Have white people ever been victims of racism throughout history

Racism wasn’t/isn’t always about skin colour, even in South Africa during apartheid regime where being white or black defined who you were.

See this blue eyed man, his name is Hisham Nimetullah Efendi. He was born in Cape Town in 1944. He lived through Apartheid Regime in South Africa. He and his family carried black identities and have faced racism as a black people just the same.

Little background; Population Registration Act (1950); This Act demanded that people be registered according to their racial group. This meant that the Department of Home affairs would have a record of people according to whether they were white, coloured, black, Indian or Asian. People would then be treated differently according to their population group, and so this law formed the basis of apartheid.

You see Hisham Nimetullah Efendi was a Turkish descendant whose grandfather (Ebubekir Efendi) had been sent to South Africa for him to help local muslims about their religious matters by Ottoman caliphate in 1862. Ebubekir Efendi came to Cape Town, opened schools, wrote books, married there, had six children and died in 1880.

Ebubekir Efendi, the man in black.

His children followed his father’s example. His eldest son, Ahmed Ataullah was fluent in English, Arabic, Persian, Afrikaan, Turkish and Urdu. He was first muslim politician of South Africa. British prevented his electing by changing election law one day before elections. He assasinated in 1903. Another son of Ebubekir Efendi also established schools in south Africa.

Third generation of the family was South African to the core. They were also the ones who would face racims to their core.

Havva Hayrunisa, she became first female black doctor of South Africa in 1929.

A news about her and her two female cousins.

One of these children, the one on the right grow up and became a doctor.

He, Muhammed Sukru, the grandson of Ebubekir Efendi is the first black doctor of Africa. He enrolled in Cape Town University in 1935 and graduated in 1942. He was one of the last because soon the law would ban blacks to enter universities while black doctors would be forbidden to touch white patients.

You see, they were not really black and what apartheid regime trying to do was not about skin colour. It was more about were you one of them or not. Obviously Efendi Family wasn’t. So all members of this family were given black identities.

Across the world, racism is influenced by the idea that one race must be superior to another.

So obviously ruling class the ‘whites’ were the superior ones. They were better than natives, blacks, Indians, coloreds and of course muslims. Superiority term of ‘white’ was not about skin colour, it was only about a certain circle of group people.

Apartheid made laws forced the different racial groups to live separately and develop separately, and grossly unequally too. It tried to stop all inter-marriage and social integration between racial groups. During apartheid, to have a friendship with someone of a different race generally brought suspicion upon you, or worse. More than this, apartheid was a social system which severely disadvantaged the majority of the population, simply because they did not share the skin colour of the rulers. Many were kept just above destitution because they were 'non-white'.

"We should not give the Natives any academic education. If we do, who is going to do the manual labour in the community?"--JN le Roux, National Party politician, 1945."

So these; some of them blue eyed, white skinned, Turkish descent, Africans were given black identity. They had driven out to suburbs from where they used to live among ‘whites’. Their possessions were sized. They were forbidden to attend whites’ schools. They sat at the restricted areas on trains or buses. They even restricted to enter where white people were living, shopping, walking, swimming... Also their rights of practising their religion was limited.

Some other members of the family.

Unfortunately there are many examples throughout history that one group being racist to another. But, I believe, in essence it is not about skin colour no matter how they define it.