There have been a few articles on the subject of being a
White African and very different views posted on the subject of apartheid and racism
with one commentator was brave enough to say that all the young Afrikaans
people they know are racist.
This got me thinking are they really racist or just
classist?
I’m English and as am sure most of you will know the stereotype
of the English Class System, I am however married to an Afrikaner and in the 4
years I have been married can honestly say that less than 0.5% if that high
even of Afrikaans people I have met can be called racist. So there must surely
be another reason why even today people hold this view of the Afrikaner.
I have pondered long and hard over this and although many
Afrikaners deny that they have a class system I have found that they do.
I case my point on when my spouse and I were in England, I was
horrified by the way my spouse addressed people who are seen to have menial
jobs to the point where I found myself saying that I was highly embarrassed that
you just spoke to the person behind the till as if you had just scrapped them
off the bottom of your shoe.
With that in mind and as time went on the classist viewpoint
grew when watching game shows on telly where the contestant says what job they
have and respectable jobs in the UK such as shop assistants, window cleaners, bar
staff etc were met with “I’d never do that or you wouldn’t see an Afrikaans
person doing a job like that” and it isn’t because the person’s skin colour but
because Afrikaans culture dictates that those types of jobs are for people of a
lower class and unlike places like the UK where we have people of all classes
who are white, South Africa doesn’t and the jobs which were deemed below the
Afrikaner were filled by blacks, coloureds and Indians.
So I am of the opinion that what is perceived as racism is
just misplaced classism and is not aimed at the colour of their skin but their
class as dictated by what job they do, much the same as is played out in the UK
without the colour issue.
Please before I start to get hate mail from the Afrikaner
community this is not an attack on Afrikaners by any stretch of the imagination
and in my own little way although I may not have put it very well in some
places I am trying to defend the Afrikaner against the charge of blanket
racism.
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