Is it immoral to have lunch with David Bullard?

WOULD you be seen dead having lunch with David Bullard? Would you give him a platform to express and debate his views? In case you have forgotten, Bullard is the former Sunday Times columnist who was in famously sacked for a column judged to have expressed racist views about blacks and aspects of black culture.

Well, I would happily be seen having lunch with the man. And I would happily invite him to express and debate his views on a public platform. In fact, I did both those things last week. My lovely friend, Financial Mail columnist Justice Malala, rebuked me. He expressed two concerns.

One is the fear that I might have legitimised racism by playing with Bullard. The other, less sexy, fear is that I might be a catalyst for Bullard to derive financial benefit from racism.
Inviting someone to debate their views does not count as approving the content of their beliefs.

It simply signals a fearless commitment to free speech.

I enjoy debating people who hold different views to mine, including views that might be considered bigoted, rather than only wallowing in the company of those singing from the same hymn sheet as I do.

The error that Malala makes is to confuse the substantive value of debate as a dialectical process for thrashing out issues, with the independent question of what debaters on a public platform think of each others’ viewpoints.

For example, if someone convened a public debate about the morality of homosexuality and invited Jon Qwelane, the country’s most famous homophobe, I would give my gay bottom to be allowed the opportunity to debate him.

Would it be reasonable to interpret my excitement as legitimising homophobia?

All we could say, until we hear what I actually think of Qwelane, is that I, Eusebius McKaiser, am an equal opportunities interlocutor. We could not say that accepting the invite to debate Qwelane is irrefutable proof that I am a self-hating gay man.

If anything, my motivation to accept an invitation to share a platform with someone such as Qwelane would be to humiliate him by exposing the content of his beliefs as evidence-insensitive, badly formed and also immoral. Valuing everyone’s right to speak does not indicate that I regard everyone’s views as equally justified. Malala misses this critical distinction.

Furthermore, from a strategic point of view, it is important to allow uncomfortable views to be exposed to the sanitising light of public debate.

The truth is that hundreds of thousands of South Africans share Bullard’s analysis of the state of the nation, including his views about black culture.

Equally, millions of South Africans agree with the content of Qwelane’s beliefs about gay people.

These social facts, however offensive to our sectional, suburban sensibilities, are not going to go away through non-engagement.

It is a bit like hoping your drunken uncle will never come out of his room to embarrass you when your friends of more sober habits come over for a do.

Why not deal with the alcoholism once and for all, openly? Why not deal with the racism and homophobia once and for all, openly? By sweeping these views under the carpet you simply allow them to fester in dark, moist spaces conducive to fomenting further hatred.

You also become susceptible to a charge of intellectual sloppiness.

Legitimate sub-debates such as the question of what constitutes racism, for example, are likely to be ignored when we regard some views as beyond the moral pale.

For example, was the column by Bullard dark humour that failed horribly or was it straightforwardly racist?

Also, can we separate judgments about an article from judgments about a writer’s character? Or does one clear expression of racism fatally occasion a judgment of racism, regardless of a writer’s life narrative up to that point? These are terribly important questions which Malala is unlikely even to raise if his squeamishness gets in the way of his intellectual curiosity.

As for the less sexy worry about making money off racism, I indeed would be horrified if someone did that. But I am not sure it would stop me from engaging them.

In the case of Qwelane, as a taxpaying citizen I have moral political right to be angry that my government is paying him from our taxes to spread hate speech.

However, if some white, right-wing breakfast club invites Bullard to address them after his appearance on my radio show, then so be it. They can spend their money as they see fit.
After all, if I was being naughty, I could equally claim that some TV channels and some print media outfits pay some of us darkies to express the anger of rich whites (many secretly loving Bullard but publicly condemning him in a fit of insincerity and so preferring to endorse black Bullards).

These whities dare not speak for themselves lest, like Bullard, they too are ordered by their bosses to go out to lunch until Jesus comes back. Instead, they egg on the growing number of black Bullards.

Billy Joel must have foreseen democratic SA when he lyrically declared honesty to be such a lonely word.

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=109642