Exploring White Privilege: Meet Stephanie Ebert

Continuing some really helpful conversations surrounding White Privilege and Racial Reconciliation, i was put into contact with Stephanie Ebert who has been doing some master’s research on a related topic.

“I’m a target of crime. I have to leave the country in order to find work.  I do not have leaders in government who are my race. When I’m stopped by a cop, they most likely do not look like me. I’m not privileged, I’m a victim.” 

These are some of the sentiments that I’ve heard (explicitly or implicitly) and read as I’ve talked with people about the topic of my master’s research, which includes issues of white privilege. Peggy McIntosh wrote an article called “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” where she lists all the unrecognized benefits she has as a white person living in America. At first glance, it’s hard to tell if these benefits come from a history (and present reality) that systematically privileges white people, or if they come from being part of a racial numerical majority. (I mean, obviously she’d be able to find band-aids that match her skin colour, if the majority of people buying band-aids have white skin).

In South Africa, white people are a numerical minority, and this means that the way conversations about white privilege happen have to account for the unique situation this creates. When people bring up South African white privilege (like Gillian Schuute’s Mail and Guardian piece) it’s usually met with vehement denial and aggressiveness. Here are a few things I’ve learned this year, that are interesting pieces of the conversation I missed when I was just looking at white privilege in the USA.

White South Africans have experienced a loss in a way that white Americans haven’t. Black people in America got the vote, but white Americans still had/have the political power. They didn’t have to “give anything up” by letting black people vote (this is a complete over-simplification, but, you get the idea).

In South Africa, by giving everyone in the country a right to vote, white people were giving up political power forever—and at the time of the Mandela miracle, some white people didn’t even realize that’s what they were doing, because they thought there would always be a power-sharing/representative government.

So when white people woke up and realized that we’re probably never going to have a white president again, and that our history books, our street names, our monuments are being re-told and re-named, we don’t have the central place in the story anymore—that’s a lot to deal with. When you’re used to being the centre (whether that’s “right” or “wrong”) and suddenly you’re not—that’s  a loss. Jonathan Jansen, in his book “Knowledge in the Blood”, (which is about his years as the first black Dean of Education at University of Pretoria, a hard-core Afrikaans university) helped me to understand this. This loss needs to be dealt with. It needs to be acknowledged. It is hard for white people to realize that actually, they are still privileged largely because their feelings of loss are screaming louder than their ability to rationally look at the privilege they do still have.

White people don’t feel privileged because we hang out with white people: The institute for Justice and Reconciliation does a huge survey every year and one of the things they look at is standard of living. There are 10 groups/levels ranging from super poor to very wealthy.  In 2013, no white South Africans occupied the four lowest groups, and 73.3 are in the two highest groups. 95% of white South Africans are in the top four groups.

When people of different races were asked to describe their perceptions of how wealthy they are, middle-class black people were most likely to say, “well off’ or “Better than most”, and all white people were most likely to say, “Fairly middling” or “Just scraping by.” I assume this is because middle-class black people have connections with friends and family who are poor (or have recently come from poverty) whereas white South Africans compare themselves with their other white friends or those overseas.

Another one: Statistically, violent crime in South Africa affects poor black people the most, but doesn’t get reported on. So white people read the newspapers and feel that they are special targets of crime, when in fact we (along with other wealthy people in SA) are safer than the majority of South Africans. But, because we’re only talking with our white neighbours who have been hijacked or robbed, rather than our black neighbours in the township, we get this warped view of the world where we think we are special targets.

This makes it hard to talk about privilege, because people’s immediate, lived experience from which they form their understanding of the world is saying , “No, no, I’m a victim.” Because in their experience, they are. They just haven’t been exposed to the realities of other people in our country, so talking about white privilege just doesn’t make sense to them.

Globalization means we’ll probably always be privileged.  Let’s take apartheid out of the equation. I’m pretty much a born-free (born in 1990). My parents aren’t even from South Africa originally. So, I could tell people that my education and my place in life didn’t come from any white privilege and think I’m off the hook. But, what this doesn’t take into account is the way that whiteness is privileged world-wide because of the way Western culture gets exported all over the world. I’m a racial minority in this country, 90% of the people here don’t share my race. However:

– I can watch TV and movies and be confident that most of the actors will look like me (and will not be in a culturally stereotypical role).

– I can open a magazine for any major retail shop and the majority of people in the advertisements will look like me.

– I can be confident that my language (English) will be preferenced. I don’t have to bother to learn isiZulu (which is the mother-tongue of the majority of people in my province) because they all have to learn English for school and work.

–  I can easily find hair products and band-aids for my skin and hair. In fact, in major grocery chains, sometimes the hair products for black people are in a separate aisle marked “ethnic hair care”—white hair is set as the norm. (So weird?!)

– If I’m ever in situations where I feel like a spectacle because white person, (for example, township kids wanting to touch my hair) it’s not usually like, “Oh that’s so weird I have to check that out” it’s like, “Oh, I wish I could be like you”.

Never mind the privileges I still get that are left-overs from apartheid:

– Most of my professors at university look like me.

– It’s easier for me to book holiday accommodation (in a blind audit of South Coast holiday accommodation last year 1/3^rd of the time black people were denied accommodation based on their race).

– I have networks and friends that I went to school with whose parents all own business or run businesses—I will always be able to get an internship or low-paying job through them.

– I can do weird things and people don’t put it down to my race (for example, I can dig through the recycling centre drop-off to get cardboard for projects, whereas my black friends would be chased away for loitering).

The Class thing: So, there is a growing black middle class, and many academics would argue that the biggest injustices in our country are against the poor (because they are poor, not because they’re black) and don’t have as much to do with race anymore. There is an argument that focusing on race “makes everything a race issue” and distracts us from mobilizing along class lines. This is true, and I get it. But I think the above examples show that there is still a racial element to the injustice that happens in South Africa, and we still need to talk about race and privilege because it’s there.

[For  more from Stephanie, make sure you check out her blog, Bridging Hope]

[For the piece i wrote on White Privilege, click here]

[For an excellent piece and maybe even better conversation in the comments on first steps white South Africans can make, click here]

 

 

 

 

Taboo Topics: Adoption – meet Corina Spinazzola

Most people in adoption circles shy away from adopting older children, some even strongly discourage it. “There is too much risk”, “they will have too much baggage” “there is so much psycological damage that you will have to deal with”.

I met the Kambers in 2009. I had no idea they would be my future adopted parents. I was 14 years old then. At that time they were just familiar faces that I labeled as neighbours. They went to church and loved Jesus, two things that were foreign to me at that point in my life. Carey Kamber swooped in weeks after I had become a Christian and offered the most genuine friendship I have ever had.

Earlier in that year Carey had been praying that God would give her a baby. The process of adopting from China was slow, tiring, and demanded patience. It hadn’t been working out the way they thought it was going to, and after a few years of waiting both Carey and Ernie were asking God for a baby. Just weeks after that the Kambers got a call: a baby had been abandoned at the church and they needed a home for him.

That began the process of Caleb’s adoption. I had the privilege to witness it all, not as his older sister, but as his neighbour. My friendship with the family grew and I really started to love them. Carey was my best friend. The more our relationship developed, the more I felt comfortable to share about the home that I had come from. Abuse, mental illness, substance abuse, neglect, and abandonment lead me to a reality of social workers, government institutions, court cases and moving from home to home before I should have even known about those things.  Though I had biological parents, I was an orphan at heart.

—– Fast forward a few months ——

Carey and Ernie were going to visit their sister in North Carolina. That trip entailed a 6 month old baby and nearly 4 hours of driving, and they asked me to come along with them to help take care of Caleb. On the first night that we were there we all sat down together and they told me what had been on their heart and what they wanted more than anything: for me to be their daughter.

I’m not even going to lie, it was weird. It was amazing, beautiful, overwhelming and everything felt right in that moment… and weird all at the same time. My 15 year old self couldn’t fully grasp it. “They want me to be their daughter?” Theirs. It felt so surreal.

After a hectic court battle and one of the most difficult days of my life, the Kambers were granted custody of me for 2 years. When that finished, I would be a legal adult. I was theirs. Within less than half a year they added a baby and a teenager to their family.

People say that adoption changes lives. The Kambers went against what most people say is wise – they adopted a teenager with tons of baggage and a completely misconstrued understanding of love. We went to counselling together. We fought a lot. I carried my understanding of family and love into their home: if they truly love me, they will leave me. I subconsiously tested them with that idea that had always been true for me. And yet they never left. They loved me when I was too difficult, too broken, too rebellious, too “psychologically damaged.” They gave me the space to flesh out my understanding of love, and then together we deconstructed it and replaced it with the reality of unconditional love.

The unconditional love that was shown to me through adoption has changed my life dramatically..

We are all orphaned at heart. We are all messed up and broken in some way, and our hearts were made to know unconditional love so that we can flourish into the people that we were made to be. Adoption does that. Adoption chooses despite brokenness. Adoption loves when it is difficult.

[For more stories from different perspectives of Adoption, click here]

Pearls before Fear and Violence

i used to receive me daily Pearls before Swine deliver to my mailbox, but recently this stopped happening for some reason… so now when i remember i dive into the site and do a little catching up [although this also bodes well for me when i order my next Pearls Before Swine annual because there will be ones i have not seen] and these two floated to the top when i did:

Sometimes Stephan works so hard:

 [For a rare surprising twist heart-warming cynicism-free Pearls Strip on Quality Time, click here]

[For my growing collection of all fun strips Pearls before Swine, click here]

Dangerous Things You Can Least Expect: Exercise

Oh dear, my alter ego, Brad Fish is at it again, this time taking a look at Exercise and suggesting that the word originates from the time you told your then-girlfriend that, “Yes, those jeans do make you look fat!”

Brad Fish heads off to the Gym and tries a variety of classes before coming to the conclusion that most things associated with exercise might be a Dangerous Thing You Can Least Expect.

 

[For Brad Fish helpful look at why raiSINs are a Dangerous Thing You Can Least Expect]

[For the rest of the series of Dangerous Things You Can Least Expect, click here]

Taboo Topic: Living with Disability – meet Susannah Prinz and Monrovia [Deaf]

Our eldest daughter Monrovia, who is now six and a half years old, was born profoundly deaf. We first heard the words “profound hearing loss” when she was three weeks old, after failing multiple hearing tests. At the time I felt pretty overwhelmed by first-time parenthood, so the idea of parenting a newborn with special needs felt quite heavy and scary.

Here’s an excerpt from an email I wrote to friends after the appointment in which an audiologist told us she was deaf:  “We chose the name Monrovia for a very specific reason, and now it seems more fitting than we could have predicted. When I spent time in West Africa, part of the time was in Monrovia, the capital city of Liberia, which had been devastated because of the awful Liberian civil war. My Liberian friends would always describe how beautiful the city had once been, and would speak with hope of what the city could become, even though it literally was falling apart. That image, of having great hope despite the surrounding circumstances, resonated with Matt and me. We wanted our child to be a person of hope and beauty even when that wasn’t what life or the world looked like at the moment. And here we are. In a place that seems so dark at the moment.

We hold this grief with the knowledge that even with M’s hearing loss we are so blessed, gifted, and privileged with a delightful and perfect child. At the same time it does feel that our immediate little world is crumbling, and we bear the weight of so much sadness right now. It sort of feels like we got robbed of this joyful beginning part of her life. Instead of just enjoying our new daughter, we are scheduling doctor’s appointments, handling insurance and specialists, researching hearing loss and learning an entire new glossary of terms. Most of all, we are incredibly broken feeling. So at the moment we are processing this, and coming to grips with a new reality for our lives.”

Six years later I can’t imagine any other narrative for Monrovia. Deafness, the word that I was initially unable to say without crying, quickly became our family’s normal. We deliberated very carefully when Monrovia was an infant and decided to pursue cochlear implants for her in order to give her access to sound. Implants do not fix deafness (nor was that our intention), but they mimic the way a typical hearing person’s hair cells work and enable some deaf people to develop spoken language. Monrovia had surgery when she was 9 months old; her implants were activated and she heard her first sound a month later! Having a deaf daughter has been one of the richest and most amazing gifts of my life, and it has shaped so much of our family’s life together.

I wouldn’t change either Monrovia’s deafness or our decision to get her cochlear implants, but there are aspects of having a deaf child that I wish others would know:

* Our complex feelings about her deafness don’t go away. We celebrate her deafness as much as we can and are very intentional about speaking to her deaf identity, but we also grieve what she misses out on as a deaf child living in a hearing world. This morning I stayed after school to watch how she was doing in her class. Within minutes I saw how she lagged behind her classmates in following verbal directions, and how she couldn’t simultaneously listen to the teacher and work like her hearing peers. Yesterday a kid called her name from 5 feet away and she didn’t hear it so the child ran off to play with other friends without her. In the morning the school bell rings at a tone that blends in with the sounds of a busy playground; as all the kids line up she is left alone playing until she looks up and sees an empty play structure. In a noisy restaurant she is completely lost in conversations. If someone speaks quickly she is still processing what they said when they move on to a new topic. Those complex feelings don’t go away, and so I wish the support wouldn’t go away either. Most friends of mine who have a deaf child are continually dealing with scenarios like this. It is amazing (and rare) to have a friend ask, “How are things going with Monrovia? Have you had any hard stuff with her deafness lately?”

*Our daughter is thriving. We are so grateful! She is in a mainstream class, on grade level, and can listen and speak spoken language even though she is deaf. But she works really, really hard. All day, every day! To keep up, to stay on track, to hear what you are saying, to focus, to process, to learn what new sounds are, to absorb new vocabulary. Unlike a typical hearing person, who can passively hear, assimilate and filter sounds, she must actively work at each of those things. So when you say, “I always forget she’s deaf!” I understand. But please know that we never forget; there are hidden parts of deaf life we are dealing with all the time: charging batteries, waterproofing her implants, finding subtitles for the movie so she can follow along, troubleshooting classroom issues (of which there are so many!)…We think about how to handle swim parties or sleepovers or talking on the phone to relatives…We field questions like, “Why does no one else at my school have implants but me?” or “Will I still have to wear implants when I grow up?” One of the biggest issues for Monrovia is that because she presents as a hearing child, it can be hard to convince people that she really still needs support as a deaf child. Yet she does.

*Please don’t say, “I wish I could turn off all the sound and just have silence like she can with her implants. She’s so lucky!” or “I think she kind of likes that she can’t hear everything. I know I would.” Really?! I can’t tell you how often I hear some variation of those comments. It minimizes her deafness and stings every single time. Instead you can ask her what it feels like when she takes her implants off at night, or what her favorite sound is, or when she wants to take her implants off. (Tonight when I told her I was writing this she said, “Tell them at night when I don’t wear my implants I can’t hear anything and I have to sign or read lips which is kind of hard.”)

*She will always be deaf. I know she doesn’t “sound” deaf. That’s because she started speech therapy when she was 7 months old, went to a deaf school that was a two hour round trip commute for four years, and still works hard on her speech and language at home and in therapy every week. I know “you’d never even know she’s deaf!” Yep. She is. I recognize that that phrase is intended as a compliment of some sort, but I cringe when someone says it (which is quite a bit.)  For a long time her implants were the same color as her hair and camouflaged. All the time people would mention, “Wow! That’s so nice that you can’t even see her implants!” What do those comments communicate to Monrovia about one of the most significant things about her? My guess is as a child she interprets the following: It is better if you don’t sound deaf. It is better if no one can tell you are deaf. It is better if your implants blend in.

*It’s ok to talk about her implants or deafness because we talk and think about it all the time. If you see her implants it’s ok to ask what they are and why she has them. After all, even Monrovia can tell when someone is staring at her and wondering what they are. She even has her own response if someone asks. If you have questions about her hearing loss, just ask!

The more people who understand this deaf journey, the more who can offer support and empathy, and the more who can advocate on her behalf and celebrate her successes. Even the opportunity to share this journey with others who listen is a gift to us, and in turn a gift to our daughter.

[You can read more from Susannah by checking out her blog, Good but Hard]

[To read other stories of People Living with Disabilities or Special Needs, click here]

DTYCLE: Why Scotland is a Dangerous Thing You Can Least Expect

Oh wow, crazy busy posting day on the brett fish blog…

but yes, Brad Fish is back [inspired by meeting one of my 6 or so fans at dinner last night]

and in the dust of the referendum, it seemed appropriate and fitting to help the rest of the world know the truth about things we need to be concerned about:

 

 

[To hear Brad Fish on the Topic of Wedding Titles as Dangerous Things You may never have expected, click here]

[Turns out this Scotland episode was number 26 – to catch up on a theme by theme list of the first 25 episodes of DTYCLE, click here]

Friday Fun: Blessed are the sarcastic. Yes, i meant that.

[This is also shared as a special shout out to my Scottish friends/family in light of today’s referendum, however sad or happy you might be]

One of the members of my posse, known as the Four HorseDawgs of the Apocalypse, showed me this just shortly before i left Americaland and it was well funny.

A whole bunch of you would have seen it on my Facebook page already but as we head towards the weekend i thought it would be good to share some fun with those who maybe hadn’t.

If you know someone who is sarcastic, you should totally forward this to them:

By a group called Burnistoun…

If you appreciated this sarcasm, you will more than likely become fans of Pearls Before Swine strips which you can check out over here.