posted April 14, 2008 09:13 AM            

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Sunday Times fires David Bullard
By: Louise Marsland

Controversial columnist David Bullard has been fired by the Sunday Times. The axe finally fell on the ‘Out to Lunch' column after his latest offering published this past Sunday, 6 April 2008, was criticised for being racist.

While the Sunday Times editor is denying any ‘other' hand in the dismissal of Bullard, speculation doing the rounds at two key industry events last night where leaders in the media, marketing and advertising industry were assembled – the annual Apex Awards and John Farquhar's 80th birthday party celebration – was that political pressure has been brought to bear on the Sunday Times with Government threats to pull advertising. This is being denied by the Sunday Times editor, Mondli Makhanya, today.

Many in the industry felt that this was an opportunity for the Sunday Times to “get rid of Bullard” as he became more and more vocal in his criticism of the Government and the ruling party, the ANC.

Makhanya reportedly said it was about “values” and that Bullard's column no longer fitted in with the values of the Sunday Times.

According to a senior writer who was with Bullard at an event he was MC-ing last night, Makhanya fired him over the phone due to his “racist column”. Says the journalist, “Surely the buck stops with the editor? If he or she thinks any copy is unsuitable or racist or whatever, he or she should pull it, not fire the journalist!... Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that columnists were entitled to express their opinions?”

Others have countered that Bullard's column was indeed offensive and it shouldn't come as a surprise that he was finally fired.

Bullard has worked on a freelance contract basis for the Sunday Times for 14 years. He hit the headlines last year when he was shot and severely wounded in a robbery at his home.

Read the controversial column for yourself:

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Uncolonised Africa wouldn’t know what it was missing by David Bullard.

"Imagine for a moment what life would be like in South Africa if the evil white man hadn’t come to disturb the rustic idyll of the early black settlers.

Ignored by the Portuguese and Dutch, except as a convenient resting point en route to India. Shunned by the British, who had decided that their empire was already large enough and didn’t need to include bits of Africa.

The vast mineral wealth lying undisturbed below the Highveld soil as simple tribesmen graze their cattle blissfully unaware that beneath them lies one of the richest gold seams in the world. But what would they want with gold?

There are no roads because no roads are needed because there are no cars. It’s 2008 and no one has taken the slightest interest in South Africa, apart from a handful of botanists and zoologists who reckon that the country’s flora and fauna rank as one of the largest unspoilt areas in a polluted world.

Because they have never been exposed to the sinful ways of the West, the various tribes of South Africa live healthy and peaceful lives, only occasionally indulging in a bit of ethnic cleansing.

Their children don’t watch television because there is no television to watch. Instead they listen to their grandparents telling stories around a fire. They live in single-storey huts arranged to catch most of the day’s sunshine and their animals are kept nearby.

Nobody has any more animals than his family needs and nobody grows more crops than he requires to feed his family and swap for other crops. Ostentation is unknown because what is the point of trying to impress your fellow citizens when they are not impressible?

The dreaded Internet doesn’t exist in South Africa and cellphone companies have laughed off any hope of interesting the inhabitants in talking expensively into a piece of black plastic. There are no unsightly shopping malls selling expensive goods made by Asian slave workers and consequently there are no newspapers or magazines carrying articles comparing the relative merits of ladies’ handbags.

Whisky, the curse of the white man, isn’t known in this undeveloped land and neither are cigars. The locals brew a sort of beer out of vegetables and drink it out of shallow wooden bowls. Five-litre paint cans have yet to arrive in South Africa.

Every so often a child goes missing from the village, eaten either by a hungry lion or a crocodile. The family mourn for a week or so and then have another child. Life is, on the whole, pretty good but there is something vital missing. Being unaware of the temptations of the outside world, nobody knows what it is. Fire has been discovered and the development of the wheel is coming on nicely but the tribal elders are still aware of some essential happiness ingredient they still need to discover. Praying to the ancestors is no help because they are just as clueless.

posted April 14, 2008 03:15 PM              

i'm white and i'm sorry for what people of my "race" have been, and are still able to do and think.

i'm not on my computer now, but whenever i've got time, i'll post the reading list of one of my course which explore the african experience, told by amazing african thinker.

but now i can give you this link where you have another link to an e-book written by du bois a century ago in the U.S and called "the souls of black folk".

from the top of my head, there also frantz fanon, achebe chinua, aime cesaire...

i'll post the list some time this week

posted April 14, 2008 07:33 PM            

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hello unmoved, racism is a ******* outragously common shame on white people

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posted April 15, 2008 04:30 AM            

This is Black,White,Hispanic,Native American saying that.

posted April 15, 2008 07:21 AM              

but white people did it on a grand scale. white people are responsible for the most shameful atrocities. let's not forget.

i came across the number of 10 to 11 millions of black people who were taken away from their land and traditions to the americas.

that's more than the number of jews killed during WWII (also killed by white people actually)

i don't even talk about the atrocities black people were made to suffer on a day to day basis for more tha 400 years! and the impact it has on their psyche, because white pretend to have the truth about everything, and forced black to deny their truth. for 400 years!

and if you read some european books such as "the heart of darkness" by conrad, a classic, you'll be ashamed by some of the ideas.

this book is still considered literature and reflects how white, normal, common people perceived africa and its inhabitants for centuries... until mentalities were forced to change in the 50's and 60's (because of the decolonisation in africa and civil right movement in the U.S.:

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"we were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. we could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil. but suddenly, as we struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hand clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling, under the droop of heavy and motionless foliage. the steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of the black and incomprehensible frenzy. the prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us - who could tell? we were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an anthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. we could not understand because we were too far and could not remember because we were travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly any sign - and no memories.

The earth seemed unearthly. we are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there - there you could look at a thing monstruous and free. it was unearthly, and the men were - no, they were not inhuman. well you know, that was the worst of it - this suspiscion of their not being inhuman. it would come slowly to one. they howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity - like yours - the thought of your remotekinship with this wild and passionate uproar. ugly. yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you - you so remote from the night of first ages - could comprehend"
Conrad, Heart of Darkness

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in the next one, after being victim of an attack (meaning africa's dangerous), one of the african crew of the expedition falls down with a spear in his heart. and conrad writes:

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and the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory - like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment

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that's to say how much white despised black in a very authorised, acknowledged, ACCEPTABLE way. and it might be over but it will not pass away from our collective memory as long as every white person on behalf of whom it has been done doesn't know personally about this shamefully inhuman behaviour.

that's onnly for black, but what about native american who got wipped out? here again, white are to blame.

i'm so white, i can't take the sun in the summer or i get red. i'm white like paper. i'm not trying to create anger between culture but what am i supposed to do when i come across something like that? it makes me furious. i want everyone to remember how the west got the power to dominate the rest of the world, cause that way, if we remember, may be we'll find the strengh to give back what we took from others. namely, riches, freedom, dignity,.... and in a way which for once doesn't secure western truth and interests but other culture truths.

posted April 15, 2008 09:18 AM              

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bornunderdioscuri said:
While I agree that it is an outrageous shame, I most certainly disagree that its common to white people

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the problem here is that the current world we live in as been built on a racist assumption that the western model was the right solution for the entire world. you don't need to be "officially" racist to behave like one. just behaving according to whit culture suffice to deny other cultures' own truths. this form of superiority complex pervades western society from every corners, in subliminal ways. and even though i agree it can lead to extreme to blame only one race for racism, it remains a fact that western culture is responsible for an inhuman behaviour, which, worst of all, has been conducted in the name of rationality; and which unfortunately damages the credibility of this rationality.

1-it's a shame.

posted April 15, 2008 09:31 AM              

I wish people would live in harmony and respect with the Earth again.

I wish we could all live as One; treating each other as we would be treated, not seeking to control....

posted April 15, 2008 10:16 AM              

would it be more obvious to us if a black journalist, from an alien culture which, through military force, had taken power over the indegenous white people, was talking about our culture in derogatory terms? how insulted in our very core would we feel?

the fact that this article is about chinese invasion of africa really shows how the white mind operates. this article is brilliantly saying, undercover: hey guys, look, chinese are going to threaten our domination... that's what it's all about, domination or influence.

posted April 16, 2008 11:09 AM              

Sorry I've not more time to spend on this thread, just wondered whether any of you had seen this story which moved me:
http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/002856.html

posted April 16, 2008 11:38 AM              

moving on, i think if i hook up with a white christian who is well educated , my family will accept it, but a black man .. no way, they will freak till hell rages fire.same for a muslim, white christian is OK but indian or middle eastern Muslim.... shotgun wedding...

posted April 16, 2008 12:06 PM            

This vegetarian thing is hectic. I have never known of it.

Well, I am bi-racial (half black/half indian) and I get racism from all angles, from blacks, and indians, and from other bi-racial people who look less like me because if it wasn't for my hair, I would look 100%. I am used to it, but it doesn't make it easier.

And funnily, in any other country, I would be classified as black and not bi-racial, but because Africa has a majority of blacks, I look somewhat different from the "blue-bloods".

The reason I posted this article is that the writer sort of made colonialism a laughing matter for those who have experienced pain from it.

posted April 16, 2008 06:01 PM              

I just wish people could wake up and see.....
that the body is just a vehicle....that all these different appearances and races are just like wearing different suits.
The world would be a far less interesting place if everybody was the same.
Why can't we all celebrate the wonderful diversities, in which there are deeper similarities despite shallow differences?
Why can't we learn from each other or at least just live side by side respectfully?

It seems so simple and yet people don't get it.

I'm not saying I'm better than other people or anything....I guess I just had a lot of spiritual awakening in regards to these things, at an early age.

The time I spent alone as a teenager, going through difficulties, allowed me to think deeply about life and many things.

Perhaps people are just to busy to hear the truth inside them.

Another thing is, I always found the study of different cultures, etc so wonderfully fascinating. I find them all beautiful, each in their special way.

Perhaps if more emphasis was to be put on these things in both child and adult education,
perhaps then we would be able to move further toward more peace, respect and understanding in the world?
Treating others as we would have them treat us.

Who sees all beings in his own Self,
and his own Self in all beings,
loses all fear...

posted April 16, 2008 08:49 PM            

later my friends who were there (it was well-attended and received in general) told me that the guys who were behind them said "look at the way she (me) is sitting, only asian people can sit like that".

posted April 16, 2008 09:03 PM            

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and i was just sitting with my feet to the side, who "cannot" sit like that?

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I understand what you're saying. Instead of trying to understand different cultures, we get people who justify their prejudice natures by criticizing other people's behaviours.

In South Africa, apparently, if a person has a darker skin, it amplifies their voices and makes them project their vocals more. in other words, the darker you are, the louder you are. utter nonsense.

"There must be black people in that room because it's so loud..."

Say what??

posted April 16, 2008 09:20 PM            

sometimes i get quite sick of being stereotyped (tho i get used to it as well). and many people really blatantly do that. when people ask me where i'm from (because i'm an asian in europe = where only caucasian people are supposed to be) i say i'm from antarctica, not because i want to be anti-social or to offend them, but i don't want to tell but i also want to keep it light-hearted by being funny. because as soon as i tell where i was "born", people make instant connotation to the place of my "birth" and from then on, i'm nothing but that! i'm supposed to behave and talk and dress and think like the people from the country i was born in, although what they see in front of them is obviously not!

i don't dislike the place of my birth, but since i grew up elsewheres, i don't really know how to connect with it. when i visit the country, THEY think i'm a foreigner because i don't speak the language so well and also i behave completely western.

posted April 17, 2008 11:16 PM            

We could get onto talking about the atrocities done in Africa by natives, too. It wasn't, and isn't, just one side.

Or how a group of blacks that gangraped a jogger was defended by mostly white liberals, even after they confessed. And the same group ignored Steve Kubby who was facing death for trying to do good because they were too busy clashing with cops over confessed murderers. These are mostly white people standing up for black people, mind you, even when they shouldn't (black people shouldn't have stood up for the rapists either, and I choose to believe that most didn't).

Then there's the gang/racial war going on between blacks and Latinos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SNBUe52zYc

As a runaway, I knew a white girl and black guy that had become lovers and hid with us because members of BOTH races, and others, hated them for it (another of 2 girls that hooked up, one white, one black, and similar reaction by society). Many in the black community condemn Halle Berry for "having a white man's baby" (never mind that she's biracial herself, refuses to identify herself as any race, and that she's dated many black men in the past and it just never worked out). Speaking of which, biracials often suffer a lot. In black/white biracial, especially if they're successful, as many blacks tend to push them away as "too white," whereas whites say any success they get was "given to them for being black."

My best friend was considered "too black" in skin tones, and between that and her drive & intelligence, she was made an outcast. And her best friend (now my lover) suffered much growing up biracial (blasian). She's actually suffered worse from the Asian American and black communities than from the white community (though white people have given her a hard time enough times, too, and cops won't give her a CCW permit because of her race and despite that a member of the terrorist organization known as the Army of God, one of the few white people to target her though more for being a lesbian, threaten to track us both down and kill us both for sinning against God--the police only let whites and/or the rich get permits in too many areas of CA. So I got a permit, but she can't. But remember, despite the death threat and police prejudice against her, she still thinks she was treated worse by non-whites, including her Korean step-family unfortunately, who beat her into a hospital more than once for her "impurity").

I just don't like to see talk about the "poor blacks." Often, like with "poor whites" talk, there's a lot of BS thrown in with the grains of truth, and too much is also ignored in order to fan that hatred. And it's often used as justification for racial hatred, and leads to things like Beat Up a White Kid Day, when people instead need to try to live up to this seemingly impossible ideal:
http://www.deepleafproductions.com/wilsonlibrary/texts/raw-karma.html

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Then, returning from school one afternoon, Luna was beaten and robbed by a gang of black kids. She was weeping and badly frightened when she arrived home, and her Father was shaken by the unfairness of it happening to her, such a gentle, ethereal child. In the midst of consoling her, the Father wandered emotionally and began denouncing the idea of Karma. Luna was beaten, he said, not for her sins, but for the sins of several centuries of slavers and racists, most of whom had never themselves suffered for those sins. "Karma is a blind machine," he said. "The effects of evil go on and on but they don't necessarily come back on those who start the evil." Then Father got back on the track and said some more relevant and consoling things.

The next day Luna was her usual sunny and cheerful self, just like the Light in her paintings. "I'm glad you're feeling better," the Father said finally.

"I stopped the wheel of Karma," she said. "All the bad energy is with the kids who beat me up. I'm not holding any of it."

And she wasn't. The bad energy had entirely passed by, and there was no anger or fear in her. I never saw her show any hostility to blacks after the beating, any more than before.

The Father fell in love with her all over again. And he understood what the metaphor of the wheel of Karma really symbolizes and what it means to stop the wheel.

Karma, in the original Buddhist scriptures, is a blind machine; in fact, it is functionally identical with the scientific concept of natural law. Sentimental ethical ideas about justice being built into the machine, so that those who do evil in one life are punished for it in another life, were added later by theologians reasoning from their own moralistic prejudices. Buddha simply indicated that all the cruelties and injustices of the past are still active: their effects are always being felt. Similarly, he explained, all the good of the past, all the kindness and patience and love of decent people is also still being felt.
Since most humans are still controlled by fairly robotic reflexes, the bad energy of the past far outweighs the good, and the tendency of the wheel is to keep moving in the same terrible direction, violence breeding more violence, hatred breeding more hatred, war breeding more war. The only way to "stop the wheel" is to stop it inside yourself, by giving up bad energy and concentrating on the positive. This is by no means easy, but once you understand what Gurdjieff called "the horror of our situation," you have no choice but to try, and to keep on trying

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posted April 18, 2008 02:57 AM            

Sorry...

I was just being silly. I forget that this is GU and I should be dark and broody and political. It's a great pleasure to meet you!