about elevating blacks so that they feel better about their race and can point to role models they can follow? Is this not a legitimate way to proceed?” Terence asks, perceptively.
“Not if you want a non-racial society. Feeling better about yourself because people of your own colour do well has a name. It is racialism. Feeling better because the people in question are doing better than whites also has a name. It is racism.” The professor does know how to make a point. I really admire him, not least because he is black. Oh God, there I go again. Will I never learn?
“Time to say good-bye,” I sing out to Terence, now that I am musically tuned up. He takes what cannot seriously be described as a hint. He beetles off. I must say, I enjoyed him tonight. Am I becoming maternally sentimental, I wonder?
Ushering the professor to bed, I feel no concern about stains on his sheets. Given the glint in Noah’s eyes, I am not so sanguine about ours. This does make me sentimental. I am, I want to tell you, not quite the dragon I make myself out to be. I do not have a ‘heart of stone.’
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