Sra,—Although but four years up the aristocratic ladder I should
nevertheless like to add a little to one of the points made in Outlook from Meikles, which I think paints a very fair picture. How very real is the situation exemplified by your contributor's reference to the barber and his black assistants. In this colony European hands have a tendency to become ornamental, apart from personal actions such as eating. Many do indeed consider their skin colour as a passport to supremacy. I am most certainly in favour of white supremacy, but must deprecate this practice of Europeans being accompanied by a boy wheneer a little "unskilled work" is threatened. What consti- tutes "unskilled work" depends on the European concerned. Apart from the wider effects: this will often not even be the best way of doing the job. -Many things can be done more efficiently in less time by oneself than by watching a native do them.
I am sure there is no fundamental difference between the manage- ment of blacks and whites. In both cases respect carries authority, but in this case a white skin does not automatically carry respect. Far from it, I am afraid. The need for example is paramount, and this may mean getting down and doing a. good job of work to prove superiority. There is, I am sure, a great deal of lack of respect, black for white, at the present time, though it is masked by a general apathetic indifference. But this apathy will not last for ever.—Yours faithfully, B. C. AKERURST. Private Bag 74B, Salisbury, S. Rhodesia.
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