Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Racial Distancing

There is extreme polarisation in the new South Africa, with regard to who mixes with who. Just recently, it was not practially possible to know who mixed with who -- yet now we have (for example) lists of Facebook friends. One sees now that a person of one race group (if there were, strictly speaking, race groups) will typically not mix with more than 1% of another race group. This is astonishing. Moreover, in the case of persons one would expect to mix -- ministers, for example, or academics or consultants -- I estimate 2%. 10% would be very unusual. I could be wrong, but it is easy to take a look. OBSERVATION: Does it matter? I think yes, very much. A Black man said to me recently that racism is what happens when you make assumptions about another race: "Would they ..." have said or done this if they were not White, Black, and so on. This is a very broad definition, but the point is, if there is (say) 1% mixing, can one really minister, practice, perform, execute things effectively? 

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