Comment by mdpm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mdpm | Hacker News Reader

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White people are a minority in the country. Given an opportunity to change the story, the overwhelming majority of them supported that, and were willing to hand over power. [1] It was obvious that would mean a black majority government, and they still did it.

The government lied to everyone, and some believed it. You'd seemingly like to make a villain out of all white South Africans, but that's not helpful in any way - many, like myself, were born into apartheid and struggled against it. So were my parents - they had no part in making those laws, and yet were born before the Union was established. It's easy to miss what it's like to try to counteract a regime - you and your loved ones will suffer. The populace did not wield the power of transformation itself, it was international intervention that allowed it to happen.

Were some complicit? Yes, obviously. Did many know? Probably. Was it the majority that supported a status quo for some time? Yes, but not without being manipulated. It was standard education that there were 'grades' of people for most of the 19 and early 20th centuries, and in South Africa this was redoubled. Narratives like 'black people are the result of the snake and eve' were common. I've spoken to many older people who are horrified at what they believed. It's incredibly hard to escape a bubble when it's all you hear. State TV, state sanctioned news, international sanctions mean you didn't ever hear how SA was seen internationally. The TRC was asking people to recognise what it saw, and what many others saw - that evil is banal, and within us. It deliberately did not pursue further actions against those that were not directly involved in harm, or who ordered it.

You have taken 'large numbers' and seem to have interpreted it quite liberally to mean 'the majority', and then further concluded that there is then some obvious flaw in their moral character. I could say the same of the US forever wars and destabilisation, but would it help? To accuse and paint with that shame every citizen?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_South_African_apartheid_r...

>Was it the majority that supported a status quo for some time? Yes, but not without being manipulated

It seems we are in agreement on the basic point. Bear in mind that at the beginning of this thread, throwaway210222 appeared to disagree with this point, and this is what I was responding to.

> You'd seemingly like to make a villain out of all white South Africans

> ... and then further concluded that there is then some obvious flaw in their moral character.

You're persistently reading things into my posts that I just haven't said. I haven't made any comment on the moral character of white South Africans as it's irrelevant to my point.

I really think that if you read through my posts again without the preconception that I'm trying to paint all white South Africans as inherently evil, you might find that you don't actually disagree substantially with any of what I'm saying.

As another poster put it, we must avoid the comforting fantasy that a system with millions of victims could have involved only a handful of perpetrators. The perpetrators were no doubt morally complex human beings like the rest of us, not evil caricatures. However, that does not mean that the fact of their participation in the system can simply be swept under the rug. Nor can the referendum vote – indeed an indicator of enormous progress – be used to show that the apartheid system did not enjoy wide support among whites in the preceding decades.

I'm not looking for a comforting fantasy, I'd just like to not phrase things in a way that implies that a group identity perpetuated something that clearly many or most didn't agree with, vocally, and with their ballots. I've just noted that your comments seem quite insistent on trying to find that a group holds fault, but that's the very thing I'm stating is not logically valid. Did every German want what happened over the middle of the 20th century? No-one thinks that it wasn't 'the Germans' who did things - but thinking that's 'German nature', or that we should 'remember that was Germans!' is massively offensive to those who tried to resist, and I believe, just a leaky abstraction. Sometimes trying to cast your net around an abstraction, your definitions can lose more utility than you gain with the abstraction. Instead of 'white' - I could point at colonial descendents[1], the Boer, or Christians being the most racist group and racially motivated in that period - in the aggregate, it would be mostly correct, but in the application, it misleads and misinforms. What does "Remember the WHITE perpetrators did this!" achieve when we're a generation past when we proved that wasn't true? I'm after a more refined viewpoint that doesn't play with identity politics, but instead realises that power and disinformation are capable of growing in any soil. The banality of evil is the lesson, not attempting to racially classify people.

[1] Not all white people here are 'colonial' like you'd imagine - see the Highland clearances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances

I think at this point you are responding based on your perception of the motivation behind my comments, and not actually disagreeing with the substance of what I’m saying. I have already stated that I’m not trying to blame all white people or all white South Africans as a group, or say that they are inherently evil.

I don't think there's malice, nor believe I know your motivation - the discussion has been civil from my view.

My singular observation has been that you seem to repeatedly wish to project a view that asks the audience to treat a group with suspicion and doubt. Based on their race and origin.

I think that's spurious, and as it applies to me and just about everybody I know, I know it to be patently false. My first-hand account also seems to be of no value.

A direct parallel would be like me propagating something negative or disparaging about Jews as a whole, due to my feelings about Palestine. I wouldn't do that, and I expect the same courtesy. Group biases are discrimination, and discrimination generally leads to collective punishment. None of these are good things, nor do they make better people of anyone.

Racial categories are relevant to a historical understanding of the apartheid regime for the obvious reason that the regime itself divided society along racial lines. For example, only white people could vote in the referendum you’ve referred to. If you are bothered by statements such as “many white South Africans supported apartheid” (even though you appear to acknowledge that they’re true?), then you should blame the apartheid regime for the relevance of this racial category, not me.

It is obvious that not all white South Africans thought alike and that many opposed apartheid to varying degrees. It is also obvious that the vote to repeal apartheid was an enormous step forward. As I’m sure you’re aware, nothing I’ve written contradicts this.

That the regime divided people on racial lines was what we were upset with, because they weren't applicable or useful.

I think trying to bring it back to "white people" when they overwhelmingly voted not to do that is disingenuous.

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