Racism and Journalism: A Country Not at Peace

Really? In 2013?

A student newspaper piece about love and race which sparked a complaint with the Human Rights Commission of South Africa has the country hot under the collar. It is not like we don’t have excessively high unemployment, retarded rates of crimes and high levels of poverty to deal with. But being the populist I am I’ll shall indulge and give my opinion on the matter.

Background for those of us who don’t read nor watch the program at seven o’clock called the news. UCT student Qamran Tabo wrote an opinion piece in UCT’s student newspaper exploring the subject of inter-racial dating. Tabo surveyed 60 students, ten from each demographic, white, coloured, Indian, East Asian, mixed or bi-racial and black. These students were asked to vote for the race they found to be most attractive and a pie chart surmising the findings had 38% voting for white people, followed by coloured and Indians and black people got the lowest percentage with a lowly 8%.

Unfortunetly for Qamran Tabo, people hate research

So what’s the fuss? When has your personal preference with the type of person you find attractive become a race issue? I strongly believe we have become too sensitive to race issues and although I concede that racism is a serious and very real matter still in South Africa a person listing that they find white girls/boys more attractive than black girls/boys is not racism.

I was with this Belgium and Iranian guy (and since I was in such an unholy state) I cannot for the life of me remember their names. They were here for their friend’s wedding (Belgium friend married a black woman) and both admitted to me that they were crazy about black women. Now I ask you are these two men racist? They clearly didn’t find white, Indian and coloured girls attractive but I can assure you these two gentlemen were not racist. Was I being racist when for the entire duration of the night I was repeatedly ‘hitting on’ an Indian girl because I find Indian girls to be very attractive (the success or failure of this endeavor not to be revealed on this platform)? Or are these just our preferences, just like how some people like skinny people.

So I dabble with an Indian woman here and there

I personally believe there is a double standard here if a white person says I only date white people (which is perfectly fine with me) they are looked upon with suspicion, racist starts creeping into people’s minds. Yet if a black person says I only date black people it is perfectly Okay.

So 38% of students find white people to be more attractive than the other races, are we all offended because black people got 8% of the vote? What’s the real issue here? If the same survey was done at the University of Limpopo I strongly feel the results would be strikingly different. Let’s not take ourselves so seriously after all our country is faced with far more pressing issues at present. I fully support the article published by the student newspaper. They were just listing people’s opinions it was an opinion piece after all. Why should they have to apologize for that?

Which race would I have voted for you ask? Well you know what they say my vote is my secret although anyone that knows me would know which side I’m leaning towards!

That’s our piece and tell them you heard it from Matt “The Rat” Mkhize and @Mr_MediaX. 

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