Blackness & the Question of Race

“Blackness emerged as an obstacle to unfettered injustice and become, in the moment of psychological terrorizing, the ethic of resistance. Therefore it is clear to be black is not merely an issue of colour nor simply the use of the language of the black people, but to use it to express the most progressive political, cultural and ethical interests that, in a racists society, must always be for human liberation and , thus, against all forms of oppression.” (Asante, 2005, p. 203)

Molefi Kete Asante, while discussing Ama Mazama`s critique of Fanons Black Skins, White Masks (1967) after noting that “blackness emerged as an obstacle to unfettered injustice” remarks that “it (blackness) has become over the decades  a trope of strong ethical dimensions with implications for a post-western construction of reality” (Asante, 2005, p. 203)

Indeed, the idea of Blackness as articulated by Asante, challenged the fundamental underpinnings of the dominant Eurocentric worldview which “placed itself at the centre of the social structure… (as) the reference point or the yardstick by which every other culture is defined”. (Oyebade, 1990, p. 223)

Asante`s trope of Blackness, although birthed in the United States with its particular history of slavery and oppression of blackness, has particular significance to the South Africa of today and highlights its universal appeal to oppressed peoples.

The question of blackness as a choice found particular favour among racialized groups such as “coloureds” and “Indians” in the early 1970`s and provided an ethical anchor within the racialized disunity of an apartheid system that emphasised phenotype as markers of difference. The pencil test (the practise of placing a pencil in the hair of those applying to be white in order to see how strait the hair was and by extension how white the person was, is in similar vain to the one drop policy in the United States) being its most symbolic expression. 

Coloured communities, seen and treated as black by the white oppressor, were nonetheless physically and mentally separated from other black communities based on the lighter tone of their skin. Indians too were separated from other oppressed groups on a similar arbitrary phenotypical basis.

The Coloured community in particular were alienated from their cultural heritage and given second class citizen status above other black communities who were categorised as third class citizens. This enforcement of division and granting a special privileges to coloured labour in preferential areas assisted in producing a community who were neither black not white, but a third race, called the coloureds, in which the social construction of race was engineered.

The forced separation of communities of Indian descent, while not succeeding in alienating them from their culture, was nonetheless successful in creating artificial barriers that achieved its central aim of creating disunity among the oppressed people.

The Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), and its chief ideologue, Steve Biko, in the same vain as Asante`s Blackness,  and seeing through the main reason for the separation of oppressed peoples, argued that “being black is not a matter of pigmentation – being black is a reflection of a mental attitude”, and within the definition of Black Consciousness confirmed to all who cared to hear, that by “merely describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.” (Biko, 2005, p. 48)

This definition of Black Consciousness in all its similarity to Asante`s later scholastic work, liberated many coloured and Indian students, who were exposed to the writing of Biko and the BCM, from their own mental slavery,  and produced a unity among black and coloured students never before experienced within the racially polarised construction of Apartheid South Africa.

This movement of students, although ideologically opposed to non-racialism, was to be the breeding ground of a new non-racialism that emerged in the anti-apartheid struggles in the early 1980`s. By the mid 1980`s it was common for coloured and Indian students, academics and activists to strongly affirm their blackness.

It is thus most unfortunate that post 1994 and 21 years into a new “non-racial” South Africa, that the value of ideas like Black Consciousness and Asante`s Blackness, have waned in the glaring focus on a “mythical” rainbow nation in which structural power is somehow erased or irrelevant and in which Whiteness or Eurocentric white privilege does not exist and everybody lives in harmony.

Popular discourse, driven by frustration at the lack of transformation and change, has most recently started to focus on, the question of divisions and differences within the group of oppressed peoples who still bear the brunt of the colonial policies of the “New South Africa”. The ongoing xenophobic violence and recent political campaign by the EFF to target Indians as a group, being the most public displays of a retrogressive confusion about, and anger at,  the unceasing dispossession of blacks in South Africa. The coloured community has also not been spared the vitriolic confused racism of a growing number of middle class groups who are more concerned with access to resources, than the emancipation of blacks.

So instead of having a discussion about Coloureds and Indians who no longer find it an ethical virtue to be black and blacks who no longer see blackness as an idea of justice and solidarity, but more as a phenotype, we end up lashing out at any privilege from which we are excluded.

As each group reverts to their historical socially constructed divisions to claim their right to existence and privilege within an economy that produces enough wealth for all, but which is structurally unable to share the wealth with all, and in which poverty and inequality have become the hallmarks of blackness, the enduring privilege of whiteness persists and the ranks of non-whites (blacks who are on side of the white oppressors) are swelled as their access to resources are increased.

A case in point refers to the manner in which the mineral wealth of the country, that source from which South Africa`s wealth and standing was built, and for which millions of black Africans died, is still being managed and distributed to an elect few, namely Multi-National Corporations and a hand full of non-whites.

Prior to 1994 and the adoption of the Minerals Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) in 2002, only white owners of Land were allowed  a right of first refusal and based on the 1927 Precious Stones Act, white owners automatically received a 50% share of the mining operations on “his” land. Blacks, who were the original owners of the land, were denied any legal recognition of their rights and where mining took place on communal land within the Bantustans, the royalties and benefits were essentially held by the Minister of Native Affairs and used for his own purposes. Blacks and local communities generally did not see any benefit from this arrangement.

That all changed with the passing of the MPRDA in 2002. White ownership of mining land was recognised but transferred as old order-rights to new-order rights thus leaving the historical legacy of white privilege intact.

At this point, with a democratically elected “black” government in power, one would expect that blacks would finally receive a fair deal, but this was not to be. Instead, Blacks were again denied ownership of their historically occupied lands and instead their rights were handed to the remnants of Apartheid era chiefs. Today Black communities live in poverty much the same as they did under Apartheid, while elite non-whites, who fervently proclaim their African cultural rights to chieftaincy, are the only ones who continue to benefit along with the historical beneficiaries of white privilege.  

This stark reality of continued dispossession of the black majority is played out in every sphere of South African reality today. The structural underpinnings of a system that ensures that the benefits of the country’s wealth are distributed to the elite of society, has not changed in any significant way.

Ones access to the resources of the country is not in the final analysis determined by the colour of one`s skin, or the ethnicity of ones heritage, rather it is the allegiance to white privilege that most matters. It is why a government ostensibly governing in the interests of its black citizens could act with such brutal murderousness in mowing down the workers at Marikana. Not in defence of blackness or justice, but in defence of white privilege and injustice.

The relevance and importance of a discourse on Blackness and Black Consciousness, is still relevant and now more urgently necessary than ever before.

The race issue is conveniently used by those in power to divert attention away from the structural nature of oppression of blacks.

In the media, the Independent Group were audacious in the opening salvos against white hegemony, when, with public funds they acquired the group and without hesitation started firing white editors and journalists. They were focused on producing a new black discourse into the media space and they were ruthless and unapologetic in their slash and burn approach.  

However, their unapologetic assault on white hegemony was merely a deflection from the true purpose of maintaining the status quo. Like the MPRDA Bill which denied blacks the right to self-determination and denied them the benefits of the wealth beneath their lands, and which perpetuated white privilege, the Independent Group has undertaken to keep these perspectives from the media space and has denied civil society and marginalised communities the space to articulate a Blackness that is premised on justice, resistance and the liberation of all oppressed people and not on phenotypes. Theirs is a Party Political mission that will not indulge any resistance to the project of continued dispossession of the black majority and the emboldening of non-white elites.

Xenophobic attacks on fellow suffering brothers and sisters, and crude racial stereotyping of whole communities of oppressed people, will not serve to advance the course of Blackness and Black Consciousness, it only serves to divide the oppressed from each other and allows the uninterrupted looting of the country.

Lest we remain trapped in the vortex of white privilege as we have been despite 1994, it is time that we as an oppressed nation agree that the colour of one`s skin does not automatically reflect justice or injustice. It is our actions that do.

We shall not judge them by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character. Martin Luther King.