Prejudice and the smug self-satisfaction of feeling offended

The issues of identity and name-calling seem to emerge from the very core of our being. An Australian in England recently sued the town council of Dymchurch for being “racist”. Apparently Geoff Stephens’ work colleagues kept imitating his Aussie accent and ragging him with cliched myths like, “is your girlfriend called Sheila?” It must have been surprising for his colleagues — and most readers — to find that as a result of this ribbing he needed counselling and takes cocktail of anti-depressants for the “trauma” he suffered.

Heck, I have been ribbed for being a South African ever since I began my global travels some seven years ago. My work colleagues in Southampton and Portsmouth were no exception. They do an excruciating version of our distinguished saffer accent. It was like hearing drugged parrots try to imitate one of the finer moments of an Italian aria. Okay, I don’t do opera; my point is I just gave it back to the blighters. So what’s with this Aussie?

The first thought that occurs to me when I read the word “sue” is that the complainant is painting himself as a victim for the bucks. Spend a night in Michael Jackson’s bed and off you go. Well, now the charge against you could be necrophilia, so be careful. But what if Geoff Stephens is being serious? The sense of estrangement that comes with being an alien living in countries (in my case England, China and New Zealand so far) can be traumatising. I know many South Africans have left New Zealand to go home.

But the point is that the ” ‘ello Sheila, ‘ow are the sheep doin’?’ ” discriminative humour made reasonably major news worldwide. Why? Discrimination, or the diminishment and falsification of people’s identities, which labelling words such as qu**r, ni**er and h**ky do, is as commonplace as tap water. They are metonyms for our deep insecurity: we have to “other” people, give them a “face” we are comfortable with. Thus, sadly, the Muslim burqa was banned in France because the garment apparently estranged and intimidated non-Muslims. When I look at you, I first and foremost look at your face: that map of micro-signals, that marvellous tree-history of grooves and life-weatherings. Your face is what makes you most human, the only identity which matters, not your label as a househusband or a Le***an.

The Aussie story made news because Geoff Stephen’s reaction was a complete surprise and because of the humour. The humour about Aussies is as popular and stereotypical as Leon Schuster, Barry Hilton or perhaps Ricky Gervais’s recent, delicious toasting of the Hollywood glitterati. I loved watching the movie stars’ fixed, obligatory grins as their egos were hauled over the coals.

South Africa has its own coals: the dreaded word ka**ir which got me and my editor David Bullard in the soft manure recently in a column of mine on NewsTime (I can’t think of a better curmudgeon to spend quality time with in a cistern) because apparently some readers, members of the elite semi-literates, were offended. In the column, retitled with asterisks, “We have got to censor a whole bunch of n***** ”, my use of the k word in context (and perhaps the readers were offended by others, like I***n and wh***), was not derogatory, but redemptive. I pointed out that my first job, back in 1989 ,was teaching in a “black” “township” school where my Xhosa colleagues called me a white k**** to show their cutting style of humour and their measure of acceptance of me. I was initially blown away by their politically incorrect compliment. But we need to look at what they were obviously doing. They were simply giving the well-greased middle finger to the brutal regime of the day. Humour has a way of crumpling greedy, self-obsessed ego and putting it in its rightful place, the waste basket.

So my NewsTime editor decided to adorn my “obscene” language with cute nipple stars (* *) which, like pert breasts, make the words even more enticing.

Most of us, if not all, wear self-imposed burqas; sometimes they are deemed as necessary for survival. Geoff Stephens, I think, chose to wear one, chose to be offended, instead of just asking his colleagues to stop it. I opened this column with “The issues of identity and name-calling seem to emerge from the very core of our being”. The sentence is deliberately overblown, and saccharine. Words do not issue from the “core of our being”, whatever that term may resume. Words are simply what have gone wrong.