Today’s viewpoint offers perspective on yesterday’s form. It doesn’t usually make for comfortable viewing. Looking back reveals past prejudices, biases and ‘truths’ that in the light of today, are revealed for what they are… wrongs, lies or for some, sin. In this narrative yesterday’s dissenters, typecast as villains, become today’s heroes, ordained as saints.
It is easy to be wise with hindsight. It is easy to be willing to fight when the battle is already over. There was a time when the term, “Nigger lover”… or as in the country of my birth (South Africa), “Kaffir boetie (brother)”, were spat out with a venom that coated a deep hatred for the ‘other’ – those unlike oneself. Today we know better, as did some then but to run with them then would have meant going against the crowd – and that was always risky. It was safer to slowly move towards the edge as the edge slowly moved towards the centre.
If nothing else, history teaches us that there will always be an edge and a centre and that the two are in a continual dance with one-another. They are held in a dynamic tension that traps the masses and propels the dissidents. As the edge is pulled closer to the masses it is seen as a ‘culture coming apart at the seams’ when in reality, it is a ‘new culture being stitched together’. These are the stories of our history, stories that become fully written only once they are history. How much easier is it to then pray, “forgive us for we have sinned” than it is to pray, “forgive us for we are sinning”?
The future will judge us for many things. Should we be in that future we too will look back and wonder how was it possible for us not to have seen what we now can’t or perhaps won’t see? We will wonder how was it that we were so late in supporting the ‘mavericks’, the dissidents…those who by their willingness to act on their convictions changed our history? From tomorrow’s vantage point how clearly we will see the cracks inn today’s orthodoxies – the self-same cracks that led to the demise of those once shiny orthodoxies of the past that scar the landscape left behind.
So today we rightly revere the “Nigger lovers” and thank them for their bravery in helping dismantle our prejudice and expose our hatred that was then so carefully wrapped in a logic, a theology or just plain ‘common-sense.’ We light candles, burn incense and pause to remember those who saw our today yesterday; those who saw the future first and were prepared to help create it even when others said, “over my dead body” and sometimes, were as good as their word.
Perhaps the real question is who then are the “Nigger lovers” of today? What are our current orthodoxies that time will expose as fraudulent and as ugly scaffolding that supported our ‘flat earth thinking’? Who are the voices that we are choosing to ignore or castigate because they see something that we don’t?
Dator’s Second law of Futures instructs that, ‘any useful idea about the future needs to appear ridiculous’. Perhaps then we ought to listen more carefully to those loudly proclaiming (and living by) ‘ridiculous ideas’. However, discernment is needed here as Dator’s law comes with a proviso: not every ridiculous idea is useful!
Sadly there remain embedded in our today, remnants of past prejudices and biases. These shrill voices are the ‘ridiculous’ sound-bites to ignore and not follow. They are the ridiculous voices that are looking backwards rather than forwards; ridiculous voices that need to be distinguished from the ones that call us forwards. They masquerade as ‘the edge’ whereas in truth they are the dead centre. Generally they are seen for what they are, hangovers from a past from which we have moved on and one that has been exposed, weighed and found wanting. It shouldn’t be difficult to distinguish them from the ones that we really need to hear.
It takes courage to be a “Nigger lover” – then as now.
Thankfully we have some today. We just need to listen…and be willing to move closer to that edge.
(Note: Terms used in this blog are in no way intended to cause hurt or insult. They are intentionally used in a specific context that requires reading the entire blog and understanding the message being conveyed)
“Nigger Lover”: Badge of Honour