Hell's kitchen

Wow!!!

Money does not only buy happiness, but tolerance as well.

I also used to find myself in these situations but also, like you, decided NOT to keep quiet a few years ago. Things got unpleasant and we lost a few friends and some, I'm sure, are now only racist and patronising behind our backs. I just couldn't continue to pretend that it was OK as long as one didn't join in. The stunned silence that follows my arguments is not easy, but it is better than sitting and seething in silence!

SHAME ON YOU!
When one person shames another (which is what you are doing from a platform), it reflects on the integrity of that person self. Bullies usually acts that way, because they feel invincible. If a big strong man ridicules someone publicly, it is not the victim the spectators despise, but the loudmouth himself, (only, he doesn’t see it that way).
This is only the 2nd time IN MY LIFE that I have encountered a journalist using their position to intimately put someone else down. Unbelievable! I don’t care what the original issue was. Shaming someone from a podium, is not doing your case any good. It only serves to draw attention to your profile, which it seems in your eyes to be “lefty, white, intellectual, self-aware and self-important” people who can demean the “garden variety white-trash racists”.
You not only did not keep the conversation not private, you attacked another person verbally, (and it seems to me, with a lot of envy to boot.)
Ten hoorays for Mail and Guardian to initiate this new dedicated section, which can serve such a positive and much needed purpose. In our country, we need to get out of our comfort zones in order to mend race relations. This means confronting the very people that you dislike the most, on whatever grounds, and reaching out in a way that can influence them positively. Be brutally honest, decide which group of people in this world you like the least, (whether it is obese people, taxi drivers, or whatever) and then make an effort to go and get to know them. THAT, because it will be awkward for YOU, will be nation building and non racist.
Persons who use public megaphones to create bigger divides and pat themselves on the back for it, is an obstacle for true democracy. What, did you think change only applies to other people?

LOVE this. Honesty forever. Let's be frank. Great.

Pearlie, your guest is guilty of patronising black South Africans, more than racism. It is quite typical of white, liberal South Africans to behave in this way. The present political atmosphere and subsequent rah-rahing from the white sidelines has fostered a climate where it has become acceptable, and easier to pretend, than it is to reveal your true feelings of your fellow Saffers.

And I strongly suspect you're guilty of this too.

But there's a strong metaphor in there. While white 'racism' is confined to kitchen table talk, black racism appears to be more sinister, legislated and quite acceptable, but mostly denied. Black racism comes through a window, rapes, pillages and calls you a 'white bitch' for having the temerity to be white and prosperous. It gives certian racial groups advantages over others, all under the guise of 'redressing the past'. It slaughters hundreds of farmers. It marginalises you and renders you politically impotent. It removes your dignity but yet you continue to deny that black racism is such a force to be reckoned with, or even alive in The New (unimproved) South Africa. It is the Great Denial.

But let's carry on pretending whites have a large share of the racial blame, and charge our snooty dinner guests, shall we? It's the easy way out, and you come away a martyr. Jolly well done Pearlie!

NOW I AM REALLY SCARED - "It is quite typical of white, liberal South Africans to behave in this way"

Proudly_South African. What are you so afraid of? What a silly comment. Try read my post and attempt to understand it. To wit: White patronising is relatively harmless; black racism is alive, powerful and occasionally reveals itself in extremely violent outbursts. Pearlie and her fellow South Africans need to understand that it is time to rid themselves of their breast-beating white guilt and see the 400lb gorilla in the room that is breathing down their neck. In this way, and ONLY in this way, will black South Africans be forced to confront their own hatred for the fellow man, and perhaps move on to true forgiveness.

Somehow I doubt it'll happen though. And that's why I moved in '96. Life's too short to hang around those bent on destroying me, and themselves along with me.

Don Mac, you are so full of yourself, do you think years of oppression can be done away in a few years. You have to consider that there are deep rooted phsycological implications in these people and wishing them away is not going to happen. I have my own therories on people that leave the country they are cowards, themselves they don't want to deal with the mess they are responsible for. ALL of us are responsible for the past and running away is not gonna make things magically dissappear. We all have our own demonds to fight, I had to defy my grandmother when she called foriegners "amakwerekwere" but because she wasn't oppsed to learning something new she stopped doing it. Why is so difficult for you...

Don Mac. Good riddance... Enjoy yur refugee status in Canada

@Panthera & Don Mac, why the rhetoric defensiveness and judgemental personal attack on someone you probably dont know. Why dont you present a counter-argument if you do not agree. That is the norm. To make a counter-argument you must present that argument for interrogation. Now are you able to do so? The nonsense that you have presented warrants no reply so please reread the article and dig deep for a useful, open and honest reply.

The area Pearlie Joubert refers to as "that scary and blurred territory between what's private and what's public" is exactly that: scary and blurred. And it is so because it hurts and because it is intrinsically unfair if not unethical. The participants perhaps could have been better disguised so that their friends did not so easily identify them. What we do know is that the writer failed to confront the person at her table and, hating herself for not doing so, wrote out her anger in a column, published for all to see. Are the questions the writer raises about remaining silent in the face of perceived bigotry invalid? No. Is this how we should tackle the perceived differences of people with whom we break bread around a table? No. And that is why this is scary and blurred territory, and why this column is a reminder of just how scared we should be by the lines we so easily blur.