EDITORIAL: Racism has no reverse gear

There is a troubling tendency in some quarters of our society to believe that those who were victims of racial injustice in the past somehow possess a license to direct the same hostility toward others today - particularly at the descendants of those associated with past systems of discrimination.

Closely tied to this belief is the increasingly popular claim that black people cannot be racist. The reasoning offered is that racism requires institutional power - the ability to build and sustain systems of racial oppression - something historically denied to black communities.

But to reduce racism solely to the possession of power is intellectually lazy.

Power and institutional tools are relevant when discussing systemic racism, the academic framework used to analyse how societies embed racial inequality in laws, institutions and economic structures. Yet racism also exists at a deeply personal level. Individual prejudice and racial insults are not dependent on who controls the machinery of the state.

Calling a black person a monkey is racist. Declaring that white people are not Namibian - as was heard in Parliament this week - is equally racist. The direction of the insult does not dilute its severity.

What makes the moment particularly revealing is the uneven outrage that follows such incidents. Namibians are rightly furious when racist language is directed at black citizens. But imagine for a moment if it was Dino Ballotti who had directed that tirade at Vetaruhe Kandorozu. The national response would likely have been explosive.

Namibia’s constitutional framework, which lawmakers swore to uphold, prohibits racial discrimination of any kind.

This is precisely because Namibia knows, from painful experience, the corrosive effects of racism. Colonial rule and apartheid left scars that still shape our politics, economics and social relations.