I cannot speak for what happens in the UK, but here in South Africa this "racist" tag is often used by people on all sides of the debate by those who tend to look only at the surface of things.
Speaking for myself, I am of mixed blood; I look white, but there are features that indicate I have "a touch of the tarbrush" in my makeup ... these come from mom. The fact that I am not lily white has often caused other people, overwhelmingly white (including gay), to make my life a living hell at times. Certainly, there are black people who hate me because I have a white skin, and their hatred can be equally bad, but throughout my life, from when I was still a child, I have found greater acceptance and simple human kindness from black people than ever I experienced, and still experience, from whites.
This attitude of intolerance and hatred toward me was further exacerbated because I became active in our struggle against apartheid, beginning when I was in high school in the 1960's but particularly in 1976, and also by reason of my late partner being Zulu. LOL, Sipho and I used to laugh about this, and cry sometimes, too... most of the whites that hated us did so largely because we were friends (A white guy with a black friend? SCANDALOUS! Put them both in prison immediately, without a trial! Beat them up first, though, and hospitalise them for a while while you're at it!), ... but our gayness, when discovered, also played a role in this ... hell, they HATED us when they discovered that we were a couple ... a black and white BONKING EACH OTHER! Of course, when it was discovered that I had some black blood it was all put down to a regression to the "inferior" blood that courses through my veins. By the way, these are actual things that were said and done to us.
Most of the blacks that hated us did so essentially because we were gay. We soon realised that our race made little or no difference in black attitudes towards us. In fact, black people here WELCOMED the fact that we were friends, and took great delight in it, and marveled that we could even BE friends.
To this day I experience antipathy, even hostility, from MOST white people because my speech is peppered with "black" words; and many of my mannerisms are "black". My cognomen, Mabhekaphansi, usually shortened to Mabheka (isiZulu, He Who Looks)is the name by which I am generally known, and I am only truly at ease when I am with my own folk; you see, I still wait for the racist barbs and comments, even if unintentional, and they do hurt.
I can fully understand why some people would prefer a "black pride"; I myself know the ease and comfort of being with one's own people. It is a cultural thing, and it is common culture, rather than racist attitudes, which makes people in a group be more easy with each other. To be a minority carries a sting that most in the majority have no concept of. And if some also want a "white pride", what of it? It is our
diversity that makes our species so astonishingly fun. How boring it would be if one had "Boiled Beef and Carrots Tikka-Tikka"... some things are not improved by insisting on uniformity and sameness: how droll it would all become if this were so.
In my life, my choice of close friends is largely governed by the the inner person, and the fact that we live and do things
in the same manner. Whether one likes to admit it or not, there ARE differences, albeit sometimes major, between "black" culture and "white" culture.
This makes it all HUGELY exciting, and is nothing to get upset about.
I like to eat phutu and chisa nyama (crumbly maize porridge and barbecued meat done over a HOT flame) using my right hand, not a knife and fork: this is my culture. Those who habitually eat with knives and forks can do so, it is not an issue. But there are some, for whatever agenda they may have, who would delight in making a divisive issue of this thoroughly irrelevant point.
As a matter of interest, we here in South Africa regard all Brits as being essentially the same in what they do and how they do it: to us, all Brits, irrespective of race, are all pretty much the same in just about everything. And they all speak with such
WEIRD accents!
But, hey, they aren't half bad at playing soccer, so I reckon that makes them okay.
LOL, luvya all!
