The Washington Post recently published a long feature story that, put politely, asks why exactly Elon Musk decided to make his primary enemy diversity, equity, and inclusion programs—and put less politely, asks when exactly did he get so racist? In it, Musk’s father, Errol Musk, offers up an anecdote that he probably believes is exculpatory of the upbringing that he provided to his children but in reality comes off as pretty damning.
According to The Post, Errol said that Musk and his brother were “interested in motorbikes, computers, basketball and a little about girls” as kids, and “They were not into political nonsense.” According to Errol’s telling, “We lived in a very well-run, law-abiding country with virtually no crime at all. Actually no crime. We had several black servants who were their friends.” He also reportedly told the paper that Musk had several Black friends.
First and foremost, it’s worth recognizing before even addressing the Elon of it all that Errol Musk seems like he just absolutely sucks. As a father and as a human being, all signs point to the dude just being the worst. Taking Elon, his brother Kimbal, and their mother Maye at their word, he was physically and verbally abusive to the whole family. After the divorce, the senior Musk ended up having a child with his stepdaughter.
He is also pretty racist himself. In speaking to Walter Isaacson for his biography of Elon, Errol explained that he didn’t register his emerald mine with the government because “If you registered it [a mine], you would wind up with nothing, because the Blacks would take everything from you.” But don’t worry, he explained, “I don’t have anything against the Blacks, but they are just different from what I am.” That clears things up!
Errol seems to come from the school of “I’m not racist but,” as he did run for office against a pro-apartheid politician in South Africa and took his family to an anti-apartheid concert, according to The Post. But it doesn’t seem like he’s done a whole lot of reckoning with his relationship to race beyond that based on how he talks about the topic.
Elon is certainly not responsible for the sins of his father, and there’s at least a little bit of room for understanding why, after being raised in that environment, Elon would be a little fucked up. But he’s gone on to register his own fair share of sins, as the Post details (and as you can see simply by scrolling through his Twitter feed for a little bit, it’s not exactly hidden).
Just in recent months, he’s warned against cultures mixing, whined about declining birth rates in majority-white countries, and inexplicably claimed that efforts to hire from a more diverse pool of candidates in order to extend opportunities to minority groups leads to people dying. And recently, dipping back into his South African roots, he’s helped push the baseless narrative that there is a “genocide” against white people in South Africa.
But hey, he can’t be racist—his dad said he had Black friends.
