Take offence better.

If you’re never offended, you’re probably dead.

i remember hearing an excellent preach by my friend Albert, a Korean-American pastor in Americaland, on the subject of intolerance.

He suggested that we are all intolerant, but that we choose what to be intolerant towards.

If you believe in a clean and appealing neighbourhood or city, then you will rightly be intolerant towards litter.

If you believe in the basic human right of living, then you will be intolerant towards murder.

And so on. The general sweeping call for tolerance is unhelpful, because there are always things we need to be intolerant towards.

That really is the heartbeat of #NotOnOurWatch – an invitation to a commitment to be intolerant towards racist behaviour and speech that happens around you. As well as being intolerant towards sexist behaviour and speech that happens around you.

This is a good thing.

Be more intolerant people.

HOW TO BE OFFENDED WELL

That does sound somewhat like the title of a very good Monty Python sketch, but as far as i know it isn’t. John Cleese’s ‘How to Irritate People’ comes closest to mind in that regard, but it wasn’t all that good.

Back to offence, i think one of the most puzzling or angering things for many of the black students who have been protesting these last few weeks is the kinds of choices that predominantly white people have made when choosing what to be offended about.

Students not able to afford studies = not offensive.

Paintings of white people being burnt = offensive.

People throwing rocks at police = offensive.

Private Security/Police breaking into res rooms to search them and arrest people without provocation or i don’t believe warrant = not offensive.

Students [particularly the ones who look like me] not being able to write their exams and graduate = offensive.

Graduates not able to receive their degrees so that they can apply for jobs due to unpaid study fees = not offensive.

Person smashing McDonalds window with family and small child sitting behind it = offensive.

Students and others [read ‘me’] being hunted in the streets of Cape Town and being fired at with rubber bullets = not offensive.

And so on.

If this causes you to lose your…

While this doesn’t bother you as much, or at all…

If you’re okay with two people living here:

And maybe four people living here:

And also okay with 8, 12, 20, 30 people living in here:

Then i would suggest something is wrong.

If you were living in something that more closely resembled the top ones and then were told you were going to move into something that more closely resembled the bottom one, i wonder if that opinion might change.

“Because shacks are okay for other people.”

WHAT OFFENDS ME?

When i am engaging with people on social media, i often wonder if people seem more offended by the notion that someone else might think they are a racist, than by actual racist stuff?

Some of this post was inspired by a post i shares earlier on Facebook inviting people to engage with the idea of Spur using a stereotypical ‘indian’ caricature as their mascot, which i presumed would be offensive to First Nation people in Americaland.

Some people agreed, others disagreed, but the biggest focus shift happened when my friend Megan jumped on and responded to someone who had asked a question. Megan didn’t respond in the most polite, comfortable, let’s-all-group-hug-and-be-friends kind of way and the person took offence… as did at least three other people on her behalf [and counting]. And suddenly all the attention moved off the original topic and became all about “how she responded to me”.

i think in a country where for decades we subjected people to dehumanising laws,  attitudes and less-than othering lifestyles, for us to expect conversation to get us beyond that to be polite and nice and friendly and comfortable is a huge ask. A huge ask.

It has to be messy and uncomfortable and awkward and make us feel bad at times and make us question how we live and speak and relate to each other. It can’t not. There is something very broken and it needs to be fixed and we cannot demand that we somehow get there with our feelings intact and our hair unruffled.

The mantra for any of us white South Africans who are seeking to understand the brokenness of the past and how we can hopefully move somehow towards a more together unified future has to be the following: THIS IS NOT ABOUT ME. [Repeat] 

Because we make it about ourselves again and again. We walk out of a history where the people we represent were front and center stage for hundreds of years… where they had the attention and the power and the money and the voice…

And it requires humility to step out of the way and adopt a listening pose that seeks to understand [even when we feel pushed to the side or offended and even when we feel like people may – gasp – be suggesting that we are racist, because guess what, white person? If you grew up in South Africa as a white person in the last hundred years and somehow managed to not be racist in any way, shape or form, then you are the miracle person – we’ve been fed/indoctrinated/Hollywooded/advertisinged into believing that white is somehow better and that curtain is in the process of being pulled away].

We need to be offended. But about the right things. That includes a corrupt government and also the fact that some people live in absolute disgusting wealth while many live in sub-human unacceptable poverty. [Hint: it is okay to be offended by both at the same time] etc.

We need to be intolerant. But of the right things. Racist/sexist attitudes and behaviours that happen in front of us. Money being spent on the wealthy at the expense of the poor. etc.

We need to not be so precious about ‘the need for people to be nice to us’ when we are engaging with these things on social media. i am still relatively new in terms of engaging people on race, poverty and justice issues as they relate to South Africans. And i am tired. i cannot imagine what people like Megan and Jenn and Walter and others must feel like who have been doing this for thirty forty years. And i cannot begin to imagine what the lived-experience of a black person in South Africa is who has to face racism [still] on a regular basis, as well as spend time trying to educate white people so that we can do it less and understand it better. We need to stop being lazy and do a whole lot more of the work – it is not their job to educate us. It is ours.

My wife tbV, aka Val Anderson preached a most excellent sermon at Christ Church Kenilworth recently that is well worth a listen which you can do by clicking over here. A sermon so controversial that… nah, it was just really good! Check it out!

Meanwhile, as a little bonus piece, here is how the ZA NEWS team tongue-in-cheekedly commented on the Spur issue a while back.