Mike Rotchtickles
3rd March 2009, 10:16
anyone read this. i have'nt yet but will try and get it on the week-end. here is an abstract from the book:
“The world of apartheid was so perverse that if I could have been
given the choice to be a very clever black kid or a very stupid white
kid, if I wanted to live a good life I might have been well advised
to choose being a stupid white kid. During apartheid, the cleverest
black kid was likely not to achieve a quality of life that the dumbest
white kid could achieve.”
Everything in South Africa seems to be about race. If you look
back into the country’s history, you’ll see that it always was that
way. Ours is a country defined by race, but there is one race that
had the choice to make it that way. Heading for fifteen years into
democracy, South Africa seems to be even more about race than
ever. The rainbow nation sometimes seems more like a technicolour dreamcoat - after Joseph’s brothers dipped it in blood.
This book has been written for all the whites who still secretly, or
not so secretly, believe that the reason our country is going to hell
is because of blacks. Read this book - our country was hell. With
every year that’s passed since 1994, it has edged further from the
flames. We’re all still carrying our lighters though.
In his distinctive style - sarcastic, poetic, at times shockingly di-
rect, and often funny - Charles Cilliers has written the book about
white racism that whites didn’t want to see, but could do well to
read. If they don’t, then South Africa will perhaps continue to be
about race for a long time to come - but whites, the very people
who made it that way, and who now don’t seem to want to talk
about it much, are still the ones who can make that less so - if only
we realised it.
One of the most controversial books of the year, For Whites Only
casts a light on the blackest days of whiteness, and encourages us
all to clean out the skeletons we have in our collective closet.
“The world of apartheid was so perverse that if I could have been
given the choice to be a very clever black kid or a very stupid white
kid, if I wanted to live a good life I might have been well advised
to choose being a stupid white kid. During apartheid, the cleverest
black kid was likely not to achieve a quality of life that the dumbest
white kid could achieve.”
Everything in South Africa seems to be about race. If you look
back into the country’s history, you’ll see that it always was that
way. Ours is a country defined by race, but there is one race that
had the choice to make it that way. Heading for fifteen years into
democracy, South Africa seems to be even more about race than
ever. The rainbow nation sometimes seems more like a technicolour dreamcoat - after Joseph’s brothers dipped it in blood.
This book has been written for all the whites who still secretly, or
not so secretly, believe that the reason our country is going to hell
is because of blacks. Read this book - our country was hell. With
every year that’s passed since 1994, it has edged further from the
flames. We’re all still carrying our lighters though.
In his distinctive style - sarcastic, poetic, at times shockingly di-
rect, and often funny - Charles Cilliers has written the book about
white racism that whites didn’t want to see, but could do well to
read. If they don’t, then South Africa will perhaps continue to be
about race for a long time to come - but whites, the very people
who made it that way, and who now don’t seem to want to talk
about it much, are still the ones who can make that less so - if only
we realised it.
One of the most controversial books of the year, For Whites Only
casts a light on the blackest days of whiteness, and encourages us
all to clean out the skeletons we have in our collective closet.