YCLSA UCT Complaint to the South African Human Rights Commission
The Young Communist League of South Africa, University of Cape Town Branch hereby formally launches a complaint against the Varsity Newspaper, the University of Cape Town, and the editorial staff of Varsity Newspaper to the South African Human Rights Commission on an article published on 2nd April 2013 in the Varsity Newspaper in an article titled "Is Love Colour-Blind" written by Qamran Tabo on page 5 of Varsity Newspaper.
1.The article begins by pointing to an 'expectation of open-mindedness' about race, and more specifically interracial dating. One would assume that the writer was hinting towards a direction that did not take racial grounds on attractiveness (whatever this may be). In a country that frowned on all sorts of interracial mingling, what then constitutes an open-mind? Is it an appreciation of such mingling between racial groups? If this is the case, then the answer lies within the same article because all the respondents stated that they would date outside of their race.
The writer went further to investigate (we are told) that these responses to interracial dating was to varying degrees with Caucasians topping the 'charts of attractiveness'. But our writer was not done, he had to attach these 'findings' on some theoretical hook, and we all saw it dangling on the proverbial hook of a 'white-crazed' media and then it swiftly jumped to 'Darwin's' arms where it was finally rested. What one sees is a carelessness that runs through this article about its expectation of an open mind insofar as this introduces what the article and the survey is about.
2. If the article wanted an appreciation of an open mind, it would have been satisfied as to the overwhelming response that all participants would date outside their race. But this was not enough, there had to be a grid where we had a loser and a winner which was the ultimate and foreseeable consequence of the question 'if not your race, which one? Issues of race in whatever context deserve a measure of care and sensitivity when dealt with as Lwazi rightly points out.
This wasn't a simple survey on who liked coke more than fanta. This horrendous piece of writing dealt with race, one of the primary tools we still use to identify ourselves (as to whether we should continue to do so is beyond the scope of this response). The article without so much as a shred of theoretical and evidentiary leg to stand on cripples the very society it seeks to educate (if this really was the aim).