The debate on the Clifton protest on social media is distressingly racist. The protest is entirely legitimate. Our public beaches are there for all, not simply the rich. Neither do I have a problem with the slaughter of an animal. This is a cultural practice of some among us.
The racial profiling in the subsequent debate is shocking. This has targeted animal rights activists who have protested the slaughter. Their argument; by all means protest, but why slaughter an animal? But if this is a cultural practice of some among us, why impose your values?
But the response to the animal rights activists is too often racist.Some have taken trophy photos of white hunters to prove hypocrisy.But what is hypocritical?The animal rights activists were not the hunters.The only thing they shared with the hunters is their skin pigmentation.
You cannot assume complicity on the basis of racial pigmentation. This kind of racial essentialism is what fascism is about. It was what apartheid was about. And now people run around sprouting this nonsense and think it is progressive. It must be called out as racism.
