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All personal prejudices should concern us.
Some of the recurring questions about the racism prevailing in South Africa are: “So what if there are still individual racists? Why do they matter?”
The answer is that racists, like other bigots, matter because they do not exist in a vacuum; they live among us and are integrated into society.
As feminist writer and thinker Audre Lorde wrote: “The personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices ...” Who we are in private is forever affecting what we do in public, because we carry our biases at all times.
Furthermore, prejudices are often used as the basis for discriminatory behaviour, which currently infringes upon every aspect of our national life.
This week, Sisonke Msimang wrote this in The Daily Maverick: “Mabel Jansen is fundamentally different from Penny Sparrow and Matthew Theunissen because she holds a public position. Her private prejudices are a matter of public interest because she is a judge.
“In Jansen we see what critical race theorists mean when they say that racism is prejudice plus power. Apartheid wasn’t simply racist because some whites had anti-black views; it was racist because that hatred was legislated and backed up by institutional power.”
However, even the Sparrow variety of racist matters, because as an estate agent she was probably part of the continued systemic exclusion of Black people from the property market. Grievances such as “I could not rent/buy/get an Airbnb with my black name” persist precisely because of people like Sparrow.
Racists matter because many of them do not hire Black people – and those who do underpay and/or abuse them. Individual racists are part of the lack of transformation we see across sectors.
Racists are able to mark down or fail Black children when given positions as educators; “normal” racists harass and beat Black people with impunity because they know that they can get away with it.
All racists, high court judge or not, actively partake in upholding the racist structure of our society. Their enacting of verbal and physical violence should be concerning enough, if we truly believe in the right to dignity and equality.
While some continue to downplay the significance of individual racists, the latter continue to use the institutional power and systems that are open to them to discriminate and to perpetuate inequality.
In the same way, sexists, homophobes, transphobes and ableists continue to use their positions and the existing unequal power structures to deny marginalised groups their opportunities and rights.
It is for this reason that every act of private discriminatory behaviour should concern us all.
