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We’re stuck in a pointless public discourse

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To say South Africa’s public discourse is in the doldrums at the moment is an understatement. Just a week into the new year, we have a public conversation even poorer than the one we ended a negative, mind-numbing 2015 on.

Perplexingly, we are getting so much wrong about racism (thank you, Penny Sparrow et al), which we continue to conflate with race even though these two standpoints are entirely different.

That we are stuck explaining that racism is prejudice backed up with systemic and institutional power (which black South Africans, 22 years into this democracy, still do not have) is indicative of exactly how backward our discourse is.

This is due, in part, to the kinds of questions we are asking, particularly as media practitioners.

And we are not helped by the dearth of leadership on matters of race in South Africa.

The public continues to be fed a poor diet about how systemic racism works – ironic, given that South Africa is the living example of what that really looks like – and peddles meaningless rainbow nationisms (“It’s not what they call you, it’s what you respond to”) when answering difficult questions about a prevailing system of racism.

Then too many of us become “tired of talking about racism” when we do anything but that – and we do even less listening, when that is also what is sorely needed.

This week consisted of a fresh deluge of distractions, from radio hosts asking, “Does the rainbow nation exist?” to some political party leaders, including those from the ANC, speaking of “responding to racism with racism” (which the expressive Zamandlovu Ndlovu described in a tweet as: “It’s embarrassing that a party that was once a liberation movement can’t distinguish between racism and prejudice.”).

Experts on TV keep repeating what has been said for years: that racism is greater than just the Penny Sparrows and their Facebook comments; it is systemic.

We are failing dismally to address gross inequality, which is ultimately what the prevailing racism in this country is.

Esteemed thinker, writer and Nobel prize winner Toni Morrison says: “The function, the very serious function of racism, is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.”

As long as South Africans choose to remain distracted, systemic racism will continue to undermine true democracy for us all.

Follow Gugulethu on Twitter @GugsM

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