A tax on white people

Now here’s an idea.

A ‘white tax’ has been proposed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu during a recent book launch in Cape Town.
Acccording to The Cape Argus, a call for a wealth tax on whites came up during the Truth and Reconciliation Process. “It could be quite piffling maybe one per cent of their stock exchange holdings. It’s nothing,” he claimed. “Our white fellow citizens have to accept the obvious: You all benefited from apartheid.”
I realise that for many in the Anglican Communion, Desmond Tutu is regarded as virtually a saint, and that his words carry an almost infallible persuasion. Yet despite his vaunted status, and his undoubted courage, humour and singlemindedness in the face of the evils of apartheid, the same rules apply to him as they do to other prelates. The main rule is this: don’t imagine for a moment that any number of theology degrees and/or pastoral experience gives you the credibility to comment on specific tax proposals. You have as much authority as the man in the pub when you depart from your brief in this way.
However noble your aims, you don’t fight racism with racism. A tax on whites alone will hardly help the cause of reconciliation (one in which Archbishop Tutu has been such a great leader).

I am reminded about this when I read about Diane Abbott’s comments about white people. It is good that we have started understanding that its not just white people who can be racist, but everybody, of every race can be really racist. My mother who is darker was told in her face by relatives when she got married that she was too dark. India is basically racial through and through. The advertisements for skin lightening creams is another example. Arabs are seriously racist. Its everywhere. We have to fight it everywhere….See more posts here.