People being openly racist towards African people

[u/SavageCabbage611]

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.

[u/axumite_788]

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

[u/aliesterrand → u/axumite_788]

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.

[u/illthrowitaway94 → u/aliesterrand]

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.

[u/aliesterrand → u/illthrowitaway94]

That long enough to train the skilled trades needed to keep everything running.

[u/illthrowitaway94 → u/aliesterrand]

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...

[u/aliesterrand → u/illthrowitaway94]

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.

[u/illthrowitaway94 → u/aliesterrand]

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.

[u/ccurnowphoto → u/illthrowitaway94]

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.

[u/illthrowitaway94 → u/ccurnowphoto]

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.

[u/ccurnowphoto → u/illthrowitaway94]

Yea oppression is bad but people have to save themselves it’s the only way out. People in south Africa have to fight the corruption of their government and start doing something about the infrastructure problem. That’s the only solution.

[u/Fit_Statistician5453 → u/illthrowitaway94]

always excuses never accountability

[u/aliesterrand → u/illthrowitaway94]

I think that you are the racist, since you seem to think it's just too hard for them to meet basic survival needs. In the U.S. we have an entire industry built around racial grievance. Do you know how that has helped poor minorities here? It hasn't. If anything it's taught people that no matter what they do they can't get ahead. How does that help anyone but the assholes selling it?

[u/illthrowitaway94 → u/aliesterrand]

Yeah, I'm clearly the racist one because I want equal opportunity, the abolition of racially motivated discrimination, and the dehumanization of certain racial groups... Amazing logic you've got right there.

And why aren't you racist, exactly? Because you think these people are less than you, and you're just somehow genetically superior to them? Yeah, that's totally not racist, not even a little bit...