Steve Biko, white guilt and me

*As much as I would love to write about Buffy some more, I have had this post in the works for a while and I have to get it off my chest.

In response to the post, On white maleness, one commentor contemplated whether social change is "an only black thing".  She confesses to having struggled with this particular part of Bantu Stephen Biko's ideas; the idea that in order for there to be real change (which in Biko's time meant the end of Apartheid), black people need to define their struggle and engage with that struggle seperately from the efforts of well-meaning white liberals. 

A few weeks ago, when I was really starting to understand who I was working for, and what was expected of my identity as a black woman at the place where I work, I revisited I Write What I Like, at the suggestion of my white male partner.  My relationship with this book, and with Biko is a complicated one.  I first encountered I Write What I Like four years ago, as part of a course I took on race and social identity.  We were assigned Biko, along with Frantz Fanon as part of our course work.  Funnily enough, I didn't struggle too much with Fanon.  It was Biko I had a problem with. I was especially bothered by the second chapter in I Write What I Like on white liberals.  Titled 'Black Souls in White Skins?' the chapter explores the role of white liberals in the fight against Apartheid.  Biko characterises liberal white South Africa thus:

...that curious bunch of nonconformists who explain their participation in negative terms: that bunch of do-gooders that goes under all sorts of names -liberals, leftists etc. These are the people who argue that they are not responsible for white racism and the country’s “inhumanity to the black man”. These are the people who claim that they too feel the oppression just as acutely as the blacks and therefore should be jointly involved in the black man’s struggle for a place under the sun. In short, these are the people who say that they have black souls wrapped up in white skins.

That palpable irony you detect is quite intentional.  Biko goes on to declare:

Nowhere is the arrogance of the liberal ideology demonstrated so well as in their insistence that the problems of the country can only be solved by a bilateral approach involving both black and white. This has, by and large, come to be taken in all seriousness as the modus operandi in South Africa by all those who claim they would like a change in the status quo.

Biko insists that these champions of change are not what they seem: in continuing to interfere and, in many cases, define and run 'the struggle' these so-called liberals are recreating Apartheid hierarchies within the heart of the struggle against Apartheid.  He suggests that the place for white people truly committed to social change, and to the end of Apartheid lies not in the black struggle but in their own community.  It's basically a case of "white person, heal thyself":

Rather, all true liberals should realise that the place for their fight for justice is within their white society. The liberals must realise that they themselves are oppressed if they are true liberals and therefore they must fight for their own freedom and not that of the nebulous “they” with whom they can hardly claim identification. The liberal must apply himself with absolute dedication to the idea of educating his white brothers that the history of the country may have to be rewritten at some stage and that we may live in “a country where colour will not serve to put a man in a box”. The.blacks have heard enough of this. In other words, the Liberal must serve as a lubricating material so that as we change gears in trying to find a better direction for South Africa, there should be no grinding noises of metal against metal but a free and easy flowing movement which will be characteristic of a well-looked -after vehicle.

When I read this, I was volunteering for a large student-run civil society organisations, and many of my fellow volunteers (who were also my best friends - nothing quite like spending all your time volunteering together to bond you to people) were white.  I believed them to be genuinely committed to addressing the injustices Apartheid and colonialism had wrought on their country.  I also struggled with Biko because I struggle, in general, with black men who I feel make pronouncements about blackness that do not take the particular struggles of black women into account.  I remember a classmate telling me the story of how Biko used to dictate passages of I Write What I Like for some woman in his life (mother, sister, lover?) to record.  What about her ideas and what she liked?  What did blackness mean for her?

I also struggled with Biko because, for all intents and purposes, he could have been speaking about me.  I am not South African, I do not speak Xhosa, Zulu or any other African South African language, I am middle class.  I do not belong in 'the struggle' by Biko's accounts, but did that mean that I was not black?  Did the fact that I worked side by side with white people mean that I was an accessory to the perpetuation of white privilege?  I never quite answered any of my questions.  I subsequently left the student-volunteering world, due to unrelated burn out.  I'm ashamed to say that I didn't confront any of my race and identity issues until I entered into my current relationship.  I'm equally ashamed to admit that I didn't think about or revisit Steve Biko until I started my current job.  

Over the last few weeks, Biko has been on my mind a great deal more.  I find that he no longer makes me uneasy.  In sharp contrast to the confusion and anger he called up in me four years ago, Biko and his writing now serve as a source of sanity and as a way for me topull together the chaos of my workplace into a coherent narrative.  In other words, I Write What I Like, which I read all those moons ago, shortly before my first encounter with burnout and depression, has helped keep a fast-approaching second episode of burnout at bay.

Reading my experiences at work - and my white colleagues - through  Biko lens has helped me make some sense of the hot emotional mess that is currently my career.  Though Biko was writing about the anti-apartheid struggle, much of what he said applies to civil society in South Africa, with one key difference.  Apartheid (and its evil stepfather, colonialism) were - excuse the pun - black and white issues.  I am fortunate enough to not have lived through any of those, but I know enough to imagine that you could see the evil during those periods.  It manifested itself in every aspect of one's life, and in every interaction one had with fellow South Africans.  It was easier back then to reject the evil, purge it from one's identity and choose a new identity that was based on opposing the evil.  I believe that is what created white liberals: they saw apartheid and the particular segment of white society it was associated with, and decided to remake whiteness that was based on resistance to that which they saw as evil.

In post-apartheid South Africa, it is less clear where the lines are, and who the enemy is.  Where apartheid allowed clear lines to be drawn between white whites and whites, post-apartheid South Africa has pulled back the curtains that the apartheid regime so violently policed to reveal what was done in the name of all whites.  Note that it is not about what was done by all whites, it is what was done in the name of  all whites, on the basis that they occupied the same place in some imaginary (biological? metaphysical?) hierarchy, no matter what their politics were.  Where there once were white liberals, who drew lines in the sand to separate themselves from evil, there are now white liberals who, having seen what was done in the name of whiteness (theirs included) draw lines in the sand to cope with their guilt.  It is no longer easy to separate whiteness from apartheid in post-apartheid South Africa.  The result of this is white guilt, which is what I believe spurs some of the white liberals I have encountered to the work they do.  Instead of the development of black agency and black solutions for black problems, as Biko advocated way back when, there has been a rush of white liberals to the spots that stand as indictments on their whiteness - spots that could have been the sites of the development of black agency, but are now into sites on which white liberals work out their existential angst and guilt.

I know how harsh that sounds, I do.  But I am not saying that the same 'evil' as during apartheid is at play here. I am not saying there is anything evil about guilt (though, I was raised Catholic and could write a book debating that).  Of course any thinking white South African experiences guilt.  Of course the natural inclination is to do something to make right what went so wrong on (effectively) your watch.  But the mistake those of us who carry our (white or middle class, private school black) guilt into our work in civil society make  is to assume that the responsibility to 'make things right' is ours.  Yes, it is the social responsibility of those of us who are privileged to do what we can to change this country, but it is not our responsibility to define change for those who are less privileged.  Going into this kind of work from a place of guilt is both admirable and dangerous.  It is admirable because it signals a willingness to face the demons in one's self.  It is dangerous because guilt is all-consuming: you can never do enough to be rid of it, and the more you do, the more you do (did Imention I was raised Catholic?).  And so you do and do and do, until all you are is a flurry of activity, and you forget to reflect on the impact of your guilt and your privilege on the work you are currently doing.

So, Biko was right, I am sorry to say.  His work has given me some sense of comfort, and a frame with which to analyse what has been a difficult emotional journey (into unemployment, amongst other things).  However, my overwhelming emotion as I write this is one of sadness.  I am depressed at the thought that 34 years after I Write What I Like was published, Biko's work is still this frighyteningly on the nose.  What does this mean for men and women like Biko who died in the hopes that  their children's children would be born into an enitirely different world? And what does this mean for my children's children?