Honorary White Read Online Free PDF

course through life avoided the rocks and shoals which battered the less fortunate.
    â€œI’ve been here only a day,” I replied, “hardly enough time to form an impression.”
    â€œBut surely you have some feel of the place,” he countered, smiling. “You writers are supposed to possess a special sensitivity to atmosphere. You have the advantage of viewing things with both an inner and outer eye, which suggests that you see more and in a shorter time than the rest of us.”
    I wasn’t sure about him. The bonhomie came so easily. All I’d heard about South Africans in general and Afrikaners in particular had warned me to be wary of them. Was this one being complimentary or mocking? I thought I’d play it safe.
    â€œI don’t consider myself specially equipped to view you or anyone else, so I prefer to take time in looking.” The rest of them were looking and listening to us.
    â€œMay I ask the same question, but in another way?” another guest interposed. Voice, casual manner, all of a piece, proclaiming the Britisher. Perhaps deliberately so to emphasize some difference from the Afrikaners. This gentleman was tall, lanky in his baggy but well-cut clothes. Thin-faced and sad-eyed. I wondered whether he was an immigrant or a native. So difficult to tell with the British. They can remain considerably aloof from a community even if they were born in it, as if geographical locations were merely accidents of fortune with no formative influence on their ancestral character. He went on.
    â€œDid you have some personal view of South Africa in advance of your decision to visit us?” Even if he wasn’t a native, he certainly seemed to feel at home. “Us,” he’d said.
    â€œCertainly.”
    â€œWould you like to tell us about it?”
    â€œWhy not?” I decided to lay it on their collective plate and watch the reaction.
    â€œSimply stated, it was a negative view. Some of it derived from those white South Africans, officials and others, who tried to defend your policies and were obviously uncomfortable about it; some of it from other white South Africans, mainly churchmen, whose conscience made them resist those policies and who suffered house arrest, banning, and sometimes imprisonment. But most of it came from Blacks of both South Africa and Namibia who were victimized by those policies and were lucky enough to escape. I found their stories most persuasive.”
    â€œAnd would you, as a writer, be content with that?”
    â€œSurely my presence here is answer enough. However, while at the United Nations I noticed that even those countries which seemed most friendly to South Africa never publicly defended her policies. Still, I am here and will try to be as objective as the situation will let me.”
    Hell, I didn’t need to sugarcoat anything for them.
    â€œPerhaps, while you’re here, we can change your view,” the banker said. “Providing you are willing to subdue your prejudices. Many people from outside our country are deeply prejudiced against us without knowing anything about how we came to be what we are, how we function as a people, and the real nature of the relationship between us and the Bantu nation.”
    â€œNation?” I asked. “I thought that, Black and White, you were all one nation.”
    â€œThat’s a common misconception.” He smiled, assured that he spoke for all of them. “The Blacks are a separate people, several nations, in fact. Language, customs, religions. They’re not the collective group outsiders imagine them to be. I know. I grew up with them and speak several of their languages. Among themselves they are as different from each other as they are from us. Our policy, simply stated, is to respect those differences, and as circumstances dictate, preserve them.”
    â€œHave you decided all this for them or with them?”
    â€œCome now, let’s be quite