It’s been nearly two years since Kiné Dineo Mokwena-Kessi’s column “Black in Cape Town? Brace yourself” was published on IOL and in the Cape Argus and sparked a backlash that eventually saw comments being closed on the IOL website. We spoke to Kiné , who is now based in the UK. How do you feel about what happened? […]
Norma Craven explains why she thinks whiteness is seen as the norm and blackness as the “other”.
Shafiq Morton More than 300 years of colonialism and four decades of apartheid can’t simply be airbrushed out of our collective psyche, writes Shafiq Morton. Racism – as defined by the UN in 1966 – is discrimination against another person on the basis of their race, or an event that reduces human dignity through actions […]
On the morning of June 8, 1988, dozens of children from Washington DC schools spread out across the well-manicured lawns of the US Capitol. Holding hands, the pupils walked one by one into the domed building. This was no ordinary field trip. The children weren’t there just for a civic lesson; they were also there […]
Some people have called for “a dialogue on race relations”. So let’s get on with it then. I want to list here, and discuss, five unhelpful responses to racism that pop up all too frequently when there’s an item in the news cycle – thank you Cape Town – that make us awkward about racism. […]
It’s not cool to talk about a “global war on terrorism” (GWOT) largely because former US president George Bush gave the expression a bad name. His successor, Barack Obama, explicitly dropped the expression, stating that: “We must define our effort not as a boundless ‘Global War on Terror’, but rather as a series of persistent, […]
It has been an interesting few months in terms of race relations in South Africa, with social media storms over remarks made by KZN estate agent Penny Sparrow, mobile gym owner Justin van Vuuren, economist Chris Hart and eNCA anchor Andrew Barnes, among others. Sparrow and Van Vuuren made seriously derogatory comments about black people, […]
The Anti-Racism Network of SA hopes to find a response to a hardening of racist attitudes, but it must be grounded and open, writes Luke Spiropoulos. This weekend, the Ahmed Kathrada and Nelson Mandela foundations hosted the first of what will become a series of historic workshops and conferences of the Anti-Racism Network of South […]