Deric

I first met Deric at Herr K's BBQ. He's in his late sixties, tall, ruddy-faced, with a cheerful and open manner that becomes more cheerful and open the drunker he gets. The first thing I noticed about him was his hat, an Afrika Korps-style tan field cap. During the raccoon discussion he told us about his gun, which he claimed was illegal, then corrected himself that the gun itself wasn't illegal, just the ammunition he had for it. At this point Herr K told me that he himself was the community representative, a kind of mini-mayor of Friedrichsaue, and another of the guests present was the local policeman. The policeman looked over and just shrugged. Clearly they are used to Deric's eccentric, vaguely militaristic inclinations.

They also seem used to his open racism. Now, I rarely meet racists, especially such amiable racists as Deric. My conversation with him slipped into racism so gently that I didn't even realise I was in a particularly racist pit until Herr K lifted me out.

This is how it happened. Deric asked me where I'd excavated outside the UK. I said Ireland and Mexico. He said how he wanted to visit Yucatan, and went on to describe his favourite holiday places, which included various places in South America and also Victoria Falls in Rhodesia, "or Zimbabwe as it's called now". We agreed that Zimbabwe was in a poor state thanks to Mugabe. Nothing racist so far, note: even The Guardian would concur there. Then he started talking about his relatives in South Africa, and how funny Afrikaans sounded to his Niederdeutsch ear. Then he mentioned his surprise that 'the blacks' in South Africa also spoke Afrikaans. Still not necessarily racist. But then he said that South Africa was also in a poor state, and that this always happened when the blacks took over.

This is the point where Herr K stepped in. He said, "Just so you know, these are just Deric's opinions, not mine. He's rather racist. I have nothing to do with these opinions."

Deric laughed and, unperturbed, cheerfully went on to talk about the deficiencies of die Schwartzen the same way he had half-joked about shooting the raccoons that broke into his yard.

"Really, how many blacks have you met?" demanded Herr K.

"I've met lots," said Deric. His mouth sank for a moment, and he shook his head. "But I must say I was disappointed."

Deric, like most unrepentant racists, has decided to dig his heels deeper into the sand against the social tide. He holds on to his racism in all its stubborn inconsistency. At times it blurred into simple xenophobia, the kind of casual distrust of foreigners and immigrants that has more to do with culture and language than race. When Herr K accused him of hating Turks, for instance, Deric vehemently denied it, saying that he loved visiting Turkey.

"But you don't like it when Turks come over here," Herr K said.

Well, of course; that was another matter entirely. Deric then brought up the problems Italy has with illegal immigration from North Africa. "You don't like them just because they're black," said Herr K.

"No, they're Arabs."

"They come from Niger too."

There followed a surreal exchange whereby Deric tried to prove that his was a particularly democratic form of xenophobia, in that he hated all non-Europeans equally, not just blacks. Yet the blacks were the object of his true racism. I've met bigots, anti-Semites and xenophobes before; but before Deric I'd never bodily encountered this peculiar, old-school colonial attitude towards race - not angry, flag-waving, skinhead BNP-style racism, but a kind of pedestrian belief that Apartheid was the most natural and logical form of social organisation in South Africa, that white rule was the best thing ever to happen to the black and brown races, and that sub-Saharan peoples never have, and never will, achieve anything of note in human history.

This was the very same attitude I'd seen portrayed in the novels of J. M. Coetzee and Doris Lessing. It is unthinking, seductive, rooted more in a perverse form of embattled paternalism than in fear or hatred, though it verges readily towards open frustration when permitted - the frustration, perhaps, of a father who has finally disowned his errant child. It is not a political ideology, but a world-view; an amoral acknowledgement of the 'natural' order of things which happened to put the white man at the top. It is, in short, the mentality that ruled the age of European colonialism, and has still not died out.

I'm suprised I didn't realise even sooner that Deric, who lives a quiet rural life with his Afrika Korps field cap, illegal rifle and collection of pith helmets, is basically a Boer frontiersman lost in space and time, as though he fell asleep in the veld fifty years ago and woke up here. And yet he was open-minded and progressive when we spoke about religion, saying that he was agnostic and always respected the beliefs of others. What's more, he was genuinely funny, charming and affable, and I'm sure that, were I black, he would have behaved just the same - he just wouldn't want me marrying his daughter...