Chain emails - please don't send me your hatred
August 10th 2008 23:53
Recently a good friend of mine included me in a chain email written by a white South African in response to an article that appeared in a newspaper ‘It’s not too sorry for whites to say sorry for Apartheid.’
The email was then written in a sarcastic tone entitled: ‘To the previously disadvantaged’ and began with the following sentence:
We are sorry that our ancestors were intelligent, advanced and daring
enough to explore the wild oceans to discover new countries and develop
them.The rest of the email descends into a racist diatribe against black South Africans, in which the classic ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomy is used to stereotype all black people as violent, backwards, barbaric and corrupt.
I am not a great fan of chain emails, but I do recognize they have a place in the modern world of techno-communication. An email chain can be a wonderful way to share information or humour, though most of the time they tend to clog up my inbox and annoy the crap out of me.
This particular email got under my skin (and not just because I had PMS). I penned the following response:
‘This is so racist. Please don’t include me in on emails like this, it just upsets me. I know South Africa has a lot of problems, but I just find this kind of response offensive and unhelpful.’I also REPLIED TO ALL making sure that everyone my friend had sent this email to, got my response too.
My friend found my response ‘unnecessary and embarrassing.’ She thought that if I had a problem with the email she had sent that I should have limited my response to her.
But that is not how I see it. The dissemination of that email does not promote peace, harmony, tolerance or understanding, but rather engenders and encourages prejudice, narrow-mindedness and a kind of smugness some white South Africans who have left there seem so at ease with.
I REPLIED TO ALL (and had I had a list of EVERYONE who ever got that email I’d have sent it to them too) because perhaps my response might jolt someone into just stopping and THINKING about what they are doing before sending it on to their networks and in this way continuing a chain of racist intolerance.
I have zero tolerance when it comes to racism, sexism homophobia or any form of discrimination. I worked for many years in South Africa trying to educate police, magistrates, prosecutors, lawyers to curb their impulse to demonize ‘the other,’ to call blacks ‘barbaric’ or women ‘irrational’ and ‘hysterical,’ or gay people ‘unfit to be parents.’
Most of the people in South Africa (just as is the case in all countries) are good and decent – the violence and problems that are going on there are derived from years of Apartheid which WHITE people are responsible for. Apartheid destroyed families, communities, psyches and it has affected generations of people and will continue to do so. And today South Africa is paying the price for that system that was imposed on the indigenous people of that place – it is a beautiful country filled with beautiful people who are battling with poverty, disease, violence, homelessness, unemployment, and worst of all, hopelessness.
Unlike those of us living in Australia or other parts of the world, most South Africans can’t leave there – they are stuck there, and for us to sit back and demonize ALL black people because SOME have been so damaged into brutality that they don’t respect life (because theirs was never respected and they were never valued as human beings) makes me sick and ashamed. We are better than that. We are smarter than that. We don’t need to add to the hatred and bigotry that exists in the world. We have a duty to speak out against injustice. Each of us can individually help others to see that their old ways of thinking are not helpful in making this world a better place.
That email to me was the end point in a long chain of mindless racism, and I wanted to break that chain.
www.joannefedler.com
The email was then written in a sarcastic tone entitled: ‘To the previously disadvantaged’ and began with the following sentence:
We are sorry that our ancestors were intelligent, advanced and daring
enough to explore the wild oceans to discover new countries and develop
them.The rest of the email descends into a racist diatribe against black South Africans, in which the classic ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomy is used to stereotype all black people as violent, backwards, barbaric and corrupt.
I am not a great fan of chain emails, but I do recognize they have a place in the modern world of techno-communication. An email chain can be a wonderful way to share information or humour, though most of the time they tend to clog up my inbox and annoy the crap out of me.
This particular email got under my skin (and not just because I had PMS). I penned the following response:
‘This is so racist. Please don’t include me in on emails like this, it just upsets me. I know South Africa has a lot of problems, but I just find this kind of response offensive and unhelpful.’I also REPLIED TO ALL making sure that everyone my friend had sent this email to, got my response too.
My friend found my response ‘unnecessary and embarrassing.’ She thought that if I had a problem with the email she had sent that I should have limited my response to her.
But that is not how I see it. The dissemination of that email does not promote peace, harmony, tolerance or understanding, but rather engenders and encourages prejudice, narrow-mindedness and a kind of smugness some white South Africans who have left there seem so at ease with.
I REPLIED TO ALL (and had I had a list of EVERYONE who ever got that email I’d have sent it to them too) because perhaps my response might jolt someone into just stopping and THINKING about what they are doing before sending it on to their networks and in this way continuing a chain of racist intolerance.
I have zero tolerance when it comes to racism, sexism homophobia or any form of discrimination. I worked for many years in South Africa trying to educate police, magistrates, prosecutors, lawyers to curb their impulse to demonize ‘the other,’ to call blacks ‘barbaric’ or women ‘irrational’ and ‘hysterical,’ or gay people ‘unfit to be parents.’
Most of the people in South Africa (just as is the case in all countries) are good and decent – the violence and problems that are going on there are derived from years of Apartheid which WHITE people are responsible for. Apartheid destroyed families, communities, psyches and it has affected generations of people and will continue to do so. And today South Africa is paying the price for that system that was imposed on the indigenous people of that place – it is a beautiful country filled with beautiful people who are battling with poverty, disease, violence, homelessness, unemployment, and worst of all, hopelessness.
Unlike those of us living in Australia or other parts of the world, most South Africans can’t leave there – they are stuck there, and for us to sit back and demonize ALL black people because SOME have been so damaged into brutality that they don’t respect life (because theirs was never respected and they were never valued as human beings) makes me sick and ashamed. We are better than that. We are smarter than that. We don’t need to add to the hatred and bigotry that exists in the world. We have a duty to speak out against injustice. Each of us can individually help others to see that their old ways of thinking are not helpful in making this world a better place.
That email to me was the end point in a long chain of mindless racism, and I wanted to break that chain.
www.joannefedler.com
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Comment by Cibbuano
20/20 Filmsight
Science News
Hunt Famous
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Fat Cult
Techbreak
I have two friends, in two different countries, that have been witness to someone saying something derogatory about another ethnic group. Both times, both friends claimed that their 'silence suggested that they disagreed', and I expressed my disappointment.
Comment by Joanne Fedler
Secret Writers Business
This statement by Pastor Niemoeller (who was a victim of the Nazi's) affected me in my youth and I've never felt scared to speak up and make others uncomfortable about their prejudice - (that's a bourgeois cop-out):
'First they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out -
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me -
and there was no-one left to speak out for me.'
Comment by Anonymous
I hate the assumption by white SA ex-pats that all white SA ex-pats think the same way as them.
Comment by Jayne Kearney
Writers In Writing (and other writing)
If your friend felt that she had the right to send this email to a bunch of people then why did she think you didn't have the right to send yours to the same bunch of people? And what was her point in sending it in the first place?
Well done for speaking up. So often the flow of information gets torrential and I suspect this stuff slips past a lot of us - flotsam and jetsam in the overload. Thanks for reminding us to, not only watch out for, but also to protest against discrimination and mindless intolerance - especially when disseminated as background noise. I fear that's when it is harder to notice and maybe therefore easier to get in.
Comment by Cibbuano
20/20 Filmsight
Science News
Hunt Famous
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Fat Cult
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A frightening, terrifying quote, actually. That's a selfish, yet utterly compelling reason to speak up for people - speak up for them so that they will speak up for you, too.
Comment by Joanne Fedler
Secret Writers Business
Jo
Comment by Mrs M
Mum's Word
I agree, that is a fantastic quote....and like Cib said, scary.
As much as we should be compelled to speak out, it's a very daunting task so well done on your reply all email.
But we shouldn't shy away from calling an injustice an injustice just because it brings attention to ourselves and pretty much put ourselves up for criticism. That's what I get out of the quote.
For what it's worth, I can't stand chain emails. Even the 'lovely' ones.
Love & stuff
Mrs M