"For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too"
About this Quote
A cry of urgency and patience fraying at the edges, the line appeals to conscience rather than to fear or force. The repetition of "will they hear" names the basic blockage: not the absence of arguments or evidence, but the refusal to listen. Addressing white people directly situates the demand within a particular history of power, asking those who benefit from the arrangement to acknowledge those it harms. The request is starkly modest: not privilege, not revenge, but recognition. To say "we are humans, too" is to expose the everyday dehumanization that apartheid and other racial orders normalize, making suffering invisible and voices inaudible.
Desmond Tutu spent his public life insisting that moral vision begins with seeing the other as fully human. In apartheid-era South Africa, laws, passbooks, segregated spaces, and routine violence worked together to deny that humanity. Tutu counters with the language of shared dignity and the theological ethic of ubuntu: I am because we are. Recognition, in this frame, is not sentimental; it is the precondition for justice. When you recognize another as a person, you cannot accept structures that treat them as problems to be managed. You must change the structures or abandon your claim to decency.
The rhetorical texture matters. "For goodness sake" invokes a common moral horizon, appealing to values that oppressors profess to hold. The question is not whether black South Africans are speaking, but whether white South Africans will allow themselves to hear. Hearing implies vulnerability: letting another's reality unsettle yours. That is why the plea is both gentle and radical. It refuses to mirror contempt with contempt, yet it demands a conversion of perception.
The line keeps its force beyond its original context. Wherever people are reduced to categories and their pain treated as noise, the first step is the same: listen until recognition takes root, then act so that the acknowledgment of humanity is reflected in law, custom, and daily life.
Desmond Tutu spent his public life insisting that moral vision begins with seeing the other as fully human. In apartheid-era South Africa, laws, passbooks, segregated spaces, and routine violence worked together to deny that humanity. Tutu counters with the language of shared dignity and the theological ethic of ubuntu: I am because we are. Recognition, in this frame, is not sentimental; it is the precondition for justice. When you recognize another as a person, you cannot accept structures that treat them as problems to be managed. You must change the structures or abandon your claim to decency.
The rhetorical texture matters. "For goodness sake" invokes a common moral horizon, appealing to values that oppressors profess to hold. The question is not whether black South Africans are speaking, but whether white South Africans will allow themselves to hear. Hearing implies vulnerability: letting another's reality unsettle yours. That is why the plea is both gentle and radical. It refuses to mirror contempt with contempt, yet it demands a conversion of perception.
The line keeps its force beyond its original context. Wherever people are reduced to categories and their pain treated as noise, the first step is the same: listen until recognition takes root, then act so that the acknowledgment of humanity is reflected in law, custom, and daily life.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
|---|
More Quotes by Desmond
Add to List
