Wednesday 8 February 2012

Politicsweb - How to write about race - Top stories

Politicsweb - How to write about race - Top stories

An eight step guide to commenting on South Africa's favourite obsession

Introduction

South Africans love race. One might even say we are obsessed with it. We cannot get enough. You cannot open a newspaper, read a blog, listen to radio discussion or watch a current affairs show that doesn't have yet another someone or other telling us what an enormous problem race is, how under appreciated the scale of the crisis is and how desperately we need to move past it.

Anyone who doesn't want to talk about race or considers themselves non-racial is accused either of effectively being racist themselves or living in some kind of dangerous denial. And it is everywhere. I mean everywhere. There is not a thing that is not interpreted through a racial lens or, indeed, argued itself not the product of some kind of racial malfunction.