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You know what should bother you more than false accusations of racism? Racism.

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“The race card”. Every South African is familiar with this phrase. To “play the race card” means to unjustly accuse someone of racism.

It’s a phrase that’s become incredibly over-used in South Africa, as “he’s just playing the race card” is used to shrug off sometimes even the fairest possible criticism of racism.

Maybe it’s because, as white South Africans, we were so used to constant, thoughtless racism in “the old South Africa”, that having all that racism pointed out since the apartheid ended has been so overwhelming that it’s just easier for us to pretend to ourselves that nothing we do, think or say is racist at all.

Whatever it is, accusations of racism is something South Africans have a tendency to casually brush off with the assumption that it’s the other guy’s problem.

Here’s a simple example: This week a black customer took to Twitter to complain about the “racist and rude service” that he received at a bike shop. An employee asked him how he got the bike, and assumed that he had stolen it.

The immediate response from whoever runs the bike shop’s Twitter account should have been to apologise immediately for any offense that may have been caused, because even if it was just a misunderstanding, the important thing is to show the customer that you consider racism to be a serious enough complaint that deserves to be treated with the highest respect and delicacy.

Instead, the bike shop’s Twitter account tried to insinuate that the customer was simply making the story up by asking the customer “do you even know me”, and then sending a tweet about “crazy tweets” and how people “jump on conclusions”.

To the bike shop’s credit, they changed their tune and apologized later in the day, and I haven’t provided links to the tweets because I’m not looking to publically name and shame here.

It’s not the incident itself that I want to talk about so much as how it and the responses it received highlighted a common trend I’ve noticed with my fellow white people:

A lot of people are more worried about false accusations of racism than they are about racism.

The difference in how people responded to this incident was striking. While some were concerned that racism had taken place, and were upset at the casual dismissal from the bike shop, others were far more concerned that this bike shop may be falsely accused of racism.

They rushed to the bike shop’s defence, talking predictably about people “playing the race card”, and saying that it was a perfectly justified response if they had been unfairly accused of racism.

The thing is: No. Even if the accusation of racism was unfair, it was still an unprofessional response that reeked of viewing racism as so much of a non-issue that accusations of it don’t need to be taken seriously at all.

What’s more, going through first the indignity of the racism and then the indignity of having your complaint about that racism publically dismissed and treated as ludicrous is far worse and more damaging than being a business that was falsely accused of racism through a misunderstanding and apologizing for it.

Even if the accusation was false, it wouldn’t be nearly as serious as if the accusation is true, yet for many, that was their big worry, the thing that bothered them, while they viewed the casual dismissal as perfectly acceptable and fair.

And this is what gets to people. Not just racism by itself, but the way people time and time again bend over backwards just to find ways to pretend that racism is a non-issue. Rather than dealing with the racism, they want to just act like it’s not really there.

This attitude is a mistake, because for as long as people lie to themselves about racism being a non-issue, it will remain one of the biggest issues that plague South Africa. You can’t fix something if you refuse to even acknowledge the fact that it’s broken.

Follow Laura on Twitter or visit her blog.

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