LIKE many people around the world, I was shocked and dismayed at the senseless death of George Floyd. And like many, I did not know him, but that did not stop most of us from feeling angry and helpless.
Obviously we could not help directly, nor could we support the family at this distance, but many people across the world took to the streets to protest police brutality.
They did this at great personal risk because of the over-zealous police and army response that was reminiscent of the dark days of the civil rights movement in the US and our student protests in South Africa.
John Oliver, in his TV show Last Week Tonight, traced the beginning of policing in the US to the militia which was responsible for finding, capturing and returning runaway slaves to their “owners” on the plantations.
He says the police were racist right from the beginning and it is something we can identify with in South Africa.
I can vividly remember the police lining up at the bus stop at the then University of Durban-Westville (now part of the University of KwaZulu-Natal) to wade into the students with batons, whips and tear gas.
I can also remember that many of the police were Indian and African men, who believed that putting food on their children’s plates was more important than the lives of the children of other parents. And we have had our own senseless acts of police and army brutality against what political parties are happy to call our own people.
It seems that everywhere we turn there is a new conflict based on old unresolved struggles and Facebook is no exception.
The one battle, strangely enough, is over the #BlackLivesMatter campaign. I’ve seen many members of the Indian community argue that all lives matter. They are right, of course.
All lives do matter and they are right to approach anything with scepticism. I also found a reason to question it.
I thought I should share the way that I made sense of the campaign and accepted its relevance and importance to me.
My first issue was with the term “black”. Many people are uncomfortable with being classified as black.
Apartheid South Africa did not use the word black to refer to all people classified as non-white.
So, I was not classified as white (obviously) and I did not want to be classified in such a derogatory sense as non-white, and I had problems with being classified as Indian simply because, while I may belong to a cultural tradition, I am not a citizen of India.
I had to understand that being black was not an insult, but really an affirmation of something positive along the lines of Black Consciousness.
Therefore, I see blackness as a state of mind rather than the colour of my skin. It is a way to refuse being oppressed.
No one is going to say that I’m not black, because it is a state of mind that I choose for myself.
The second issue was a little easier to understand and it could be reduced to one simple question: “When did black lives ever matter?”
Well, if I consider the history of all black people it is clear that my life really did not matter to whites (not to refer to skin colour but the state of mind).
I really did not have to be a historian to know that black lives didn’t really matter – otherwise we would not have had slavery, subjugation and indenture.
Since my heritage was interrupted by indenture (which is a form of slavery), it was clear to me that black lives never really mattered.
The last issue is whether African-American lives matter more than, say, South African lives, or even Hispanic lives. This has been my greatest worry. I even want to change BlackLivesMatter to #AllBlackLivesMatter.
This does not mean that all lives don’t matter, but white lives have always mattered more than black lives – think about the poor white problem in South Africa and how the railways provided employment and accommodation for white workers.
So, I’m black and my life has been demeaned, manipulated, traded, violated and destroyed by whiteness, but I can proclaim that my life matters and I can join with like-minded people and proclaim that #BlackLivesMatter.
So, what is it that we can do?
I’m not suggesting that people support the #BlackLivesMatter campaign, but I do suggest that if they genuinely believe that all lives matter, then start a campaign and don’t dilute the potency of the #BlackLivesMatter campaign, because it deflects the focus away from police brutality to an argument that does not achieve anything besides ruining friendships.
There is something that we can do which is well within our influence as parents.
Oliver also pointed out that police brutality was made palatable and even acceptable by the media. Remember when psychologists were warning us not to expose our children to too much violence on TV? Well, it turns out that they were right.
Almost every American film and television series glorifies violence. From Dirty Harry to Lethal Weapon, The Fast and the Furious to Arrow, violence is glorified.
Children see this violence, but they do not experience the pain.
Educational psychologists once conducted a study where they observed children in two rooms; in the one room they had toys like guns and swords, and television that showed violence, while in the other room they had toys such as dolls and building blocks, and television that showed non-
violent programmes.
They observed that the children in the first room became violent but the children in the other room did not. Well, building a peaceful world starts in the home.
(Professor Kiren Thathiah is an academic, artist, author and creative director at SA Local Content)