Creating a future in which you don’t look twice

We have all seen them – those eyes that follow the white mother as she tends to her black child, the faces that stop to look at the white guy as he holds his black girlfriend’s hand across a restaurant table. Maybe we were even one of those who stopped to look.

Many South Africans are still undeniably fixated on race. As the DA Youth leader I see it every day among young people – an undercurrent of identity politics not always spoken about but always present.

This undercurrent was blown wide open this week by a poster we released online as a part of our recruitment drive for the DA Students Organisation (DASO). The image of an inter-race couple staring lovingly into one another’s eyes with the tagline, ‘In our future you wouldn’t look twice’, was unapologetically intended to provoke debate, and provoke it it did.

Comments ranged from one end of the spectrum to the other – either people hated it, one Facebook user calling inter-race relationships an ‘abomination’, others loving the fresh and controversial angle. Ironically, the vast number of comments, both good and bad, have vindicated the premise of the campaign and expose the glaring necessity of the discussion it has provoked. It is clear that, whether we as a society like to admit it or not, the tolerance debate is not over in South Africa.

We have chosen to enter this debate with a poster that sends out a loud and clear message about the kind of organisation we as the DA Youth are and the vision we have for South Africa, namely one in which a campaign of this nature would go unnoticed. Some people may disagree with our approach, but no-one can deny that it has achieved its goal, which was to rip the plaster off the festering issue of tolerance in South Africa and give it air to dry. If it makes people feel uncomfortable we are all the better for it – as a youth organisation we have a responsibility to push boundaries and challenge the status quo. We are prepared to set the change agenda and will not apologise for it.

Ironically, those who are the most upset by the image are probably those who need to do the most introspection into the real reasons behind why they are uncomfortable about what is, relatively speaking, a  very tame image for 2012. Claims that we are promoting promiscuity or racism say more about the individuals leveling them than anything else, as more explicit images can probably be found on the cover of magazines in the local supermarket or on prime time TV.

As stated by liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill, “No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.” Ultimately our role is to lead the youth of South Africa towards these great improvements, and with this campaign we have successfully and proudly started on that road. We will not succumb to the criticisms of today in our efforts to build the future we envisage.