The Big Read: Innocent joke, my backside

#BLACKFACE trended immediately and the Twitter noise broke out in two predictable directions.

Most whites thought the two university students who dressed up as black domestic workers were engaged in an innocent and private party prank, and the incident was something to laugh about. Most blacks argued this was a blatant act of racism that should be condemned.

It is not very useful to enter a race debate when the offensive act first breaks in the news. There is simply too much noise.

Long before all the facts are in, our race-sensitive society will rant and rave on both sides of the issue. The high priests of political correctness will line up with astounding clarity and simplicity of distant judgments. You can rely on a student body threat to shut down all campuses. And where there is a Facebook picture to post or a video to replay, expect never-ending coverage of the matter.

I have been thinking hard why it is that an atrocity so clear to some is a non-issue for others.

The main reason is the miseducation of South Africans. White (and black) middle-class children easily attain four, five or seven distinctions in the so-called matric examinations, and yet most of these youngsters have a gaping hole in their education, better described by the Afrikaans word opvoeding. For these students and the significant adults in their lives (parents, dominees, sports coaches) there is no history, only the present.

In other words, those mainly white South Africans who shrug their shoulders at what they call "studente pret (student fun)" have frozen the past, and therefore cannot see the racism of the present. In the minds of these people, there is no slaving black domestic worker exploited in a white home, with low pay, special food and designated mugs or plates, and subjected to verbal abuse.

There is no sense of how the black female body has been the subject of jokes, and worse, at home and abroad, as in the case of Saartjie Baartman. There is no knowledge of how naked black bodies were lined up, hosed down and beaten by white authorities after a pass law raid.

So without a sense of black people's historical pain and humiliation, the two students find it perfectly acceptable to make fun of the black female body.

Why did they not dress up as old white women, with exaggerated wrinkles, grey hair and flat butts? Because those bodies represent family, themselves, and nobody in their circles would find that funny at all. They dressed up as black women for one reason only - to give friends and peers a good laugh at the expense of others. As a leading scholar of whiteness correctly observed, here was an opportunity for a racist joke without the burden of words.

The sad irony, of course, is that many of these white youngsters were raised in the arms and on the backs of the black women they now mock in such an ugly way. What once were caring arms and loving bodies that raised them now become the subject of ridicule and laughter.

So how do we deal with this atrocity? We need to acknowledge it as a problem rather than make spurious comparisons to Leon Schuster movies, or "more serious issues" like crime on the streets.

Please do not simply call for more history in schools. It will not work unless the teachers themselves have a sense of a progressive history along the lines described. Simply "putting in" corrective history in the school curriculum is not good enough.

I believe a core curriculum for all first years at university that includes such a critical history of "the past as present", and taught by open-minded professors, could address these concerns.

The University of Pretoria should not expel the two students from their studies. Yes, they should be firmly disciplined and it is correct to expel them from their residences, a punishment that will be felt deeply by students in former Afrikaans university contexts.

But putting ignorant young people onto the streets makes them much more of a danger to themselves and others. The two should be re-educated and the opportunity used to bring them to their senses through a process of both correction and compassion.

They should be led to a safe place in which they can ask for forgiveness, and then be embraced and empowered to join the continuing struggle for a non-racist South Africa.