APARTHEID STILL EXISTS IN MANY WAYS

Apartheid has grown in its colours; it has fanned out in many ways in our society. If in a premier French restaurant, a high-end family is enjoying a pre-office breakfast then a coloured executive of an established advertising firm getting cold shoulders and nasty looks from people around, then that nasty look is apartheid. If a celebrated white cricketer refuses to a planned pre-match bend your knees ordeal to support Black Lives Matter, then that refusal is apartheid. When a coloured professor in an esteemed University does not get the recognition he deserves for his epoch-making research, then that lack of recognition is apartheid.

When and where it all started(?). One of the most effective tactics used to justify anti-Black racism and white supremacy has been scientific racism. Through the years, scientific racism has taken many forms, all with the goal of co-opting the authority of science as objective knowledge to justify racial inequality.

Some 19th-century scientists, like Harvard’s Louis Agassiz, were proponents of polygenism, which posited that human races were distinct species. This theory was supported by pseudoscientific methods like craniometry, the measurement of human skulls, which supposedly proved that White people were biologically superior to Blacks. Early statistical health data was weaponized against Black Americans in the late 1800s, as it was used to claim they were predisposed to disease and destined for extinction.

By the early to mid-20th century, polygenism and biology-based racism were widely disproven, and racism in social science had gained popularity. Studies showing high rates of imprisonment among Black Americans were used as proof of innate criminality, while pseudoscientific intelligence testing claimed the mental superiority of white people.

These flawed, biased studies failed to account for political and social factors such as poor housing, poverty, lack of healthcare, and virulent racial oppression. But they provided the so-called evidence needed to fuel systemic forms of anti-Black racism, like segregation. And, for many Americans looking for objective reasons to justify racist beliefs and behaviours, studies like these were more than enough. 

And our eyes are still cloudy(?). Contemporary scientific consensus agrees that race has no biological basis, but scientific racism still exists. While it is now more subtle than craniometry, its long history demonstrates the influence social ideas about race can have on supposedly unbiased research.

Apartheid is still rampant in United States of America but its social landscape is different from that of South Africa. In USA the blacks are in minority and are abhorred in spite of the fact that in many areas, like sport, it is the Blacks who have excelled and carried the American flag high. In South Africa the whites are in minority but due to the paradigm of scientific racism it was always Whites ruling over the Blacks.

What is Apartheid as we know(?). Racial segregation was long evidenced in South Africa, but the practice was extended under the government led by the National Party (1948–94), and the party named its racial segregation policies apartheid (Afrikaans: apartness). The Population Registration Act of 1950 classified South Africans as Bantu (black Africans), coloured (those of mixed race), and white. Other apartheid acts dictated where South Africans, on the basis of their racial classification, could live and work, the type of education they could receive, whether they could vote, who they could associate with.

History says that Europeans first colonized what is now the country of South Africa in the middle of the 17th century, it was not until the 1948 election of the Afrikaner - led National Party that the system of apartheid - with which the nation of South Africa came to be so closely associated for the second half of the 20th century - was formally instated.

While this strict system of racial classification and segregation drew on a variety of existing measures that had limited the rights of non-whites, the 1950s saw a dramatic eruption of discriminatory laws.

Under apartheid, the South African population was divided into four distinct racial groups: white (including Afrikaners, who speak a Germanic language called Afrikaans), black, coloured, and Indian. Strict residential, economic, and social segregation was enforced on the basis of these racial categories. Non-whites were not allowed to vote in national elections.

At this time Nelson Mandela entered the fray. Because of the injustices it perpetuated, the apartheid system gave rise to a broad resistance movement. The primary organization leading the struggle against apartheid was the African National Congress (ANC). The ANC was founded in 1913 in response to the oppression of non-white South Africans at the hands of the white ruling class.

 In 1943, Nelson Mandela - then a law student - joined the ANC and co-founded its youth division, the ANCYL. Mandela (picture below) and other young activists had begun to advocate for a mass campaign of agitation against apartheid. In 1949, the ANCYL gained control of the ANC and a year later Mandela was elected national president of the ANCYL (African National Congress Youth League).

To his prudent persona, Mandela's political outlook began to shift: while he had previously opposed cross-racial unity in the fight against apartheid, he came to be influenced by the writings of socialist thinkers who supported apartheid across racial lines.

He was also influenced by the non - violence emancipation of Mahatma Gandhi who resided in South Africa for more than 20 years (1893-1914).

The story goes thus: a young Gandhi (picture above on right) was travelling to Pretoria for a legal case on the cold night of June 7, 1893, when a white man objected to his presence in a first-class carriage. Gandhi, naturally, refused to move since he had a valid first-class ticket. The train had reached Pietermaritzburg by then, and Gandhi was unceremoniously thrown from his carriage onto the platform.

The waiting room where he spent the night is today peppered with posters and a computer kiosk presentation that recounts the incident in great detail. It was winter, and winter in the higher regions of South Africa is severely cold. Maritzburg being at a high altitude, the cold was extremely bitter. My overcoat was in my luggage, but I did not dare to ask for it lest I should be insulted again, so I sat and shivered. I began to think of my duty. The hardship to which I was subjected was superficial, only a symptom of the deep disease of colour prejudice, Gandhi writes about that night.

It was a long night for Gandhi, one that would make him think about the situation back in India and mull over what he could do about it. I was born in India but was made in South Africa, commented Gandhi once. It has been 130 years since that night, but the statue and the waiting room in Pietermaritzburg leave Indians teary - eyed to this day.

Well gentlemen, this is apartheid at its worst. The filthy class-colour divide would have been denounced much earlier but yes South Africa is a changed nation now nevertheless the inherent abhorrence for the coloured people by the whites – in minority though – still exists and is in full view !!

Gandhi came to India to fight against British imperialism but the burning urge to free India came from his deep despise for white people manning the swathes of Indian citizens always telling them that they are a coloured race and are fit to be ruled.

India’s Apartheid was as despicable as that of the South Africa’s. There is a story that is commonly told in Britain that the colonisation of India - as horrible as it may have been – was not of any major economic benefit to Britain itself. If anything, the administration of India was a cost to Britain. So, the fact that the empire was sustained for so long – the story goes – was a gesture of Britain’s benevolence.

Research published by Columbia University Press deals a crushing blow to this narrative. Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, it was calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly USD 45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938. For perspective, USD 45 trillion is 14 times more than the total annual gross domestic product (GDP) of the United Kingdom today.

The Dorians and the eternal thieves !! What a shame.

Here’s how it worked. The East India Company began collecting taxes in India, and then cleverly used a portion of those revenues (about a third) to fund the purchase of Indian goods for British use. In other words, instead of paying for Indian goods out of their own pocket, British traders acquired them for free, buying from peasants and weavers using money that had just been taken from them.

It was a scam – theft on a grand scale. Yet most Indians were unaware of what was going on because the agent who collected the taxes was not the same as the one who showed up to buy their goods. Had it been the same person and the theft being noticed – who knows – by today India would have been an economy more throbbing than China and the USA.

Picture above shows Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, and his wife, Lady Edwina Mountbatten, ride in the state carriage towards the Viceregal lodge in New Delhi, on March 22, 1947. Don’t go by the look and smile but instead read the face telling – hey I am the boss and you, my subjects. Never mind Lord, our own Rishi Sunak now tells you he is the boss and the whole of UK are his subjects ! Redemption.

In today’s world USA and France are the worst offenders of apartheid. George Chauvin, an American police officer was caught in camera stifling a black American George Floyd around the neck in Minneapolis in May 2020 and was responsible for his death. Do not go by the glitz !!

9 in 10 black people in mainland France say they are victims of racist discrimination. On February 15, 2023 the Representative Council of France’s Black Association (CRAN) presents to the Assemblee Nationale its second evaluation of the perception and experience of discrimination against Black people in France. Is the French society flawed(?).

France, Canada, USA, UK, Germany are denounced for their dirty mindset and for their two-faced socialism. No wonder a heap of global worries is on their heads now as they unflinchingly tread on trampling colour and creed to arrive at pre-ordained destinations.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently revealed that he faced racism during his childhood.  Sunak also shared that his parents enrolled him in extra drama lessons to speak without an accent, to help him fit in.

During an interview with ITV News, Sunak opened up about the challenges he faced growing up and recalled the pain of hearing slurs directed at his younger siblings, adding that racism stings and hurts in a way that other things don't.

You are conscious of being different. It's hard not to be, right, and obviously I experienced racism as a kid, he said.

Why do humans like fair skin (?). The attraction is driven by preferences based on moral assumptions. Researchers have found out that people are sub consciously attracted towards fairer skin due to its with virility and danger. Want to employ artificial intelligence to peep into the sub-concious ?