Two interesting stories to do with race relationships have caught my eye lately.
The one has got to do with a man I grew up idolising and often quoting - Mahatma Gandhi.
The other is a man I have recently come to admire - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The latter is in the news because of pictures and videos of him in blackface that have materialised just weeks ahead of Canada’s national elections.
Blackface is when a white person paints their face, as a caricature of black culture and is something that today is avoided as offensive, insensitive and racist.
In one instance, Trudeau attended a party in blackface and in an Aladdin costume.
And in another instance, he performed the song Day-O at a school play while in black face.
He has since admitted that it was racist and has apologised.
Closer to home, it was hoped that the life-sized statue of Gandhi, donated to Cape Town by India, would be unveiled on his birthday last week.
But it was not to be, since numerous people objected to Cape Town hosting a tribute to a man we have now come to understand was racist.
Ghana removed its own Gandhi statue since the accusations against the father of non-violent protests were revealed to be true.
The irony of this truth is, of course, that Gandhi’s philosophy inspired dozens of the world’s greatest black resistance figures, including Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jnr.
So how does all of this sit with me? It all comes back to context again.
In Gandhi’s case, he was quite simply the product of his surroundings and his ambitions.
A man who at one point in his life was fiercely loyal to the British crown and who ended up in a racially divided South Africa.
The fact that he expressed extremely racist views against black people during his lifetime, is of course very upsetting and disappointing to me.
I must, however, consider the context of the times in which he lived and accept that no human being is perfect.
There are other things about Gandhi I also find unpalatable, but that also goes for Albert Einstein and probably Madiba one day.
Which brings me to the point I want to make about this.
Do we completely discard someone’s contribution to society because we find a particular aspect of their lives reprehensible?
Does Gandhi’s contextual racism reduce the value of peaceful resistance and how it has progressed the human race?
As for Trudeau, he was a teenager and a young man when he did those offensive things.
It was stupid and hurtful, but then again, which teenager - blinded by hormones and wanting to be cool, hasn’t done stupid, hurtful things?
Trudeau says that he didn’t see it as racist at the time and therefore didn’t do it with the intent of offending anyone.
I believe him, not because I am biased towards him, but because of his words and actions since he became the Prime Minister.
But even if he was racist back then and has since evolved his thinking, isn’t that what we are striving for - to get racist people to admit that their thinking is flawed, and to change their hearts?