Racism is not dead

The report by Michail Rassool “Races still polarised” (July 30-August 5) confirmed an incident some of us seminary students had with an Afrikaner lady near St John Vianney seminary.

We were out walking when this lady stopped her car and questioned our indentity. Puzzled, we enquired her motives, and she said that we looked like criminals.
Amazed by this prejudice, we wondered beyond that whether she knew that the seminary existed a child’s-crawl away from where she stopped to interrogate us. In this wealthy suburb, one can blindly conclude that any black walking around there fits a racial profile or is a potential criminal who is assessing how to beat the highly visible security system.
History has indoctrinated whites to look down on blacks and victimises them through racism.

Sadly, there is also a growing trend even among the blacks themselves to victimise fellow-blacks on the grounds of how dark their skin is. The lighter your skin, you are probably on the privileged side to even hang out with whites or be mistaken as coloured. The darker you are, the more likely you are to be a victim of xenophobic attack.

If you are black with darker skin, where should you find refuge? What has happened to the belief that we are all made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27)?

Tlali Fusi, Pretoria