Towards a non-racial and independent Cape: untangling the Gordian knot of racism.

It’s a confusing time to be a non-racialist. Not that long ago, one would have been branded a race-traitor for refusing to judge someone’s worth by the colour of their skin, and adopting this position in the South African context would have put one at odds with the policies of the Apartheid government. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the undeniable gains in race relations since the end of Apartheid are evidence enough of the unifying, Liberalising power of non-racialism, especially considering that the ANC officially adopted this philosophy during the struggle against Apartheid, yet taking this position will not absolve you from attracting significant ire. While it is clear that the ANC have abandoned non-racialism in practice, much of the criticism levelled against non-racialism now comes from so-called “progressives” who emphasise the racial dimension of economic inequality in South Africa. Under the banner of “anti-racism,” progressives have muddied the waters of the national discourse and enabled illiberal practices to take hold, threatening to reverse the hard won gains of democracy. In the midst of this ideological tempest a nascent Cape Independence movement is slowly gaining traction, appealing to those who understand that the ANC would rather destroy the country than reform, and that the DA, despite having recently reaffirmed their commitment to non-racialism, are unlikely to build a broad enough consensus among voters to ever govern the country. In this article, I will attempt to untangle the Gordian knot of racism, non-racialism and anti-racism by applying the Hegelian dialectic, and I will argue that non-racialism should be a non-negotiable principle upon which a free and independent Cape should be based.

Any attempt to understand the problem posed by our societal responses to racism must begin with a proper definition thereof, as it is precisely at this level that much of the problem starts. Until fairly recently, racism has been understood as a set of values, attitudes and practices that presume the inherent inferiority of a particular race, and it is usually coupled with a sense of one’s own racial superiority. At the psychological level, the universal propensity for racism might be understood as an epiphenomenon arising from several cognitive biases, some of which have served an evolutionary function in our distant past. For example, our capacity for forming attachments arises from the discrimination between the self and the other, and the phenomenon of in-group bias is an extension of this process to one’s immediate social group. In evolutionary terms, in-group bias serves to strengthen bonds between members of a group in situations where conflict for resources may arise. Another form of cognitive bias, namely the outgroup-homogeneity bias, is a consequence of our natural tendency to derive mental heuristics through pattern observation, and to apply these heuristics indiscriminately in an attempt to predict social situations under conditions of uncertainty. Racial stereotyping is a common manifestation of this process, and of course if a person is only exposed to incorrect or one-sided information they will develop faulty heuristics. These explanations should not be read as an exoneration of racism, but given that racism rests on universal cognitive processes society is faced with the challenge of how best to respond to this. When applying the dialectic method, racism is the de facto thesis; the question now becomes how to best negate it.

As alluded to above, the contemporary progressive discourse around racism comprises the term “anti-racism,” which its proponents claim represents the antithesis of racism, but in practice simply reproduces it in an inverted manner. On face value, the term does seem to imply opposition to racism, yet the devil is in the details, and in particular in the conceptualisation of racism that underpins anti-racism. Anti-racists don’t simply conceive of racism as a product of psychology, they view it instead as a nexus between prejudice and power. As such, anti-racists believe that racism is something that is produced by powerful institutions, and they view any disparities in outcomes between members of racial groups as evidence of racism in a particular system. This definition is grounded in Critical Race Theory, and while unpacking the philosophical roots of this theory is beyond the scope of this essay, the reader should note that this is a synthesis of Critical Theory and selective post-modern philosophical assumptions. When confronted with racial disparities, an anti-racist employs inductive reasoning, presuming an absence of equity to be evidence of racism, and concludes that the system that produced this “racism” must be dismantled in order to negate any such disparities. It’s important to note that racist intent is not required as part of this definition of racism. A prime example of this can be seen in the EFF’s attacks on Brackenfell High School: a private party, to which all students were invited, produced a racially skewed attendance in favour of white students, and this was apparent justification for intimidation and protests outside the school. A sound thinker might wonder about the racial dynamics of this incident; is it not racist in itself for the predominantly black EFF to assume racism on behalf of these white students simply by virtue of the fact that no black students attended the party? Herein lies the fundamental inconsistency of anti-racism; it is a sword which only cuts one way. Anti-racists will argue that black people in South Africa cannot be racists, because black people were oppressed during Apartheid and most of the institutions in South Africa produce the same racial disparities in outcome as Apartheid institutions. Considering the status quo is one in which “transformation” has been legally instantiated as an institutional imperative by a black liberation party (the self-styled authentic representation of black people) that has political and institutional power to the point of hegemony, the fundamental anti-racist assumption falls apart under the weight of its own duplicity. Furthermore, given that racism itself is rightly considered a disgusting phenomenon, is it not astoundingly ironic that those who claim to have no institutional power have the power to change the definition of racism to absolve themselves of racism in order to foist accusations of racism upon others to serve political ends? Returning to the dialectic, anti-racism does seem to be an antithesis of racism only in the sense that it claims to be a response to racism, but it does not in fact negate racism because it incentivises people to seek racism where it does not really exist. Anti-racism is how pharmacies get fire-bombed over shampoo adverts, and how private parties are policed by red-clad communists. In this way, anti-racism only serves to obfuscate racism, but does not deal decisively with the fundamental problem: the psychological propensity of people to discriminate and respond on the basis of faulty heuristics.

Finally, we arrive at the non-racialism, the synthesis which negates both racism and anti-racism. Contrary to popular misconception, non-racialism is not about “not seeing race,” but is rather about understanding that our assumptions about members of another race are often tainted by the universal psychological processes described above. This forces one to deal with the reality of the person or people in front of us, and requires us to suspend our snap judgements about skin colour in favour of an honest appraisal of behaviour and character. Non-racialism requires one to literally become a better person, by tempering our base intuitions through the application of empathy and rationality. One can only achieve this synthesis by responding to the humanity of the other; and by applying the same kind of consistency and honesty to our views of another as we would like applied to ourselves. When confronted by what might appear to be a racial disparity between groups, non-racialism requires that we do not make essentialist assumptions about either the races involved or the system that surrounds them, but behoves us to apply deductive reasoning to truly understand the root causes of this disparity. Lastly, non-racialism opens up a space for a cross-racial and cross cultural dialogue by removing artificial barriers (be they legislative, psychological or cultural) between people; it is a means that serves the utilitarian ends of better understanding, cooperation and cultural exchange.

The notion of an Independent Cape is, in part, a direct response to the failure of South Africa as a whole to achieve a non-racial synthesis, and it is precisely for this reason that non-racialism forms a core part of the movement for Cape independence. The “Rainbow Nation” experiment is teetering on the brink of failure, brought about largely due to the failure of the elites to articulate a shared vision that might elevate us beyond The Eternal Apartheid, where the interests of different racial groups are always framed as zero-sum games for political purposes. A non-racial, independent Cape opens up the possibility that black, white, Indian and Coloured people could cooperate across racial, cultural, and linguistic lines to birth a new nation from the ashes of a violently racialised history. A commitment to the principle of non-racialism is a moral commitment to the humanity and dignity of our fellow human beings, and only a nation which embodies these principles can truly unleash the boundless human potential we all know resides on the Southern-most tip of Africa.