To better understand the dangers of hardcore racial identitarianism and the politics of ethnic and racial grievance, look no further than the disaster of a country that is South Africa. Following the triumph of the African National Congress (ANC) that put an end to the apartheid state, one would have hoped that the country and its new democratically elected government would set out to build a prosperous, thriving nation. However, South Africa did not receive any sort of “democracy dividend,” instead becoming beset with rampant corruption, electricity shortages, and poor economic growth.

One would think that in 1994, when the ANC took power, its members would look to other thriving civilizations to better understand how they could build theirs. From Europe through the Arab world and all the way to the Orient, history across these diverse cultures has revealed certain prerequisites to building a prosperous society:

1.) A culture that rewards, both materially and socially, innovation and intellectual achievement.
2.) The existence of a legal system that strives to apply the law to individuals in an equal manner, without respect to ancestry or wealth.
3.) Means of resolving disputes (via courts, enforceable contracts, etc.) that do not rely on violence or brute force.
4.) The respect for private property by the government.

Unfortunately, the cultural prerequisites that predict a nation’s ability to meet the institutional requirements for prosperity were never developed. If they had been, the citizens of a nation that struggles to keep the lights on would not regularly pillage the producer of 95% of its electricity, Eskom. Furthermore, the levity with which South African politicians treat corruption is shocking. For example, when Jacob Zuma, the fourth president of South Africa who served from 2009-2018, was uncharacteristically taken to trial for corruption, his defense was that corruption was only a crime under the “Western paradigm” and that corrupt acts had no victim.

Under current President Cyril Ramaphosa, the situation has only become more dire. Amended last winter, South Africa’s Employment Equity Act now requires that all businesses with more than 50 employees comply with the government’s affirmative action provisions, while also giving the minister of employment and labour the power to set specific numerical targets for the hiring of members of special groups. Even more grotesquely, Ramaphosa recently signed into law a land expropriation act, which ditches the standard of “willing seller, willing buyer” for land expropriation to one that requires no sort of compensation to land owners who will soon find themselves victimized by it. In what appears to be self-serving ignorance, Ramaphosa seems to be unaware of the fact that land expropriation has been tried by the ANC before and failed spectacularly. Following the collapse of the apartheid regime, the South African government spent over $4 billion giving white-owned land to black South Africans. According to a 2010 report from the Los Angeles Times, 90% of these farms failed.

The motivation for these policies is similar to that which underlies the calls for reparations by black activist groups and their white left-wing allies in America: a resentment of the outsized achievement of Westerners combined with a victim mentality in the former and a harrowing guilt over this achievement in the latter. As in America, black South Africans have less economic success and own much less private land than white South Africans, despite the shackles of the oppressive apartheid regime being lifted. Similarly, the more the South African government attempts to impose equality of outcomes through heavy-handed laws and race-based initiatives — efforts that consistently fall short — the more likely it is that black citizens will blame white citizens for those failures. In turn, many whites may respond to this scapegoating with increasing resentment and hardening racial attitudes, deepening social division.

The implementation of these policies, combined with a pervasive problem of violence against white South African farmers, explains President Donald Trump’s recent decision to allow a few dozen of them into the country as refugees. In response to this decision, the media has ramped up their racism against whites.

Ashley Allison, a commentator on CNN, had this to say about the white Afrikaners:

If the Afrikaners don’t actually like the land, they can leave that country. … They can actually leave and go back to where their native land is, which is probably Germany … or Holland. What I am against is that they are being given special treatment when … they just don’t like the law of the land.

In this statement, Allison portrays the Afrikaners’ grievances as little more than a disagreement with government policy — akin to a tax dispute — when in reality, their frustrations stem from far more serious issues: violent crime targeting farmers, racially motivated land seizures, and systemic job discrimination under race-based quotas. The deeper irony lies in Allison’s own inconsistency. In response to documented discrimination and violence against a minority group in South Africa, her suggestion is for them to “go back to where they came from.” Yet this standard is not applied to herself or to prominent figures like Joy Reid and intellectuals like Ta-Nehisi Coates, who constantly complain about how exhausting and degrading it is to live in the United States while black. When black Americans voice frustration with systemic racism, the idea of “leaving” is rightly considered offensive. But when white South Africans do the same, Allison’s answer is exile. The double standard is obvious and the irony is rich. Too bad Allison’s law degree, master’s degree, and two bachelor’s degrees didn’t teach her how to spot it.

Also present in the media’s freakout over Trump’s decision to let in a handful of white South Africans is the complete dismissal of the reality that it is actually physically dangerous to live in South Africa while white. A decade ago, it was not controversial to report this. Due to the long-standing institution of apartheid, it was widely understood that white South Africans paid the sometimes lethal price of this racist institution.

For example, in a Reuters report from 12 years ago, Olivia Kumwenda wrote this about what it was like to live in South Africa as a white farmer:

In a country cursed by one of the world’s highest murder rates, being a white farmer makes a violent death an even higher risk.

Unfortunately, since the Racial Reckoning of 2020, it has become even less permissible to claim that whites experience discrimination, which explains why the media has doubled down on crafting a narrative that white South Africans are perfectly safe in their country, with full rights and protections under the law. That said, beneath the media’s hysteria lies some truth: what’s going on in South Africa is by no stretch a genocide. Sure, the term “genocide” has been completely neutered in recent years by LGBT activists who claim there is a “trans-genocide” and by black activists who claim there is a “black genocide” being carried about by cops and the carceral state, but the application of the term to what white South Africans are facing only continues this linguistic perversion. By making claims of genocide, white South Africans and the Trump administration overplay their case that the former should be admitted as refugees. As a consequence, they open themselves up to having their cause delegitimized, when the fact that white South Africans face legalized racial discrimination is already enough for their entry as refugees.

The case of white South Africans should serve as a warning for America. While the Trump administration has rolled back legal means of anti-white discrimination, the underlying belief systems and ideological justifications for this discriminatory regime have not abated. On college campuses, some students of color still feel that their safety at “Predominately White Institutions” is in jeopardy. In classrooms, both K-12 and at the collegiate level, students are taught that disparities today are the result of historic and ongoing discrimination.

Meanwhile, U.S. immigration policy continues to admit over a million people annually — many from non-Western backgrounds — who are often socialized into narratives that portray Western traditions and “whiteness” as inherently oppressive. Should the ideology of racial identitarianism and victim grievance not be abandoned, America’s future will look a lot like that of South Africa’s. But unlike today, dissenters from this poisonous ideology and its victims will have no place to seek refuge.