Q. “Do you think human beings are inherently racist?” A. Having lived in South Africa and the U.S., I think that racism will always exist. For one reason or another, there will always be people who are driven by fear, who deny the humanity of others. In South Africa, the problem is not so much the white people as it is apartheid. Apartheid has codified racism as a means to preserve its own power. Q. Is it the same in both countries? A. When I came to the U.S. in 1978, I believed that America had long since resolved its racial problems, that blacks were equal citizens. In many ways, I found that to be true. The U.S. seemed to be a hundred years ahead of South Africa. Then I discovered, to my horror, that not much had changed in people’s hearts. White people’s attitudes toward blacks have changed very little since the days of lynchings. Without that change, laws are relatively impotent. In many towns, there is a black world and a white world. I told my friends that I did not escape from the bondage of apartheid to end up segregated in America. Q. What kind of segregation are you referring to? A. One of the most segregated hours in America is 11 a.m. on Sunday. This was most revealing to me. If people who are motivated by the noble precepts of Christianity cannot bring themselves to accept the equality of people of another race by joining in worship with them, then how can they feel on the other days of the week? What was really shocking was discovering that the black world in America resembled the world I had left, the townships of South Africa — the poor buildings, the bad roads, the hopelessness, the rage, the frustration on the faces of the black boys and girls I met. These were the same emotions I felt when I was fighting for my life under apartheid. Everyone in this country is an accomplice to what is happening in the black ghettos of America. Q. What do you see happening in the ghettos? A. I see we are dying in many of those places. Young people are growing up in homes where family life is unknown. For me, in South Africa, family was the citadel, the center that kept me alive. Also, what does this society hold up for its young people as the values to emulate? On television and in real life you extol materialism, villains and people who circumvent the law and achieve success by cheating and lying. Finally, the stereotypes. My God, 90% of white South Africans go through a lifetime without entering a black township! I came to New York City, where I lived for a time, and found that a majority of white Americans seldom set foot in a ghetto. They know nothing about the real life of black people. They react to what they see on television. I know because that is the way they reacted to me. Q. You are now living in North Carolina. Do you encounter any hostility here? A. No. I asked myself why people did not react to me the way the Northerners did. I found that in places in the South where change has occurred, it has been genuine. Many white people go out of their way not to be seen as racists, not to give a racial connotation to any situation. It does not surprise me that more and more blacks are moving back south. Compare Birmingham with Boston, for example.
