“Black Economic Empowerment is just reverse racism!”

The heated debates about employment equity and affirmative action have over the years centred on the principle of whether these policies are racist or not. Criticism has been levelled against such policies because they appear to entrench racism in society rather than create new values for a non-racist society.

At the root of this debate is the question: “Is racial prejudice the same as racism?”

Prejudice is something all human beings have. It is a necessity. Our brains must cope with a deluge of information every second and the only way to do so is to neatly package information according to simple algorithms based on past experience. Humans are masters of categorisation. It is part of the reason we have become such a powerful species: we neatly capture similar traits in collections of information called stereotypes and are able to infer characteristics or even predict the future based on observations in the past.

A hunter can predict the behaviour of the prey. A weather forecaster can give reasonably good assurances of fine weather tomorrow. A child can learn from parents how to be a good Scot or Zulu.

This same skill when turned to examine other humans leads us to categorise people according to a range of stereotypes. We recognise patterns in peoples’ behaviour and we type these behaviours according to the people who use them. For the most part this is harmless if not always useful.

But it is limiting. We can stunt our ability to relate widely by making choices based on our prejudices. We can even find ourselves making unfounded assumptions about others. Normally this will result in some form of conflict which can be resolved if people are prepared to revise their assumptions or prejudices.

We categorise according to race, because it is a relatively easy identifier. The colour of one’s skin is obvious and secondary racial features like noses and hair can help make a type even more obvious. We associate behaviours with certain race groups too. Sometimes this is playful, sometimes harmless, but when does it become racist?

It becomes racist when these prejudices are used to create a societal system that deliberately disadvantages those who apparently fit the prejudice. It becomes racist when a person who has power over another uses that power to enforce the application of a prejudice to the disadvantage of that person.

Apartheid was racist because it used skin colour to keep sections of the South African population in poverty. A black women who avoids white people’s parties because she thinks their music is silly and white people can’t dance, is being prejudiced, but not racist.

So is BEE racist? BEE is based on the assumption that black people are poor and white people are rich, which is true for the most part. As to whether it is racist or not, that depends on to what extent it is a deliberate use of power to push a segment of the population into poverty using a prejudice which negatively defines them.

Black people are supposedly meant to benefit from BEE. Some black people do, many do not… not yet at least. While the intention of BEE is to lift black people out of poverty, it does not seem to be working and if the SACC, Cosatu and others are correct, it never will. By defining a sector of society according to past stereotypes BEE is clearly prejudiced. By using power to enforce that stereotype BEE is in danger of becoming racist as it further entrenches the poverty of the vast majority of black people in South Africa, however unintentional such an outcome may be.

In this issue of Axle, we take a brief look at some of the issues of racism and prejudice. We hope you find material that is interesting and challenging.