By Sarah Connor
"Unity is the world's key, and racial harmony.
Until the white man stops calling himself white
and the black man stops calling himself black,
we will not see it. All the people on earth
are just one family." — Bob Marley, 1978
Some people leave messages scrawled on the walls of public toilets. Opinions, jokes, and crude suggestions are offered, uncensored, perhaps because it is difficult to muster outrage whilst sitting on a toilet.
The most obscene story I have ever read was written on the wall of a cubicle near a rainforest pool near Port Douglas. It began as follows: "My girlfriend and I were in here changing when a man came in and said he would give us $20 if we ..."
Of course, "obscene" is a relative adjective. The other day I was in a public toilet in West London, where I read something that outraged me.
It was written in response to the following words: "Everyone has to be so — expletive — racist! Why can't we all just get along with each other and respect each other's differences?" Someone had decided it was: "Because of all the muggings, thieving, rioting and drugs the black — expletive — have brought to this country".
A plea for tolerance had been met with obscenity. Such cheap anti-immigration rhetoric is as offensive and shocking as the worse kind of pornography. It utterly dehumanises. Both viewer, remote, locked in a fantasy, obsessed by personal gratification and actor, an object, an arse, beyond the redemption of narrative, are alone in their worlds and incapable of communicating with each other.
Racism dehumanises racists because it makes fear the defining characteristic of their lives. The kind of racism revealed by the above comment is a shocking reminder of the extent of our need as a society to find someone to blame for everything we do not understand.
Why do so many young people, millions of them, take ecstasy every weekend, turning their backs on their parents, teachers, employers? Why doesn't everybody have a job? Why do I have to guard my back against my neighbour?
Racism dehumanises its targets because it turns them into criminals and scapegoats. For example, when Green Left Weekly columnist Brandon Astor Jones was on trial to determine whether his punishment should be mitigated, he was dehumanised, allowed to shower only once every five days, perhaps to provide evidence for the theory that black people stink.
He was manacled as though dangerous, a nobody who deserves to die. The gap between this shadow and Brandon himself is so wide as to be almost inconceivable.
I have come to the sad conclusion that for many whites, black people might as well exist only on television for all the insight into the reality of their lives these viewers possess.
What is so shocking is our blindness to all we do not want to see. Yet I do believe Bob Marley has suggested a solution to this problem. If we substituted the word brother or sister for black in our comments and conversations, what would we come up with? Everyone in the entire world would turn out to be a member of our own extended family.
Small wonder listening to his songs always brings a smile to my face. Just like the lady who asked an important question whilst going about her business.
Just like re-reading a story involving a lace G-string and some serious manoeuvring.