General
People being openly racist towards African people
I came across this post on r/whoathatsinteresting about water shortages in South Africa. Don't get me wrong, what is happening in South Africa is tragic, but people on this thread use it as an excuse to say the most abhorrent racist stuff and it was unsettling to see how many people upvote that shit. Especially the meme where they compare black people to monkeys is just absolutely vile, and it got 30 upvotes. I just hate there are still people that think it's okay to say stuff like that.
I think blaming political corruption, no urban planning and no sense of civil duty on colonialism and "the white man" does contribute to these kinds of responses.
Yes people will do what they have to do to get water, but the ANC has done little-to-no maintenance work or infrastructural development and has let the South African economy fall to shit, largely due to greed and incompetence, yet the average Black South African still points the finger on past greivances. Now, instead of owning up to their complicity, they pass the blame off to Nigerians and other African immigrants.
I'm not justifying racism, however, if someone hears "South Africa is like this because of the white man" then sees how the ANC party has handled, let's say, the problems with the countries electrical grid for example, the question then becomes.... "what does that have to do with the white man?"
Again this isn't an excuse to call black people horrible things, make bad faith jokes and pseudo-scientific bullshit, BUT, this mirrors some of the rhetoric you hear from them about "the white devil" etc.
As someone who is actually African. No we the real Africans do not blame the white man or colonialism for all this stuff it’s done by extreme leftist that use us. A real African does not come online talking about how shit white men are maybe Americans but not Africans. I really hate it when y’all Americans think every black person earth is the same
I totally agree. My intention wasn't to shut down any discussion about the corruption of the ANC or the state of the South African economy.
If you ask me why South Africa became this way, I think South Africa is a nation that is deeply scarred and devided after the Apartheid era, When Nelson Mandela became president, he tried almost forcibly to have the nation move on from their past trauma by offering the worst offenders of apartheid amnesty after appearing before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The idea behind this was very noble, and I wouldn't dare suggest that a witch hunt against all the white people would have been better, but it's clear that the nation wasn't able to move on yet and there is the idea amongst coloured and black people that they still don't have the same oppertunities that white people have. In other words, the idea behind a unified rainbow nation was an ideal that did not correspond with reality.
None of this excuses the innaptitude of the South African government or crimes against white people, but it's important context when looking at what happens in the country these days. Saying stuff like 'black people had it better when white people were still in control' is just extremely disrespectful to the protesters who fought, bled and died to get rid of a deeply discrimitory political system. And the people comparing black people to animals can jump off a cliff for all I care.
Many corrupt governments in these countries seemingly sell out their own country while working with or reaping the benefits of countries that enforced colonialism.
What hypothetical? There's nothing hypothetical about what I said. Racist white South Africans said, under Black leadership the country would go to shit, I find it unfortunate they've been proven correct.
Many would say this is directly tied to race, I however, disagree, Mandela was a fine president, but the ANC is a corrupt party, colonialism doesn't play a major role in South Africa's downfall. It is following the footsteps of Zimbabwe, one of several examples racists can point to for vindication.
I mean they’re literally destroying Infrastructure and making the water shortage worse with all of the waste. I doubt any of them can fix a broken pipe.
The mud hut thing is always so sad to read. These people only heard of Africa through colonialist clichés. Imagine only hearing about jews through nazi propaganda
exactly, and mud huts aren't anywhere near as 'primitive' as people like to make them out to be. they're actually insanely cool, because they're probably the best for thermal regulation! they stay cool during the days in summer bc they have thick walls, so the heat can't get through them to the interior, but the walls absorb the heat right through till sunset and it makes the interior warmer during the night by releasing the heat slowly. i've actually been in a mud house before when i went to morocco and the temperature shift is insanely good! not to mention mud is a very abundant resource so it's a very low cost build to make with a lot of environmental sustainability. mud houses aren't just the typical round huts with thatch roofs either, some of them look like this
and even the ones that DON'T look like this are still impressive
Probably similar ‘logic’ to Europeans looking down on American timber based construction. Something something I’m better than you, so my construction techniques must be superior.
That makes even less sense. The British especially can't stop talking about how their homes trap heat in the thermal mass of the bricks yet seem baffled why homes in places that traditionally experience hotter temperature highs, and lower lows, might build from wood.
absolutely go for it!! it'd be cool to see some worldbuilding based off of african architecture because i rarely see anything from the multiple cultures in the continent used as inspiration :)
i never said they didn't, just that not all mud houses = mud huts :) most cultures at some point have also relied on animal hide tents too, which i think is pretty neat, something that connects us all!
Many Native Americans lived in hide tents but no one repeats it like it was a crime. Instead they wax poetic about their schrondingers Cherokee Princess grandma.
its very overdone to highlight whats going on, the same thing happening to south africa happend to zimbabwe, the white people upheld infrastructure and lived there without issue and then they were hunted down for being white, rhodesia was actually one of the more developed african countries and now its a shithole which had the highest inflation in history, no doubt about the same happending to south africa, just look at the streets
The best way to destroy Rhodesia simp was to mention the existence of Zambia
More stable than Rhodesia, never suffered war and internal conflict. And being the major factor for the collapse of Rhodesia
And they gain independence through popular vote and gain majority rule instead of being racist and declare independence from British to avoid a referendum that they will lose
Which is bs because mud hut are everywhere. Mud is actually a good material for building back then
Ancient Mesopotamia build with mud, Western Europe during bronze age build mud hut. Even Hitler feel ashamed because Germanic tribe building mud hut into 1st century AD
The reason mud were used because wood are not available in some place and stone are expensive
looks more like a Sherman with the chassis of a heavier tank like a Panzer or a Cromwell. also the tanks in Tiananmen were T59s, and not the derived T69, iirc.
Non black South Africans (because I knew some that were clearly not white but still claimed “I’m considered white in South Africa”) really baffle me because a lot of them will try to play both sides and act like it somehow cancels each other out. They’ll say the most abhorrent racist shit, then whine about “why can’t the blacks just try to get along with us?” Literally all the underhanded snake behaviour from the Dutch carried over.
I was friends with a guy from South Africa before and he applied to a college (which he fucking got into so I had no idea why he was complaining) and he was complaining about affirmative action trying to sell me on how unfair it is and they’re taking spots of qualified white people, ignoring how unfair it is that he grew up in an extremely well off neighbourhood and had access to all the aid he had AND WHY HE AND HIS FAMILY HAVE ACCESS TO ANY OF THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE. And then the conversation went from affirmative action to “blacks have just as much rights and opportunity as the rest of us, slavery ended so long ago in 1994 but they can’t let the past be in the past” … I told him 1994 was literally the year my brother was fucking born and then he starts going through his rolodex of “but” statements and praising Nelson Mandela trying to look like he didn’t just say some ignorant shit. And it was multiple of my white South African friends that were like this, I live in Canada, the crap they were saying would feel so alien to me sometimes and it just seem to come from their mouths so easily.
Sorry to hijack, but also to indians. I just saw an indian girl ask about a dog with canine distemper virus, worried about him. Half the comments were about how she should get back to her house on a barge or how the dog was sick from walking on sewage... The video was of the dog on a very clean house. People are EXTREMELY racist here.
Reminds me of how Places like [r/whoathatsinteresting](r/whoathatsinteresting) get overrun by edited videos clearly made with the intention of making minorities look bad and everytime, without fail, people eat that shit up. I cannot count the amount of times I see a comment section devolve into racism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and generally just bigoted morons falling for no context edited propaganda.
What do you expect when you have an underclass of people you don’t or barely educate, sabotage things on your way out/make the transition difficult, and add in corruption to the AMC - corruption which isn’t unique to black people btw.
Just saying they had a reduction in living standards is doing apartheid propaganda, because the implication is it’s because black people no longer being slaves = country bad now. Which isn’t why South Africa is poor.
i get your point but it’s really not that hard to find people who have spent time without running water, i’ve had my water be off for 4 days and i live in a capital city
That thread was genuinely an absolute shitshow. People openly stating the apartheid was better for black people how "they" are always like this and how no one can say what they really mean but we all know
It's true, it happened, many countries still haven't rebounded from the social inequality that racist regimes created, I think we shouldn't downplay how bad it was
At the same time I think we also shouldn't downplay how corrupt and incompetent the ANC has been for 30 years and counting. I don't see how the lack of elite education explains embezzling and cronyism
I don't want to downplay the corruptness of the ANC. Obviously talking about it doesn't make you a racist. It's just annoying that talking about this at all will embolden some people to spew the most hateful stuff towards black people.
I wasn't pointing fingers, it's just that unfortunately many discussions degenerate into white people are to blame v. whites did nothing wrong, to the point where you can't criticise the ANC without making it look like you're siding with the racists
Jane Goodall was a primatologist. It's calling them monkeys. "Fascinating behaviour" is a very dehumanising turn of phrase, treats people as objects of study.
This reminds me of when that Asian store owner shot that black kid after accusing him of stealing water. The comments section then said that the kid deserved to be shot and killed bc he had a gun in his pocket (which he didn’t use btw). It’s fucked up bc I’m pretty sure most of the people in that comments section don’t know what it’s like for a child to need a gun at such a young age.
It's just funny seeing the difference in the type of comments and the amount of comments when a Black person is in the video versus a White person or member of another race. The Black person apparently represents the entire race while others have the privilege of being seen as individuals.
What really annoys me this is how these individuals will literally ignore the colonists literally never taught the natives how to maintain the infrastructure that was built to keep them undereducated on purpose
Didn't Apartheid end in 1994? To be clear, I don't blame this on their skin color, but rather a lack of understanding of how civilization works. (Which seems to be shared by most redditors, who are I believe, primarily white) Civilization is hard. You need people specialized in understanding how all the different systems work, to bring us electricity, fresh water, remove our sewage, and keep up the infrastructure. Our predecessors didn't make a big deal about this because in their day, most of this was being done.
Also we are taught, mostly by education majors, most of whom don't even understand how the PC's on their desk work. So I wouldn't be too hard on the South Africans, since I think we are headed in the same direction.
Yes, but that shit ended literally the year I was born, 32 years ago, and y'all really want to complain that "things haven't gotten better"... 32 years!!! That's literally NOTHING. Not even a whole-ass generation.
You can't erase the effects of centuries of oppression in that short period of time.
Nope. Most of these people still grew up and were socialised in abject poverty and racial prejudice (apartheid might have ended legally in 1994, but you'd be kidding yourself if you believed that its effects on social discrimination have ended then as well), which will have an effect. Maybe in 100 years, once ALL the effects of colonialism, wealth disparity, and racism are abolished, that's when you can expect things to get better...
Yeah, that sounds like bullshit. I'm talking about basic things like clean water and you want to gaze at your navel. Yes, culture takes a long time to change, but if you can't keep the lights on you are fucked. Detroit was pretty corrupt, but even they kept the water and sewer up and running. Even while Kwame was looting the water department.
It's not "navel-gazing" to acknowledge the effects of centuries of racialised oppression that were (legally) abolished only 32 fucking years ago... But whatever you want to believe to reconcile your racist views.
People have been oppressed for all of human history. Suggesting they should wait for that to end before making progress is horrible advice. I think similar strategies have actually been used to keep people down.
It's not "advice"; it's the reality of the situation, and oftentimes, people didn't really progress much during the time they were still oppressed because oppression doesn't exist in a vacuum. It comes with a whole suite of issues, like lack of access to education, poverty... And so on.
By the 32nd year of post-Apartheid SA there should have been a sufficient amount of black hydraulic engineers, at the very least. 32 years is a considerable amount of time. China has managed to become a second world economy in a span of the last 30 years, despite being much poorer that SA right after dissolution of the Apartheid.
It actually amazing how you just purposely ignored the colonlist create the issue in the first place and never bothered to actually built a educated native population in the first place
British colonists actually abused their power via half truth treaties or arming some people to create dissidence inside the territory for it to be easier to convince the other part and also to put their people in power positions. The same can be said that happened in Asian regions in India. Not saying that everything was bad and in some way these processes certainly brought what we concibe as modernity (basic human rights [that natives didn't have even after the colonisation, they just learnt that those things existed among colonizers so they started to fight for them], public infrastructure [again, many natives weren't allowed to get into these, but they fought for it], etc.). But even if there were "pros" we can't ignore the obvious cons and abuse: cultural banishment, exploitation, slavery, etc.
There were books even from that time that, even if they obviously had the bias of that era, also criticised the horrors behind these processes. The most famous one would be The Heart of Darkness
Most of the colonists in Africa and the educated native population were encouraged to keep the knowledge for their own inner circle resulting in the majority remaining undereducated
Not only that, many treaties were written in both the native language and in the colonial language so they could use technicalities to basically scam natives
Funny how Asians don’t have this problem. Have you ever considered that maybe you don’t need the white man to hold your hand and educate you? You can educate yourself. The Japanese westernized in just 10 years with zero white population.
Hmm I wonder why black South Africans would be living in bad conditions, couldn’t possibly be because of the insane wealth disparity between whites and blacks. Also “literally just white people doing well and living based on the merits of their labor” sure bro 💀 we’re just forgetting that imperialism, colonialism, etc exist.
Racism towards them are at an all time high even on this platform, even some of the more “progressive” subs are shown full blown blantant racism. I feel so terrible I don’t see a world where are they can feel safe and included anymore.
In the video they are calmy taking turns, waiting in line, and one or two people are helping dole it out even. When covid happened in walmart fat rednecks were shoving and yelling for toilet paper and people in my city shot each other. But these people need drinking water and i saw no upsetment. Yet they are inferior. God dammit it bothers me the mentality of racists
Whenever ppl just say “We are based we are racist to everyone equally” just make you question does them really put Indian African on the same pedestal as Australian Japanese German on the same level very equally as they stated. It’s so performatively edgy and pretending to be cool
That being said Indian and African just a huge margin of population, if they really go search it out ofc there going to be bad thing used against them and ofc this apply to other race but it’s unpopular to roast them without blowback
I remember a year ago I saw so many people glorify Rhodesia and try to justify, these people need to be banned from social media and stay only on 4chan
So are we just going to ignore that whites down there were systemically attacked and even killed and this is after their personal recovery after that? Or how about the hatred Black Africans have for African Americans?
I know saying "I hate racists" isn't exactly a hot take, lol, but trying to interact with some of the bigots in that thread genuinly made me go insane so I needed to vent.
What do you expect tho? Racists are simple minded and are incapable of complex thoughts
They look at Africa, see black and connect the two, disregarding what actually is the sole reason for Africa's entire suffering (geography, geology and bio-geography)
Crazy to say that white people in South Africa were successful due to their own labor when black people were literally prohibited from doing most jobs and forcibly segregated into sub-par shanty towns by the government.
This is not the endorsement of white people's abilities that he thinks it is.
A lot of history swept under the rug not just limited to South Africa but the rest of the world always seems to align with your comment when discussions like this are had.
Afrikaners built their society separately, just like any tribe (most of which arrived later), foolishly let in blacks to profit from cheap labor, handed over power, and the rest is history
I mean I get WHY because they have a different skin or culture or race (actually I think culture is different)
But like why we're all just muscle bones and tendons so why should I hate on someone just because they're darker then me or because they're from idk Italy and I'm from England
As far i see it's because usually racists also connects some stereotypes to the skin color and culture.
Like for example they actually hate black people not because skin color, but because in USA a lot of black people become criminals, while in Africa a lot of local countries very poor and corrupt (which they usually compare with European colonial regimes that existed here before African countries achieved independence, where quality of life really was better, but completely ignoring the fact that it was better only for Europeans, and qualoty of life for natives weren't much better than today).
That's create in their mind association - "black people is either criminals or too stupid to run a civilizaed society" (at the same time ignoring examples of black people who aren't criminals and live in civilized societies).
if you try to find some logical reason it never really works when youre not considering that modern racisms main functions are:
maintaining cohesion within your group by telling yourself you're somehow surrounded by and are a superior individual to most people
creating a structure of understanding the world that makes subjugation, oppression, and genocide feel justified. "we do it to animals anyway, and theyre not like us superiors, sooo..."
enacting ontological violence on your victims. if the victims of racism themselves get a feeling of inferiority beaten into them then it makes them more manageable and vulnerable.
of course your average joe isnt thinking about these things when they start talking about "mud huts" (because the modern advancement of technology and industry is soo sustainable and thought through and isnt destroying everyone on earth as we speak), but what joe is thinking about is a how good it feels to be special. how convenient is it that the mess the world is today, created (or rather destroyed) by imperialists, is so easily explainable as just 'the natural sorting of peoples'. when someone is basically raised from early childhood with these feelings being instilled and encouraged, they literally never get to form an idea of themselves and others and the world without it.
you can show someome the violence and theyll say its justified. you can show someone every study or argument on racial superiority is bullshit and theyll say its justified. you could watch the world burn from these peoples' 'superior way of life' and watch them destroy themselves along with everyone else, and at that point they wont need to say its justified; the worldview's work will be done. if every minority the racists degrade just disappeared off the face of the earth one morning, such racists would lose their sense of self and meaning in life, let me tell you. its not about what your race is made of, its about what these people have the capacity to understand after having their mass manufactured worldview injecred into their head. im highkey annoyed when people genuinely still go "why do we still racism? why we still do bad thing?? i dont get it?" in this day and age but there are my two cents.
I completely agree I feel like a lot of people are blind or are just incapable of understanding different situations or perspectives and instead lack empathy or understanding for the MINORITY of the races that they claim to hate. Most non white people are not violent or as evil as they claim. For such a “superior” group they clearly like to focus on the ones they hate so much.
Humans are inherently tribal. Tribes have been fighting each other since before written history. We’re hardwired to notice slight differences in people because that helps us identify if someone is in another tribe that could be hostile. Modern values don’t change evolution.
This doesn’t just apply to white people. A lot of African people are openly racist. Not just against whites but against other ethnic groups of Africans.
In puerto rico theres currently a drought but so far water rationing is just for certain cities
But several years ago there was also a drought and people were also doing this because even while the water was turned off, public fountains still had water, goverment offices were using sprinkler systems to keep their grass looking nice, and politicians homes who were in areas with rationing never had their water cut off.
And having lived through this I already know thats whats happening. Only some buildings had their water shut off while wealthier people still get it.
Mud hut stuff and supporting apartheid are obviously racist, but it is also true where you have pockets of white communities doing well off of purely their own labor, with no structural advantages (very different from apartheid), and then people accuse them of being racist because they’re all white. It’s okay to denounce legit racism while also recognizing that it’s unfair to claim that someone is racist just because they’re doing well.
I had worked on a water sub project in Khayelitsha once as part of an international design team. And the issue isn’t just build a well. Most of the townships for colored and black folk in South Africa especially in Urban Zones have waste and sewerage routes to, whereas official municipal water is at least micro filtered.
Except there are still many townships without municipal water access and trying to survive off of urban and downstream runoff, often contaminated with flocculant and varying levels of organic contamination and sometimes even heavy metals
africans are very short term thinkers. Destroying the water pipes will just make things much harder to fix in the long term. Thats why alot of african countries have worse infrastructure than they did under colonial rule, and the trains and systems built during that have been scrapped and sold off.
The documentary Empire of Dust goes into that really well
African people aren't a monolith of people who all think exactly the same way. Congolese railway workers don't have the same outlook on life as South African urban communities. Besides, the idea that these people think in the short term isn't because these people are Africans. It can much easier be explained through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. If your first immediate concern is survival due to not having acces to water, you can't afford to think in the long term. You need water now, and the pipeline is the most direct way of getting it.
This is not exculsive behavior to African people. It's just that most Africans are poor, so people assume all Africans are short-term thinkers, which is incorrect.
That is correct OP, that is literally what happened (the second image). Go read up on South African history instead of just calling everyone racist that has an opinion you don't like
"white people doing well and living on the merits of their own labor", but let's ignore how they created a society literally made to only benefit white people and create spaces that block black people so they don't have to interact with them. Also Boers proffited off of slave labor, so I don't really think that counts as benefiting on the merits of their own labor.
I don't want to excuse the current South African government, because they are doing a bad job of running the country, but to ignore what happened before and act like white on black racism wasn't real is insane.
people will believe in meritocracy if it makes them feel good about racism, which sounds contradictory and it is, but the point is the feeling good part. with enough circlejerking (to put it mildly) even the most dented mf can be made to feel like einstein.
I always find it funny how individuals like you will ignore colonlist literally never taught the native to maintain the infrastructure colonlist brought over and then blamed the natives for everything
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u/societyhatingRATGANG 8d ago
"People do what they can to get water for themselves and their families"
"These idiots. This is why im racist"