David Beresford
ANOTHER COUNTRY
A British judge, Justice Martin Stephens, found himself in hot water last week during a case in the Old Bailey when he told the court that he had difficulty distinguishing one Ethiopian witness from another.
The judge was trying to be helpful at the time, advising members of the jury as to how they might deal with evidence relating to identity in a trial involving a number of Ethiopians. But he was immediately denounced as racially ”insensitive”, a serious offence in Britain where judges now undergo racial sensitivity training and seemingly lay great store by a book known as the Equal Treatment Bench Book.
Whatever advice the book would have given Judge Stephens with regard to Ethiopians, clearly he would have been well-advised to shut up when it came to matters of collective identity. At the same time, one questions whether this should be a matter of public policy in that it could, presumably, lead to miscarriages of justice which could have an impact to the detriment of such members of the Ethiopian community who might find themselves in the witness box.
My interest in the plight of this judge was aroused because a few nights ago a friend, who was seemingly ”white”, told how an acquaintance, whom he took to be black, had informed him that he (the acquaintance) had ”difficulty telling whites apart”. My friend looked troubled, but only because, of course, such statements can be taken as racial insults.
Like the judge, I confess to being baffled as to why. It is all, surely, to do with memory and the tricks used by the mind to facilitate remembering. Faced with a new set of features, of which skin hue is one, the tricks are momentarily reduced to confusion. To say I am confused, with regard to identity, by the appearance of a group of people is surely no more racially abusive than to say ”I don’t speak Swahili”.
The speaker is confessing to a lack of learning (by way of training to memorise new vocabulary and accent), or a limited social circle, but hardly to racial prejudice. The most I could be charged with is not ”bothering” to get to know the language, or to get to know people from a particular community. To them I would reply, it is not a case of ”not bothering” but of inferiority on my part.
The real sin by way of racism is stereo- typing, although there is some confusion on that as well. Offensive stereotyping, of which racism is one example, appears to have two components, being collective as well as denigratory misrepresentation. An instance is the representation of a human community as another species of animal. The Nazi portrayal of the Jews as vermin, and subject to extermination, is the classic example. It was no coincidence that the authors of the Rwanda genocide chose to liken their victims to cockroaches.
In this country the use of the word ”baboon” can be a racial insult fit for criminal sanction. But when the police chief referred to a sergeant as a chimp it was held not to be particularly offensive. Presumably because the two belonged to the same racial collective they were considered incapable of racially abusing one another.
The most offensive racial insult does not seem to have the element of misrepresentation in it. The ”K” word is virtually unprintable, with the striking exception of the Oxford English dictionary which, in its two volumes on South African English, devotes five pages to the word. While it records the unacceptability of the term in modern South Africa, the origins of the racial insult are not clear among such terms as ”k-sheeting” (a near-white material popularly used for curtaining).
The most familiar usage of the ”K” word is in ”K-Wars” – usage of which is so shameful now that church authorities have taken to blocking it out on memorial stones. Considering that the dead thus memorialised offer mute testimony to the capability of the Xhosa and Zulus as warriors, one would have thought their descendants would have taken great pride in the original description of them. With majority rule it would perhaps be opportune for South Africa to rescue the word from the dustbin of more recent history by assertion – declare an official ”K” day, perhaps, for all South Africans to celebrate the brotherhood of man by pronouncing themselves, regardless of race, or tribe, as … well, sshhh, you know who.
The question of racial insult is a minefield. Standing on a mine, the first reaction is said to be that of bewilderment rather than pain as the brain struggles to come to terms with the detail that the legs have disappeared, or – as in the case of Judge Stephens – that he has just landed up in the annals of racial infamy. Under South Africa’s new anti-discrimination laws the legless man and others who are physically disabled are recognised as being at risk and are granted constitutional protection. Surprisingly the characterisation of them as ”disabled” has drawn no protest from that quarter.
Disabled for what? For life? It can be seen as dangerous language if one recalls that many personnel in the Nazi death camps were chosen for their experience at a German euthanasia centre for those considered disabled. Many of those described as ”disabled” might consider themselves enabled or empowered by their circumstances – if only by way of insight into the gravity, or otherwise, of the remarks of Judge Stephens where Ethiopians are concerned.
I’ve long treasured the story of the driver of a Pretoria ”whites only” bus, fired by the municipality for failing to pick up a Japanese passenger. The Japanese were considered by authority to be whites by virtue of some lucrative steel contracts signed between the two countries. The driver appealed on the grounds he could not distinguish between a ”white” Japanese man and a ”non-white” Chinese man. He was reinstated.
What does it say? Why, welcome to the monkey house. With apologies for the stereotyping of mankind.