Business Day
*Vice is courageous * *Steven Friedman, Letters, Business Day, Johannesburg, 6 July 2011*At long last, a cricket writer in our mainstream press who tells the truth about the racial bias which dogs our cricket! Telford Vice (SA cricket is still held in the heart of whiteness, July 5) puts his finger on the problem --- that whites are assumed to be good enough and blacks not good enough unless the contrary is proven (and often not even then). Although he does not say so, it seems likely that this prevents our national teams from performing as well as they might.
Of course, some of us have been pointing out for a while that the attitudes Mr Vice identifies are not restricted to cricket --- they are found in just about every area of our national life. The prejudice that whites always have merit and blacks always lack it distorts the national debate on a range of issues. It is also a far greater obstacle to economic growth than any of the economic policies we so often debate.
But it is one thing to unmask these prejudices in a national debate in which those of us who do this are assured of support as well as criticism. To challenge a cricketing orthodoxy in which racial prejudice is so pervasive that it has come to seem like common sense must be a lonely task.
Mr Vice should be commended for his courage and assured that, whatever flak he may take from cricket fans and administrators, his view has widespread support in the society.
Steven FriedmanDirector, Centre for the Study of Democracy, Rhodes University/University of Johannesburg
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