What do you know?

by Dr Raymond Perrier · May 14, 2013

While in many respects a hugely rich language, English is poorer in having only one word for �know�.

Other languages can distinguish between knowing a fact (savoir in French, wissen in German) and knowing a person or a place from personal experience (conna�tre in French, kennen in German).

Thus, there is a difference between knowing that Cape Town is a city in South Africa, and knowing Cape Town.

“almost every Afrikaner can say that they know an Indian, almost every Indian that they know a Zulu, almost every Zulu that they know a Sotho person, almost every Sotho that they know an Anglo. But they don�t necessarily really know them.”

Being aware of this difference can help us to avoid falling into the trap of believing that because we know something � by knowing it intellectually or by listing some facts in relation to it � that we really know it in a way that our views might have some authority.

And in the same way we might say that we do not know something � because we do not know how it works or what lies behind it � while we do at a more instinctive and personal level know it.

Many people in South Africa know the reality of poor service delivery because they experience it all the time � but that sadly does not mean that they know it in a way that will make them politically active or able to protest about it.

The use of the word �know� in relation to people is particularly problematic. I might say that I know someone because I have worked with her for many years. I know how she takes her coffee, I have met her husband, I have even socialised with her outside of work. But then something unexpected happens and I find myself saying: �I don�t think I ever really knew her.�

One of the blocks to progress in South Africa is, I would suggest, the failure of each of us genuinely to know people who are not like us.

It is not as bad as it once was. We have mostly now left behind the ghettos in which we only came across people who were just like us: Portuguese Catholics living, working, socialising with and marrying just other Portuguese Catholics; Cape Muslims living, working, socialising with and marrying just other Cape Muslims; Venda living, working, socialising with and marrying just with other Venda.

Instead, the reality of living and working in this country today means that it is hard not to come across people from a different background � in offices, in shops, in government departments, in schools. So almost every Afrikaner can say that they know an Indian, almost every Indian that they know a Zulu, almost every Zulu that they know a Sotho person, almost every Sotho that they know an Anglo.

But of course they don�t necessarily really know them. They might know their names and a little about them (knowledge as a series of facts) but they do not know them in the sense of having a genuine relationship with them.

The reality is that the stripes of the rainbow nation lie alongside each other but rarely mix. As a brown-skinned Brit living in Johannesburg I find myself in unlikely social situations � one evening I can be at a party where everyone is white apart from me, and the next evening at a party where everyone is black apart from me. When groups of people spend almost all their time socialising with people who are like them, can they really claim that they �know� people from different communities?

We might hope that this is a legacy of apartheid and that it is going to change in the next generations. Certainly, in terms of religious segregation we have seen great improvements. One of the curious advantages of having Catholic schools in which only a minority of the students are Catholic is that our young people grow up from an early age with an experience of meeting and studying alongside people from religious backgrounds that are not the same as their own.

But in terms of differences of skin colour (raised up to the spurious status of �race�) our young people rarely get the opportunity to genuinely know people from a different community. And even when they do get these opportunities, they seem unwilling to take them.

A walk around Wits University campus in Johannesburg would show large numbers of students of different colours � but it is sad to notice on closer inspection that they are clustering together in groups of brown students and black students and white students.

What is true of skin colour is true of almost every other basis of difference. Most able-bodied people do not know many disabled people. Most rich people do not know many poor people. Most professionals do not know many manual workers. Most Christians do not know many Muslims. Most straight people do not know many gay people (or at least they think they do not).

Does this really matter? Is it not just a social reality that people will cluster with their peers? I believe it does matter and on four levels.

Most Christians do not know many Muslims. How many do you know? (Pope Benedict XVI and Mustafa Cagrici, grand mufti of Istanbul, pray in the Blue Mosque in Istanbul in 2006 / Photo from CNS)

First of all, the easiest way to combat prejudice is to enable people to interact genuinely and discover that the �other� is not as different/alien/threatening as they thought.

We have experience this at first hand in the Catholic community through the fruits of ecumenism � our prejudices against �Prods� or their prejudices against �die Roomse gevaar� (�The Roman Danger�) do not stand up for long once we actually get to know each other. This is a sure fire way of combatting all prejudice.

Secondly, in spending time getting to know people who are different we can grow in ourselves. Whatever I thought I knew about people with disability was facile until I actually went on holiday with a friend in a wheelchair or lived with a priest who is deaf. Getting to know them more deeply and how they coped with life, taught me a lot about how some of my weaknesses could be strengths (and how my apparent strengths could be weaknesses).

Thirdly, inherent in the comment above is the misplaced use of the word �peer�. That rather begs the question: to say that I only spend time with my peers allows me to define a group that includes some and automatically excludes others, the very definition of prejudice.

It is a basic tenet of Catholic teaching that all human beings are equally children of God and we should feel equal responsibility for all other human beings. To rephrase the famous epigram of Terrence: I am human and no one human is alien to me.

Finally, such behaviour could not be further from the model that Jesus gave us. He annoyed his closest friends by spending time with people who were not like him � women, Samaritans, tax-collectors, prostitutes, Roman centurions. He realised that only in that way could he genuinely claim to know them.

If Jesus ever felt that he did not know a group of people, I would imagine that his reaction would not be to dismiss them or judge them, but instead to go out of his way to spend time with them.