Flagrant denialism

I have never seen an academic run away from his own writings as tactlessly as David Benatar. At this rate the guy might as well deny he ever wrote anything.

Benatar sees his endless clarifications as a display of valour but what they really reveal is a man walking a desperate tightrope.

If he does not “man” up to his retrograde views about black people then he loses his folk hero status in his carefully cultivated constituency. But if he is honest enough about them then he loses credibility among his academic peers. One misstep and he comes tumbling down and his true nature is revealed. In Benatar’s mind his black interlocutors are driven by grievance and he alone is driven by reason.

The real damage is that, as with apartheid South Africa, Benatar’s views will soon turn our university into the pariah of both the local and the international academic community.

Can anyone really believe that black students and staff, and international partners, will come running to a department headed by someone holding Benatar’s views about Africa?

But then again, I don’t expect someone who denies what he wrote a week ago not to also deny that our universities are a racial caste system that sets limits on the aspirations of black students and staff.

But what makes Benatar’s denialism egregious is that he insults black people as he goes about it, and that won’t go unchallenged.

Xolela Mangcu

University of Cape Town