OPINION | Refugees of Privilege: How Racism Rebrands Displacement | Southern African Times
In a year marked by overlapping refugee crises—from Gaza to Congo to Sudan—the news that 59 white South Africans have been granted asylum in the United States raises a deeper question:
What does it mean to be seen as vulnerable, and who does the world believe is worth protecting?
Their claim? Racial discrimination.
To many, it may seem contradictory. How can white citizens of one of the continent’s wealthiest nations be classified as persecuted, while Black and brown asylum seekers are met with barbed wire, bureaucracy, or burial at sea?
But this isn’t a contradiction. It’s the system doing what it was built to do.
Because global systems of racial power continue to protect and elevate white identity. When fear is expressed by white bodies, it is believed. When that same fear is voiced by the racialised and displaced, it is criminalised.
