How I became a racist
Or what happened after I published my first-ever article on the origins of wokeness.
No, it isn’t clickbait — it is a genuine title to indicate the frank honesty of this story.
The story of what happened after I published my article on the intellectual origins of wokeness.
Vitriolic emails hit my email box. They rechoched like bullets of the pavement.
I’ve been writing for a long time. I once lost a job because of, at least in part, the words I wrote.
But I’ve never yet been on receiving end of such malice.
This is my response
First — I am not a racist. Never have been and never will be. Irrespective of who, when, and how someone tries to convince me that I am or label me as such.
No.
I understand that you can choose to think that regardless of what I say.
I have no problem with that. On the contrary, my whole life, I have believed and upheld Voltaire’s wisdom — I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
I only wish you would adopt the same. Only a wish. Because it is not up to me to convince you of the value of it. I am not responsible for what you think, only for what I say.
Which is why I am saying it. As honestly and as respectfully as I know how.
Not because I had to defend or justify myself to you or anyone else but because I owe it to myself to stand for myself and my beliefs.
I grew up in an Eastern European country that is no longer found on the maps. Only in people’s memories which, as I have learned, not only vary but often conflict. For all its mistakes, real or imagined, it was a good country with excellent free education, including tertiary education.
Thanks to that, I grew up reading widely, from Russian classics to Shakespeare, from Boccaccio to Dickens, Milton, Kundera, from Marx to Malcolm X to Morrison, and many others besides.
Teachers and lecturers taught us ethics, logic, and philosophy from Plato to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Kant, Schopenhauer etc.
Above all, they taught us to think. Critically. To debate. Vigorously. Not fight. Debate.
As the man in charge of the said country was also one of the creators of the Non-Aligned Movement, many students from Africa, India, Egypt, and other countries came to our universities. It was the first time most of us encountered non-white people in real life. We loved it! We loved learning from them as they learned from us.
Not because we were ignorant about racism. Of course, we knew about it. And loathed it with a passion. All of us. There wasn’t a single person who didn’t.
Sadly, not long after the man in charge died, the country disintegrated. Many of us found ourselves scattered in various corners of the world.
As it happened, I landed in New Zealand.
Apart from all the difficulties any migrant from a non-English speaking country encounter, I found myself in a society comprised of indigenous and non-indigenous people for the first time. It was never an issue. Neither at work or home, or anywhere else.
It was not until this year (2022) that I came across a behaviour I eventually recognised as discrimination. Against me, that is.
It happened on a university campus in a, I was told, prestigious class with competitive entry.
The first time I hardly paid any heed to it.
Until it happened again. And again.
The first time I was told that, as a white person, I have no right to partake in certain programmes.
The second time I was called a wanker-writer who cites Hemingway, who was a wife-beating alcoholic.
The third time I was called racist for refusing to condemn certain writers.
The fourth time I was reprimanded publicly for complimenting a young woman of colour for her beauty, as my compliment, they said, stereotyped her.
The fifth time I was told I have no right to tell stories that involve people of colour. Stories of my life, experiences I’ve lived.
It was no longer a matter of smiling and carrying on.
I started connecting the dots.
The emerging patterns disturbed me. To say the least.
How naïve and uninitiated I was is evident from what I did in an attempt to rectify the situation.
I embarked on research. To try to understand. Imagine!
Just like they had trained me, I looked at the literature, compared, contrasted, analysed, and wrote my findings, including in the article in question:
To be clear, I have no clout of any kind, neither on Medium nor anywhere else. I live a quiet, secluded life of contemplation, writing and thinking. There are many reasons for that, but this is not the place for any of them.
But even as such, I still have to be put in my place, as they wrote. I have to be made to realise the errors of my way. Accept that, as a white person, I am inherently racist. I have no business thinking, let alone writing, about the woke movement, race or anything related. How dare I do such a thing, they wrote. Who do I think I am.
Those are some of the statements made in emails I received following the publication of the above article. Not one contained rational reasoning or invited a dialogue. Ordinary, civil dialogue.
I did some more research.
More and more disturbing messages started to surface.
Including from an academic working at a prestigious university, at least some of whose students are presumably white:
From the guilt-ridden:
All the pieces fell in place. Confirming my original premise — that the origins and the ideology of the movement (whatever it is called) are modified Marxist teachings. Heavily modified at that.
Because whatever sins can be attributed to Karl Marx, he most certainly wasn’t a dictator, intolerant of any opposing views not to mention criticism. On the contrary, he knew well the value of critical thought.
For Marx, one had to own means of production to qualify as an oppressor; for you, the mere incident of birth suffices.
For a single-truth dictatorship, our way or highway philosophy, new and improved world order, you are best advised to try those that came after him and also claimed to act in accordance with his teachings.
You may like to start with Stalin or Pol Pot or even Mao.
I do wish you all the best, including living in a society arranged exactly as you desire. I wish you that with all my heart.
There is nothing more I’ll say on that matter. Either now or ever.
Because I refuse vitriol.
As I refuse to be labelled racist without any evidence of it but my skin colour.
No more does my skin colour makes me an oppressor than your skin colour makes you oppressed.
For those conditions to occur, something else needes to happen. Something called an actual act of oppression, one of us undertakes knowingly against the other.
It is something I have never done, never want to do, and hope to prevent from happening to you or anyone whenever I can.
Including defending your right to voice your grievances, even by spewing vitriol.
Yes, I hear you… you do NOT need my permission or my defence. I get that. But that is not my point. My point is that I stand for who I am. As you do.
Not because I am white, or black, or any other colour, race, sex, religion, nationality… but because I am a human being. As you are.
Thank you for reading.
