Double standard 101. How to break down stereotypes of yourself, by stereotyping others November 5, 2013 Henri Le Riche I came across a British website about Afrikaners, with the following explanation on the their “About page”, with a lot of assumptions, based on very limited information. Even more so why I found the following information interesting: Intermix was started in 1999 with a grant from the Family Learning Millennium Awards by Sharron Hall, who wanted to address the negative assumptions based around mixed-race individuals and their families. Well, great. Don’t we all know the damage of stereotyping combined with generalisations and selective information? The article is: Afrikaner’s Not So White After All Correction. 6% of Afrikaners don’t have mixed blood. Rather most Afrikaners has up to 6% mixed blood. So the writer of the topic and article wants to give the impression that a “secret” is finally out. Phew! How nice of them. Or is it? It would seem it is more a case of ignorance and being uninformed. Clearly this writer do not know enough of this Afrikaner ethnic group other than the power of assumption and (mass) generalisations, which can be easily misconstrued as subtle racism. Imagine if the topic had this to say, “Mixed race people not so black after all”. For many it would be an insult, similar to this article trying to portray Afrikaners as “white supremacists”. (Nazi propaganda minister, Ghoebels would’ve been proud) Most Afrikaners don’t think anything of it having mixed blood. For someone reason it would seem news to the foreign public that was made to believe certain things about the Afrikaner over decades. Many of these assumptions and stereotypes come from people who hated the Afrikaner. (Because let’s face it. It was cool to hate Afrikaners at some point. You could even be racist towards Afrikaners and nobody even thought anything of it.) Most foreigners seem to forget Apartheid only lasted 40 years. What happened before and after that time, they seem to easily forget, or maybe uninformed is just the default. Exhaustive research was carried out by Professor JA Heese for his book Die Herkoms van die Afrikaner (The Origins of Afrikaners) published in 1971. Professor Heese studied parish registers and numerous other sources to track down how many European (Dutch and German, mainly) settlers married non-European brides. Between 1652 and 1800 over 1200 marriages were performed between white and ‘black’ or white and ‘mixed blood’ people. By that figure Professor Heese determined that approximately 7.2% of Afrikaner heritage is non-white. (Similar studies have suggested this might be as much as 10% in reality). Professor Heese suggested a genetic mix for the average Afrikaner to be: 35.5% Dutch, 34.4% German, 13.9% French, 7.2% African/Asian/Khoi, 2.6% British, 2.6% Other European, and 3.5% undetermined. Do I have any sleepless nights over this? No, of course not. The mix of our history is what makes Afrikaners so unique is their DNA and grit that goes with it. The last sentence of this article is interesting: “this minority can no longer afford separatist views.” Many Afrikaners even during Apartheid mingled and mixed with people of different races. That I can personally vouch for as can others. Yet, good propaganda wanted to give a biased view to the outside world to bring down a system. In order to do so many lies were intertwined with half truth, and “anti-racists” were so foaming from their mouths for the next story, they believed anything. Propaganda won , or rather stereotyping won, and lies married truth. Afrikaners today are part of the UNPO.org which include Aborigines, Tibetans and many other minorities struggling to survive in majority regimes. Who can ever forget the white and black people of the Boers, or Afrikaners as they later became known as, they so easily all showed into concentration camps. Black Africans were put into concentration camps in South Africa due to their loyalties and friendship with Afrikaners during the Anglo-Boer war. A good 40 years before the Nazis came up with the idea beaten by the British. Even during Apartheid there were white Afrikaner families who adopted black or mixed raced kids. However, this went against the “Anti-Apartheid” narrative of the hated Afrikaner. Ignorance about a group of people, added you don’t understand their language, has a way to bring out hypocrites in any shape or form. Maybe it will come as a surprise to this “mixed race” website, that it is not just whites that are Afrikaners… This article in a way reminds me of my own travels around the world, and in some cases I came across “anti-racists”. When they heard my accent I gladly, and proudly, said where I was from. Instantaneously, these people, without knowing anything about me, who I am or my background, became openly racist towards me. The only thing they knew about me, was where I was from. So, on that basis, with the visible fact that I have white skin, they immediately made an assumption with the good old racist ingredient, generalisation. You see, it was, and still is, acceptable to be racist, towards someone you perceive/d as being a “Racist”. The hypocrisy of these closet (anti) racists always fascinated me about human nature on double standards. Interestingly this article does precisely the opposite, as what it professes it is trying to do. It is making negative assumptions based on propaganda by stereotyping a whole ethnic group, the Afrikaner, and spreading this ignorance further to more uninformed people. The effect is mass assumptions that spread like a virus on the infection of stereotyping. If that isn’t racist in itself, then it’s obvious there are two sets of rules that apply for some groups or individuals. Maybe the whole idea to fight racism, prejudice and assumptions, is, with racism, prejudice and assumptions?? Weird isn’t it? It is always best to do proper research on people, cultures or nationalities, than in the end to sound like a closet-racist, when your message was supposed to be the opposite. There’s no better book than The Afrikaners: Biography of a People Read more at henrileriche/2013/11/05/double-standard-101-how-to-break-down-stereotypes-of-yourself-by-stereotyping-others/#ALpwFBUDYrcCj7Lo.99
Posted on: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 20:20:33 +0000