Desmond Tutu's View on Racism
Gareth Holvey 10P04/05/2007 Desmond Tutu’s View on Racism "We live in a country that has many casualties and disasters. Some of these are naturally caused, but many are caused by man in his inhumanity to his fellow man.You have to have the sensitivity of love not to hurt people's pride. Don't be a do-gooder. Sometimes all that is necessary is to visit a banned or detained person and show that you do not fear contamination and that you don't fear the system. . ."NOTE: The above collected statement is taken from a speech Desmond Tutu gave in December 1981 to a group of women. This speech can be found in its entirety in Hope and Suffering compiled by Mothobi Mutloatse and edited by John Webster, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids Michigan,
1983."One of the ways of helping to destroy a people is to tell them that they don't have a history, that they have no roots.”"There is an old film called The Defiant Ones. In one scene, two convicts manacled together escape. They fall into a ditch with slippery sides. One of them claws his way to near the top and just about makes it. But he cannot. His mate to whom he is manacled is still at the bottom and drags him down. The only way they can escape to freedom is together. The one convict was black and the ...
This is a preview of the whole essay
1983."One of the ways of helping to destroy a people is to tell them that they don't have a history, that they have no roots.”"There is an old film called The Defiant Ones. In one scene, two convicts manacled together escape. They fall into a ditch with slippery sides. One of them claws his way to near the top and just about makes it. But he cannot. His mate to whom he is manacled is still at the bottom and drags him down. The only way they can escape to freedom is together. The one convict was black and the other white: a dramatic parable of our situation in South Africa. The only way we can survive is together, black, and white; the only way we can be truly human is together, black and white."In our African language we say 'a person is a person through other persons.' I would not know how to be a human being at all except I learned this from other human beings. We are made for a delicate network of relationships, of interdependence. We are meant to complement each other. All kinds of things go horribly wrong when we break that fundamental law of our being. Not even the most powerful nation can be completely self-sufficient."The university is dedicated to the pursuit of truth and imbued with a passion to follow the evidence wherever it might lead. Sadly, far too many of the institutions claiming to be universities in South Africa actually base themselves on a lie, which, if not consciously espoused, is acquiesced to by what those institutions do. The lie is that people should be separated because of fundamentally irreconcilable ethnic differences. How can you say that people are dedicated to the pursuit of truth when they have tried to provide intellectual respectability to this horrendous lie, which has caused so much unnecessary suffering to millions. A university must have a social conscience."We shall be free, all of us, black and white. Let us sit down together, black and white. I have said before and say again the minimum conditions for starting negotiations: lift the state of emergency; release detainees and political prisoners and allow exiles to return freely; unban political organizations; and then talk to those whom the people identify as their representatives and leaders. We shall be free only together, black and white. We shall survive only together, black and white. We can be human only together, black and white."Unless we work assiduously so that all of God's children, our brothers and sisters, members of one human family, all will enjoy basic human rights, the right to a fulfilled life, the right of movement, the freedom to be fully human, within a humanity measured by nothing less than the humanity of Jesus Christ Himself, then we are on the road inexorably to self-destruction, we are not far from global suicide-and yet it could be so difference."NOTE: The above collected statements were excerpted from The Words of Desmond Tutu , selected and introduced by Naomi Tutu, Newmarket Press, New York, 1989. "Africans believe in something that is difficult to render in English. We call is ubuntu, botho. It means the essence of being human.You know when it is there and when it is absent, it speaks about humanness, gentleness, hospitality, putting yourself out on behalf of others, being vulnerable. It embraces compassion and roughness. It recognizes that my humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together." -Desmond Tutu
