The internet never forgets, it’s a hard lesson that some people refuse to learn.
Last week, it was the turn of Renaldo Gouws to be schooled.
One moment, he was a newly appointed and elated DA MP. The next moment he was a disgraced “racist,” who spewed angry vitriol into a camera as a young man.
You will recall similar ugly histories coming back to haunt two Miss SA finalists Levern Jose and Bianca Schoombee.
Their dreams were also shattered by youthful indiscretions, some of which were social media posts with racist overtones.
I am still constantly surprised at how racism remains a relevant topic this far into the 21st century.
We should be studying it as a relic of ancient history, along with barbaric human sacrifice, flat earth beliefs and barbers moonlighting as dentists, attacking rotten teeth with rusty pliers and no anaesthetic.
Yet here we are once again, actively wondering whether Gouws is a bona fide racist. Or whether he merely spoke with ignorant, youthful passion about what he perceived to be public discourse that prejudices white people.
For those of you who missed it, Renaldo used to post regular videos commenting on current affairs.
In one of them, he attempts to illustrate that singing “kill the boer, kill the farmer” is as racist as him saying kill all black people.
He does this by using the k-word and the n-word egregiously, which is what got him into the bind he now finds himself in.
He also talks about the “reverse racism” that has made it virtually impossible for young white people to find employment.
Ironically, he is now without a highly coveted job, faces disciplinary action from his party and may have to explain himself to the Equality Court in a complaint lodged by the Human Rights Commission. But many agree that his troubles are all of his own doing.
Even those who initially came to his defence, like The Kiffness and the Patriotic Alliance’s Gayton McKenzie, have since withdrawn their support, after pictures of Gouws in blackface surfaced.
Blackface is when white people paint their faces to caricature and belittle black people with derogatory stereotypes.
Questions are now being asked about the DA’s vetting process.
This is an especially pertinent thought, since Gouws wasn’t exactly keeping his ideologies to his close circle of braai buddies.
This was out in public and on the internet for all to see, so how could the image-conscious and PR and social media-savvy DA miss it?
The conversation has now centred around whether Gouws was just a silly young man whose views have since matured and whether racists can change their condescending opinions and redeem themselves.
My view is that exclusion breeds contempt, which is why racial extremism, prejudice and hate seems to be popping up all over the world these days.
I believe the solution is that more intelligent white people - whom I firmly believe outnumber the ignorant ones - need to stand up and be counted.
They cannot remain quiet, politely declining to get involved, wanting to simply live their lives in peace, while others suffer the indignity of unchallenged bigotry.
They must make their voices heard, because as long as they don’t, there will always be a minority of people who will want to mark a territory that they believe is theirs and theirs alone.
This is also another lesson for the digital generation eager to express their views publically.
Understand and appreciate that no matter how passionate and convicted you are about a topic, your youth means that you are ignorant and more idealistic than informed.
Google gives you information, not wisdom, which is an appreciation for the grey that oscillates between the black and white absolutes.
With age comes experience and in that time, you are very likely to change your mind, or at least refine your thinking.
But that video you made at the height of your juvenile anger, will live on forever and may come back to bite you in the bum.
So stick to the TikTok dance videos and leave the deeper societal analysis to those of us who have lived a little.
That having been said, there are also deeper lessons.
I don’t know whether it is hardwired into us as human beings, but tribalism is the one thing that continues to hold us back as a species.
I often wonder how far we would have been as humanity, had we simply allowed human beings to contribute to our progress, irrespective of skin colour.
It fills me with despair when I realise how much knowledge has been lost over the ages, from people whose brilliance were squashed, because they were born with darker skin.
What is needed is ongoing education around the human cost of prejudice.
America tried this with a school module called Critical Race Theory, but the pushback has been explosive, causing even more social and intellectual rifts than it was attempting to address.
Which leaves us with the home. It almost doesn’t matter whether Gouws is racist or not. But it does matter that there are still homes where parents are passing their old prejudices on to their kids.
It’s a different world and such things are no longer tolerated, so they are setting those kids up for the kind of shame that Gouws is now enduring.
dailyvoice@inl.co.za