Black fatigue, White genocide — Ep.10

***See episodes sooner at: https://ericbyler.substack.com/podcast
**Or listen at: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/....podcast/wrestling-da

Attempts to address racism are fruitless unless we find paths that lead to healing. This is one of many epiphanies I found in reading Sisonke Msimang’s acclaimed memoir, Always Another Country. Two days later, we talked at length about South Africa and the United States, our two, sister nations each struggling to free themselves from caste systems that date back to colonial times.

The emotional heart of Always Another Country is in South Africa, but Sisonke’s revolutionary father and accountant mother raised their three daughters in exile during Apartheid. Born in Zambia, Sisonke grew up in Canada and Kenya before attending university in the United States.

After the fall of Apartheid, when political freedom and lanes for economic advancement opened up to nonwhite people in South Africa, Sisonke “returned” to a country she had not yet seen. She invited and even sought conflicts with white South Africans during the historic presidency of Nelson Mandela, and through them, she learned lessons about herself and her country that are germane to the challenges we now face in the United States.

In reflecting on her efforts and encounters in South Africa and in North America, she concludes that once we have created a caste system, it’s difficult to replace it or even change it very much.

Rifts created by race and class, she finds, should not supersede our moral responsibility to one another as human beings. She writes that “decisions I make, even the small ones, like extending a hand in friendship, will make a difference in the long run.”

In both the memoir and our chat, Sisonke holds herself accountable for wielding power and privilege not unlike that which had been reserved for whites in South Africa not so long ago.

We talked about the notions of “white genocide” and “black fatigue” in ways that were illuminating and, yes, provided a path toward healing.

If you are eager to know Sisonke’s rebuttal to Mr. Trump’s assertion that there is any sort of “genocide” in South Africa, please subscribe to Wrestling Darkness so you are among the first to receive part 2 of this conversation, coming soon.

In it, we discuss Sisonke’s article, How Trump’s Embrace of Afrikaner “Refugees” Became a Joke in South Africa. You might also read On Trump and the invention of white victims in South Africa, which she published on Substack.