Black Racist Bitch: How social media reveals South Africa's unfinished work on race

By Thandiwe Ntshinga

Critical whiteness studies is an offshoot of critical race theory that Thandiwe Ntshinga believes is desperately needed in South Africa.

She pokes holes in the belief that leaving whiteness undisturbed for analysis creates justice and normalcy. Instead, she says perpetually studying the 'other' hinders our development. 

The title of this book comes from one of the first comments she received on Tiktok when discussing her findings and research.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tafelberg
• Release date: Aug 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9780624093114

Thandiwe Ntshinga

Thandiwe Ntshinga is a media and communications professional with a master's in cultural anthropology from the University of the Witwatersrand. She has studied critical whiteness for more than seven years. She lives on a farm just outside of Pretoria.

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Black Racist Bitch

How social media reveals South Africa’s unfinished work on race

Thandiwe Ntshinga

Tafelberg

To my grandmother, my Makhulu. For as long as I have been writing, my granny, the avid reader that she is, has always read my work. Because of that we have come to share an intimate connection – it’s our thing.

Makhulu, I am so happy that for your 100th birthday, I get to dedicate my debut book to you.

Not everyone gets to be this blessed.

The centre of my universe, I love you more than words could ever express. Your granddaughter and friend – umntwana kaMakhulu.

To the two halves of my heart, my loyal companions, Solli and Sindi.

My sweet boy Solli, I miss you terribly. A piece of me is gone without you. Thank you for being by my side and saving my life.

Sindi-girl, I won’t say much. We still have many more years together, lerato laka.

All three of you came closer to me due to the pandemic. For that, I am eternally grateful for the life-changing experiences of selflessness, care, support and unconditional love.

For the reader, please note:

I refer to myself as a womxn and not as a woman.

‘The racist waving his flag isn’t a surprise. I see him. You see him. We all know what that’s about. But racism and bigotry don’t always march down the street. Sometimes the racist or the bigot sits down at your dinner table and asks you to pass the bread [. . .] Racism grows and festers in intimate spaces and behind closed doors.’¹

CHAPTER 1 

Introduction to whiteness

‘Race as a social construct’ – Discourses that miss the mark

‘FYI: I believe non-racialism will end racism. Race is social construct that only exists in the minds of people.’ ²

On social media, posts, comments and memes circulate with the phrase ‘Race is a social construct, it does not exist’, however that can be misconstrued. It is not the same as ‘Racism is a social construct; it does not exist’. That’s a dangerously incorrect understanding of race and how it moves as a tangible force in society. Race and racial classification are ideology. Racism encompasses behaviours, structures and laws.³ The question then becomes how was race constructed? The short answer is: by Western European men.

Multiculturalists who support nonracialism, may not notice that neither multiculturalism nor nonracialism challenge the status quo of oppressive systems that white people erected and see no problem in benefitting from. On Tiktok, user @Knysna provides such an example in her engagement on racism in South African universities:

@Knysna FYI: I believe non-racialism will end racism. Race is [a] social construct that only exists in the minds of people.

@BaiM So it’s something that you cannot just simply do away with.

@BaiM But you’re making it seem so easy when it’s been a system created by white people to their benefit and it won’t stop just like that sorry.

@Knysna Racism will exist so long as people believe races exist. #DecoloniseRace.

@BaiM Yes it’s a social construct but that construct is embedded in systematic (sic) and institutional racism that [was] created to oppress poc.

@Knysna I know. This is what I said. But if you want to end racism, you need to stop believing that races exist.

@BaiM I think you mean interpersonal racism as opposed to systemic or institutionalized racism. We would love to hope people would treat others equally.

@Knysna The concept of race was created to divide and control people. We won’t solve racism until people stop valuing and believing in race.

@Knysna SA’s constitution is actually non-racial. Gov can’t classify SAfns (South Africans) according to race. They get around this by getting SAfns (South Africans) to classify their own race.

I always find it a little bit off-putting when a Black person sounds like a white liberal who ‘fights’ racism by ignoring it. The post-apartheid ideology of non-racialism and the misuse of the social construction of race, in the way that @Knysna asserts, is not progressive nor decolonial. ‘. . . the very logic of the narrative prevents us from truly engaging with the problems that race presents to our society’, writes Simon Howell for Thought Leader. He elaborates:

Non-racialism sweeps under the rug the very real differences that racial categories have wrought on South African society. There is no denying, for instance, that race is as much an economic concept as it is a political and social one. Not seeing race prevents serious engagement with some of our most desperate problems: the ever-widening chasm between the rich and the poor, a faltering education structure and the continued growth of South Africa’s townships for example.⁴

Tiktok user @BaiM makes all the relevant decolonial critical whiteness arguments when tackling the ‘race is a social construct’ position in popular nonracialism narratives. The reality of race, racism and white superiority is ‘something that you cannot just simply do away with’. The claim that ‘Racism will exist so long as people believe races exist’ made by @Knysna is misguided. Racism will exist so long as people – regardless of race – subscribe to ideas of white racial superiority. The nonracialism discourses that have been employed by the ANC have been weaponised to continue racism. New political party, ActionSA’s, values address some of what is missing in nonracialism narratives on their website:

Non-racialism is not ‘colour blindness.’ Non-racialism acknowledges the division caused by the social construct of race in the South African context.

South Africa must strive to be a country where people’s potential to thrive is based on their ingenuity and hard work, and not the colour of their skin.

While we strive for a non-racial South Africa, we recognise that after 26 years of democracy, a strong correlation remains between race and socio-economic standing.

We cannot pretend that race is not a primary determinant of the future prospects of many South Africans. We must act as one to address this historical inequality.

Breaking the cycle of racial inequality requires that we take action to implement real and substantive policies aimed at improving equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.

South Africans must act as one to challenge racism in all its forms and pro-actively work to break down racial stereotypes and racial prejudice.

Interventions aimed at addressing inequality must be grounded in the principle of achieving non-racialism, which means interventions must be focused on equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes.⁵

On and offline there is sociopolitical commentary that argues that the political ideologies of newer parties like ActionSA and the EFF have primarily based their political visions on older ANC principles that tackled racism more directly. The ANC has yet to achieve this clarified position as a governing party. This is the political context in which South Africans find themselves having conversations about race.

Race – A European invention

Up until the Western European intellectual and philosophical movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’ Age of Enlightenment, race as a classification of human difference did not exist. Instead of dividing human beings according to perceived ideas of differing physical and mental attributes, human difference was categorised along lines such as religion, language, location, customs and social status. The Enlightenment is seen to be a great influence on the Scientific Revolution, as well as the intellectual origin of nineteenth-century political movements like liberalism, neoliberalism and communism.

The Enlightenment centred its values on notions of human happiness and knowledge production through reason, scientific method, evidence and reductionism while ideals were articulated around natural law, constitutional government, individual liberty and religious tolerance. In the mid-eighteenth century, the philosophical movement called for a society ordered by faith and for Catholicism to be replaced by natural law and scientific experiment and observation as a civil order. However, the theories of natural law during this period combined Christian scholastic philosophy, Roman law as well as the social contract theory. Social contract theory argues that an individual’s consent is needed, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender their freedoms either for the protection over their remaining rights or for the maintenance of social order.

The significance of science is not to be understated. This was a time when great value was placed on rational thought and empiricism in the pursuit of advancement and process. The study of science under the banner of natural philosophy – the study of nature – was divided into physics, chemistry and natural history to include biology, geology, anatomy, mineralogy and zoology. Science during this period was dominated by scientific communities and not universities as it was claimed that these societies functioned to create knowledge as opposed to universities that were seen to merely facilitate the transmission of knowledge.

Pseudoscience and biological racism

‘Contemporary scientific consensus agrees that race has no biological basis, but scientific racism still exists. While it’s now more subtle than craniometry, its long history demonstrates the influence social ideas about race can have on supposedly unbiased research.’ ⁶

The creation of knowledge by scientific societies during the Enlightenment also began the creation of biological, or scientific, racism. The empirical underpinnings in Enlightenment thought meant that a pseudoscientific belief was employed to justify and support racial superiority and racial discrimination that became popular from the 1600s. In 1684, French traveller and physician, François Bernier published the essay New Division of the Earth by the Different Species or Races of Man that Inhabit It, where he divided humanity into four different races determined by skin colour and other physical attributes, with an emphasis on his conceptions of female beauty. In the essay, he distinguished four different races: 1) The first race included populations from Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, India, south-east Asia and the Americas; 2) The second race consisted of the sub-Saharan Africans; 3) The third race consisted of the east and north-east Asians; 4) The fourth race were Sámi people – a group from a region that encompasses parts of modern-day Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia. Bernier’s classification was not one of established cultural and racial hierarchy, however, in this system of racial classification based primarily on physicality, other races deviated from the Western European norm. Interestingly, white people from Europe, the Americas and India were considered to belong to the same racial group where differences between Indians and Europeans were deemed as a result of institutional history and climate. His harshest comments were towards the Sámi/Lapps of Northern Europe who he described as resembling the face of a bear and being ‘ugly animals’.⁷

Swedish physician, botanist and zoologist, Carl Linnaeus, came up with five varieties of human species that vary by place and culture in a 1767 edition of one of his major works, Systema Naturae. It’s important to note that during this time, the terms ‘race’ and ‘species’ were employed interchangeably. Here, he noted the Americanus (Native American) as red, choleric, upright; black, straight, thick hair; nostrils flared; face beat; beardless; stubborn, zealous, free; painting himself with red lines, and regulated by customs. The Europeanus (European) were noted as white, sanguine, fleshy; with yellowish, long hair; blue eyes; gentle, acute, inventive; covered with close vestments; and governed by laws. Yellow, melancholic, stiff; black hair, dark eyes; austere, haughty, greedy; covered with loose clothing; and ruled by opinion, were the physiognomic characteristics of the group he labelled Asiaticus (Asian). The Afer or Africanus (African) were those who were black, phlegmatic, relaxed; black, frizzled hair; silky skin, flat nose, tumid lips; females without shame; mammary glands give milk abundantly; sly, lazy, negligent; anoints himself with grease; and governed by caprice. Finally, and arguably the most insulting, were the Monstrosus – a mythical sub-species of human that he presented as humanoid creatures to include ‘monorchid’ Khoikhoi (Hottentot).⁸

In his book, The Outline of History of Mankind, German polygenist, Christoph Meiners, examined the mental, physical and moral characteristics of each race and built a racial hierarchy with the ‘beautiful white race’ and the ‘ugly black race’. He argued beauty as the main characteristic of race where only the white race was beautiful and other ugly races were inferior, immoral and barbaric. Moreover, he concluded that ‘the Negro’ felt less pain and lacked in emotions in comparison to other races. In his words,

The more intelligent and noble people are by nature, the more adaptable, sensitive, delicate, and soft is their body; on the other hand, the less they possess the capacity and disposition towards virtue, the more they lack adaptability; and not only that, but the less sensitive are their bodies, the more can they tolerate extreme pain or the rapid alteration of heat and cold; when they are exposed to illnesses, the more rapid their recovery from wounds that would be fatal for more sensitive peoples, and the more they can partake of the worst and most indigestible foods . . . without noticeable ill effects.⁹

An observation to support his claim of Black people having ‘no human, barely any animal, feeling’ was his story of witnessing a Black man being burned alive and halfway through, he asked to smoke a pipe and then continued smoking while being burned to death. I don’t believe this story to be true. Nonetheless, the idea of Black people being void of the ability to feel pain remains in society today, particularly in relation to healthcare. Practicing the pseudoscientific method of craniometry, and its measurement of human skulls, the anatomy of the Negro was scrutinised by Meiners. He then concluded that Negros have bigger teeth and jaws making them carnivores, have larger skulls but smaller brains, and were the unhealthiest due to a combination of immorality, poor diet and mode of living.¹⁰,¹¹

Creating racial hierarchy

‘Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war.’ ¹²

By the nineteenth century, the Linnaeus human classification had been established which then led to sociological and anthropological theories that proposed unilineal evolution – the societal shift from primitive/agricultural to civilised/industrial – where Western European culture was the pinnacle of human social and cultural evolution. From the 1820s, the Bible had been interpreted to sanction slavery in the United States (US) with the idea that Negros were biologically inferior and well-suited for slavery. Theories of Black people being a separate species to white people, primitive and ape-like were also gaining more momentum.

Although Charles Darwin’s politics were considered moderate and abolitionist, his theories of human evolution and ideas of natural selection and the ‘survival of the fittest’ proved problematic. Historian Richard Hofstadter wrote, ‘The Darwinist mood sustained the belief in Anglo-Saxon racial superiority which obsessed many American thinkers in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The measure of world domination already achieved by the race seemed to prove it the fittest’.¹³ This theory also inspired the English philosopher and political theorist, Herbert Spencer, a prominent figure in eugenics, a movement based on the belief in a science behind improving the human race through selective breeding.

The civilising mission

‘Take up the White Man’s burden—

     [. . .]

By open speech and simple,

An hundred times made plain.

To seek another’s profit,

And work another’s gain’.¹⁴

The civilising mission, beginning in the fifteenth century with its intensity peaking between the nineteenth and twentieth century, is defined as the political rationale for the westernisation of indigenous populations through military intervention and colonialisation.

Portugal and Spain led the expansion of early modern European powers with the most advanced European maritime force during the fifteenth century. The impetus behind these maritime explorations was trade and capitalism that developed out of the European Renaissance. With the reductionist unilateral