Some thoughts from Spaghetti conversations [with Portal Pete]

Another guest on Friday was our mate Portal Pete who has moved with his wife, Sarah, into Manenberg and is running a drug rehabilitation program among other things, and he had these words to say:

Great food etc.

It didn’t feel awkward to me. It felt OK. Living and working in what some call missional community in Manenberg, I feel and cause offence on a fairly regular basis. We’re learning that offence most often leads to blame, and blame is one of the greatest obstacles to moving forward together (whatever that means!) We need to deal with our offence if we want to get anywhere. Proverbs 18:19 – “a brother wronged is more unyielding than a fortified city; and disputes are like the barred gates of a citadel.”

When we feel we have been wronged, will we deal with our unyielding-ness? When we are accused of wrongdoing or oppression, will we acknowledge hurt we’ve caused and work towards restitution? Will we see the futility in ‘disputes’ about ‘issues’ held at arms length? It’s one thing to get all systemic about things. That does need to happen. But if it’s not preceded by friend-making across the racial and geographical barriers we bang on about, issues will remain impersonal and we will become either an enraged activist or a hopeless cynic. Very few people want to be friends with, or even listen to, enraged activists or hopeless cynics.

One of the young men we have been doing life with decided to leave the house on Tuesday, the very day he was celebrating being four months clean from drugs. It hurt. It makes me realize that the battle and the journey towards healing really isn’t against a chemical dependency on tik. Personal, communal, or national healing Is about each person’s whole life – their beliefs, behaviours, view of God, awareness of strongholds, sense of self-worth, level of humility, level of Holy Spirit, and pivotally WHO THEY ARE DOING LIFE WITH. That’s the key.

What our dear friend, or any addict, or in fact any human needs to realize is that each individual’s freedom is inextricably bound up in the freedom of others. Ian needs Dowayne, who needs Achmat, who needs Elroy, who needs me, who needs Sarah, who needs Clare, who needs Lloyd, who needs Ian – and so the cycle continues. That is why I need Manenberg – because it teaches me everyday. I, a white British male with a tertiary education and networks of economically empowered friends, become interdependent with those who have been, or are currently, marginalized, addicted, abused and traumatized. As theologian John Inge puts it, “if places are the geography of our imagination, it is…true to say that how we are affected by them will be a function not only of the place, but of the people we find in it. Our ‘placement’ is much more important than is generally imagined. It is no mere backdrop to actions and thoughts. This needs to be part of the ‘unavoidable witness’ of the Christian community.”

So the power for systemic transformation is in living locally as a generative contradiction to the neoliberal dream, living in distinct redemption to a segregated past, and in emphatic opposition to a globalised present. I think conversations like the one we had last week are important. But much more important is making friends with people different from yourself, and moving near them and doing life together. Then, from a place of close, placed, friendship, a local theology will spring up and the issues will choose themselves.

What if we all just stopped talking about it, and did it?

[To return to the start of this conversation and read what reflections other guests had, click here]

[For a post Portal Pete wrote on Moving into Manenberg, click here]

Some thoughts from Spaghetti conversations [with Val ‘tbV’ Anderson]

My lovely wife Val was of course the hostess for Friday's dinner and deep dive into Race, Boundary and Location conversation that i wrote about over here, and she shares some of her thoughts from the evening:

The idea is simple: gather good people around good food and good discussion and see what happens. So we did. We turned off technology and tuned in to people. It was messy and it was chaotic, it was painful and it was personal and it was powerful. It was raw and it was redemptive. Some of us ate spaghetti with a spoon cos we ran out of cutlery. We sat on the floor and on stools and really close to each other – three people thigh to thigh on a chair made for two. We talked and told stories, argued and challenged, wrestled and sat in silence – the good kind and the uncomfortable kind. We left with heads and hearts aching, but full.

Here’s some of what I learnt:

1. White privilege is less about access to “stuff” and more about access to choices or, in Sen’s theorizing, capabilities – the real opportunities of being and doing available to attain well-being. Here’s an example: consider a priest who is fasting and a man in a famine-stricken country who is starving. The key element in determining a person’s well-being here is not whether both are experiencing hunger, but whether the person has access to food and is choosing not to eat. The functioning is starving but the capability to obtain an adequate amount of food is the key element in evaluating well-being between these two individuals. Having a lifestyle is not the same as choosing it; well-being depends on how that lifestyle came to be.

Here’s another example. Consider a bike as a commodity which enables the functioning of mobility. Personal, social and environmental conversion factors impact an individual’s ability to convert the commodity (the bike) into functioning (getting from A to B).  If a person is physically disabled, never learnt to ride a bike, if women are not allowed to ride bikes, or if there are no roads, then a person’s capacity to convert the potential of the bike into movement is limited. It’s not enough to give someone a bike if they don’t have the ability, the capacity, the enabling conditions to ride it in a way that moves them forward (or if they don’t have access to a pump, if they cannot take the bike out without being physically threatened by a mugging, etc)

2. In a post-industrial/post-agricultural world, we believe that we too are living in the Information Age, where the primary means of production is Knowledge and the accumulation of knowledge (i.e. education) is the means by which individuals access livelihood, opportunity, resource, jobs etc. I simply don’t believe this is true in South Africa. I wonder if perhaps we are actually in the Age of Connection. Knowledge might be power, but it’s less about what you know and more about who you know. The primary means of production might be Social Capital – the contacts and connections which enable us to network, navigate and negotiate the economic landscape. Perhaps education is the capability, but the functioning is all about social capital – it’s the people we know, the professional contacts, the personal networks that enable us to actualize opportunity. White privilege is at its core all about social capital.

3. While I can sympathize with the pain and anger of black friends, I don’t think I can actually empathize. I can show compassion for, seek to understand, commiserate with, experience anger on behalf of but I can never really experience “from within another’s frame of reference”. As one of our guests so rightly pointed out “We do not and cannot experience EQUAL frustration. You had a choice.”

4. I need to shut up more. Perhaps one of our greatest failings as white people in South Africa is our inability to sit in silence. When we listen to the voices of our black brothers/sisters expressing pain, anger, frustration, or simply sharing their experience, we want to immediately question, clarify, push-back, argue, dissect, debate, wrestle, show the other side, point out the discrepancies or inconsistencies, locate within the “larger picture”, propose solutions, and find “action steps”. We don’t know how to sit – just SIT – with a rage that fills a room, sucks all the air from it, and leaves our friends shaking. We have ears but do not hear, and eyes but do not see.

5. Reconciliation is not the path towards Justice but rather Justice is the path towards Reconciliation. Until and unless Justice has been enacted we can not experience right relationship. (Thanks, Nkosi!)

[To read more reflections from the other guests, click here]

[For more from tbV, like this piece explaining her tattoo, click here]

Some thoughts from Spaghetti conversations [with Daniel van Zuydam

Daniel was another of the guests from Friday's dinner and deep dive into Race, Boundary and Location conversation that i wrote about over here, and he shares some of his thoughts from the evening:

We need to learn to listen to one another. Such a simple concept, "I stop talking, you talk", but very hard to execute.

On Friday, Brett invited me to a dinner with a number of other peeps from different ages, colour, monetary and social backgrounds. I, unassumingly, accepted his his offer and when we got to the real talk, I felt like I had been hit by a big metaphorical truck.

It was awkward, it was hard, it was confrontational and, as Brett said, it was Messi (great pun by the way Brett).

What I have been really chewing on for most of the week about that conversation is that we need to learn to listen to one another. I am a lawyer by profession and I deal with conflict all the time (so I secretly enjoyed all the passion and confrontation going on) but what I have learnt is that when people don't take the time to listen to one another, they begin to assume that they know what the other person is thinking and doing and they also think they know why the other person is doing it.

I have never seen more conflict happen this way. It is a complete break down of communication and both sides of the coin believe they are right, hence, justified in what they are doing and boy do they fight.

I went into this dinner thinking, conceitedly, that I had done a lot of thinking and changing already with all the media hype of late leading me to research this "white privilege" thing and seeing how the effects of apartheid are still very real. I was completely humbled at this dinner in what I thought I knew and in how broad minded I thought I was.

I had a good idea of what "they" (black people) thought, mainly derived from media articles and some pretty outspoken politicians you know, all the legitimate sources (I hope my sarcasm is quite clear here). Equally though, I noticed that one of the black guys at the talk also had an idea of how "they" (white people) thought and I was saddened at how we, my (black) friend and (white) I, had been missing each other due to our poor communication.

The veil of my own prejudice slowly began to lift as I listened to his personal story, as I put a human being, a face, a name to all the strife that I had been reading about and academically engaging, but not emotionally engaging.

I, too, saw the veil of his prejudice lifting, how when he listened to me, he began to see that I too was dissatisfied with the inequities and complete injustice of our present system, that I too recognized my white privilege and was actively trying to change my life to redress the poverty and race barriers so obviously hampering our country.

We listened to each other. We were no longer an "us" and "them" but rather a "we".

But as I said, it was HARD, it was SCARY, it was CONFRONTATIONAL(okay, I liked this bit), we DISAGREED STRONGLY(I liked this bit too), but it was so so NECESSARY.

My final question to my new friends, who happen to be black as well, was how do I wake up tomorrow and change this system? One of them said that I could do nothing but join hands every other person and redress the issues and that these "small" meetings were ineffective.

I disagree, Christ changed the world with 12 people, revolutions happen when "small" groups of people meet together and try and make a difference.

I challenge all my friends, all the people reading this blog and all the people who take on various pseudonyms and write outlandishly racist comments on Brett's blogs (in fact especially these guys), read Brett's initial blog on this night and look at joining (or even hosting) a conversation like this, and do it face to face, social media doesn't cut it.

[To return to the start of this conversation and read other guests’ reflections, click here]

Maybe you ARE a racist butt…

My friend, Rebecca, who has written before on my blog – a message to South Africa over here, and about her journey with dyslexia over here – wrote this as a status update the other day:

Dear racist old man on the Pavilion escalator.

I’m sorry you smashed your phone screen and that it’s going to cost you R4000 to fix. But you don’t have to call the salesman you talked to that [insert derogatory name] it is really not his fault it costs so much. And even if it was you still can’t call him that.

And no I don’t think i’m a disrespectful ‘little girl’ for calling you out and I WILL NOT apologise!

And i was just so completely proud of her.

It is beyond time that we start doing this South Africa – whenever racism of prejudice of any type rears its ugly head. For too long we have cringed silently when a relative has referred to a 45 year old black woman working for them as “girl” or a friend has made an uncomfortable joke with racist implications.

Referring to members of another group as “those people” or starting any sentence with the words, “I’m not racist, but…” [which can only ever be followed by a racist statement] – from blatant to subtle to intended or not, it has to stop.

And anytime we stand by and say nothing we become complicit, which if that’s too big a word for you means it is as if we are doing that very racist thing ourselves.

We need to draw a line in the sand and go, “Here and no further.”

This feels like such a small one and yet it feels like such a big one. Mindsets and behaviours need to shift so that we can move forward together. You won’t necessarily change those who you call out, but you give them an opportunity to think about their words and hopefully move towards a better place.

And we need to be having more conversations around the dinner table about race – what is okay, what is not okay. This is one of the pressing needs for us in this country to get right so how about just once you push sport, movies, food to the side and have a good old chat about South Africa and race and what you are personally involved in in terms of helping us move to a better place…

[Want to read about some other ways we can move things forward in this country, click here]

Beyond colour.

This is my friend Rob Davey who lives in Zimbabwe. i have not seen Rob for something like 10 to 15 years i imagine and yet we recently connected and i asked him if he would write a piece for this blog. i have a saying that ‘Quality Shows’ and with some people you just identify that immediately – Rob is one of these people – reading this piece will give you that impression as well. We would do well to have more Robs in the world… or at least to hear their stories shared more often – please pass this around – it is gold! Lessons for South Africa [and others] to learn from experiences in Zimbabwe:

My wife shops in a flea-market in the middle of a township in a rural town in Zimbabwe, she is tall blonde, slim and undeniably white in complexion despite a tan earned by the many hours we spend outside in the sun. She speaks a bit of the local language here, she understands quite a lot more of it than she can speak so she can hear the comments some of the people make as she walks by.

Comments along the lines of, “change the price quickly she can pay more because she is white”, or , “why is she here?, whites don’t belong here”, or better yet, “ I can get her to sleep with me , watch , these foreign murungus (white people), like what we have”.

I understand a lot more of the language and speak a fair amount of it (having been born here and spent most of my life here) and so when I am with my wife I have a very strong urge to hit someone when I hear things like this. I usually avoid this by greeting everyone I see very loudly in the local language so they know I understand, generally things go better afterwards. Quite often the people who don’t make the stupid comments will throw in a little extra with our shopping, a couple of extra avocadoes or tomatoes or bananas, given with a quiet shy smile and a gentle “have a good day” or “thank you for supporting us”.

When we mix with white people later in the day, we hear similar comments , “stupid muntus (derogatory term for a black person), they don’t know how to do anything right”, or “you cant trust these guys (black people), they just lie to you!”, quite often these people are being generous to my wife and I, sharing a meal or a cup of coffee.

We live in a situation mixed with prejudice and generosity. My wife and I live in the middle of this situation, we have black friends and white friends, we find that black people and white people speak in a similarly derogatory fashion to one another or about one another, based on assumptions made due to popular opinion, or their experience of varying incidents that they feel gives them the authority to make sweeping general statements about an entire people group. It doesn’t necessarily make them bad people , it just makes them seem stupid and ignorant, both black and white (and occasionally coloured) lumped uncomfortably in the same boat, and periodically we also find ourselves in this ship that sails to nowhere.

When we do ourselves the disservice of seeing colour as the thing that primarily defines someone else then we are stating that we too are defined by the same thing, it’s not only insulting to other people but to ourselves as it negates or nullifies the myriad of experiences we have had, from birth up until the present, that have made us who we are. Granted some of those experiences may have been a result of someone else’s perception of our value due to our skin colour, but is not the colour that defines us but rather the experience itself.

To deny someone their personhood by labelling them with a colour as a means of attributing some generalised characteristic to them opens the door for the same thing to happen to you. Don’t you hate being labelled or treated in a particular way because you are white? Or black? Or coloured? Don’t you think its unfair when those rules are applied to you? Those generalisations that seem so justified when you say them seem ludicrous when reversed. When you begin to treat people like people, when you begin to treat people in the same way you would expect to be treated , whether you have done good or bad, something changes.

During a particularly unsettled time in our country’s recent past we broke down on the side of the road in an area renowned for politically motivated racial violence. It was a public holiday and there were severe fuel shortages and so traffic was sparse and we had to spend the night on the side of the road. We had water but no food to speak of and were wondering what to do about this when a man walked up out of the darkness and greeted us politely, as custom demands here he waited to be invited into our circle before he addressed us further. He was carrying a small pot of scrambled eggs, some bread and he had another pot containing hot sweet tea, (it was a cold night). He had seen us break down and when he realised that we were staying for the night he set about making us a meal.

There are a few remarkable things about this situation, it would have been politically expedient for him to ignore us or subject us to some kind of abuse, in fact by helping us he opened himself up to being abused by others. He emptied his house of food to feed complete strangers, I know this because I went back to his hut to help him carry his belongings. We were all white and he was black.

Now on the reverse side of this, during the time of violent farm invasions a farmer friend of mine found that over the Christmas period some of the people that had violently invaded his property were stuck out there with no food, he mobilised a bunch of people and bought food and supplies and slaughtered a cow for them and delivered it all to them so that they would have food over Christmas. By doing this he opened himself up to abuse and isolation from his peers undergoing similar trials, it would have benefitted him to make sure the people invading his property had no food so that they would leave. He gave to them when he was experiencing need himself. They were all black and he was white. These are not isolated incidents, this is humanity at its best, and it happens all the time.

Remarkable things happen when we see people beyond their colour, when we see people with hopes and dreams and faults and fears before we see them as black or white or coloured. What we see is humanity as it should be. Whenever we think of colour first as a means of describing anything but the person’s appearance we all lose, immediately. I am living in Zimbabwe, it has ugliness, it has racism in abundance in every direction. It has a great deal of hardship and poverty, and I am grateful beyond measure because when we experience need we can empathise with others who do so too.

We are not called to ignore injustice, racial oppression, or any other of the violations that seem to frequent this beautiful continent. We need to address these things, but we address them simply as people, not as people of any race except that of the human race. We cannot expect people to change if we are not prepared to change ourselves, the responsibility is ours first before it is someone else’s.

[For more posts that look to rally hope for South Africa, click here]

With great white power comes great fragility.

Why do white people tend to freak out when the conversation moves to being about race?

i just read an excellent interview article online that spoke into some of the things i have been thinking and observing and while it is worth reading the whole thing, there are two aspects i wanted to dive into. Robin DiAngelo [who is being interviewed and is white and runs workshops on anti-racism and has been for more than twenty years] introduces the term ‘White Fragility’ as something she has noticed again and again. One reason she gives for this is the idea we tend to have that ‘Only bad or racist people can be racist’ as opposed to the possibility that a good person can still have some racism in them. It’s not the black and white [ha!] of Complete Racist or No Racism Whatsoever. As a white person, the likelihood is that i am racist in some way or ways [i see it in myself and it’s horrible and needs to be tackled every time] but the question is ‘To What Extent?’

For white people, their identities rest on the idea of racism as about good or bad people, about moral or immoral singular acts, and if we’re good, moral people we can’t be racist – we don’t engage in those acts. This is one of the most effective adaptations of racism over time—that we can think of racism as only something that individuals either are or are not “doing.”

In large part, white fragility—the defensiveness, the fear of conflict—is rooted in this good/bad binary. If you call someone out, they think to themselves, “What you just said was that I am a bad person, and that is intolerable to me.” It’s a deep challenge to the core of our identity as good, moral people. [Robin DiAngelo, professor of multicultural education at Westfield State University and author of What Does it Mean to Be White? Developing White Racial Literacy]

Many white people tend to be a little iffy around race conversation in general, but it tends to be when you bring up the term ‘White Privilege’ that so many of them suddenly get a little “shaky”. i believe that for the most part it’s not understanding what many of us are talking about when we talk about ‘White Privilege’ that causes some of the issue. i think the term has become one of those overused ones that for many people is instant red cloth waved to a bull. If we managed to get some of the people who react so strongly around a dinner table and explain what we are talking about when we talk ‘white privilege’ i believe that for the most part people would be nodding their heads, going, “Oh, well yeah of course.”

White fragility also comes from a deep sense of entitlement. Think about it like this: from the time I opened my eyes, I have been told that as a white person, I am superior to people of color. There’s never been a space in which I have not been receiving that message. From what hospital I was allowed to be born in, to how my mother was treated by the staff, to who owned the hospital, to who cleaned the rooms and took out the garbage. We are born into a racial hierarchy, and every interaction with media and culture confirms it—our sense that, at a fundamental level, we are superior.

And, the thing is, it feels good. Even though it contradicts our most basic principles and values. So we know it, but we can never admit it. It creates this kind of dangerous internal stew that gets enacted externally in our interactions with people of color, and is crazy-making for people of color. We have set the world up to preserve that internal sense of superiority and also resist challenges to it. All while denying that anything is going on and insisting that race is meaningless to us. [Robin DiAngelo]

Wow. DiAngelo nails it on the head. i would love to participate in one of her race workshops.

One thing that helps me think i might be right on the whole direction of where these race conversations have been going on my blog and on Facebook and beyond is the posture. The kinds of people that are saying the same kind of things i am saying or engaging positively in those conversations tend to come with a sense of question, of listening, of being open to learn, of saying things like, ‘Well i don’t know what the answers are but i know we have to do things differently’, of being open to being wrong or needing to change within themselves, of moving away from comfort if necessary, of the possibilities of sacrifice. And more.

Whereas, typically, those people who are arguing against what we are saying and the process are judgemental and accusatory, they say it how it is [as opposed to asking questions, listening, being open to see wrong in themselves], they make personal attacks, they leave ultimatums [“i dare you to post this comment else it proves you’re a liberal doos” or whatever], use Us vs. Them language [“those people”, “the blacks”…], ridicule, talk about how they earned their money and deserve to spend it on themselves, and speak quite negatively about where the country is headed.

If someone disagrees strongly with me and i can see they’ve taken time to listen and hear what i am saying and have formulated an argument based on facts, or sensible ideas, or reasoning, and if they treat me with respect despite strong disagreemnet, and if they argue the issue as opposed to making it personal whether it be about me or other people, then i am far more likely to engage with them further and see if maybe i have something to learn from them even if i disagree with them. And that is what i hope to see more of on here – strong disagreements, back and forth wrestling, passionate arguments on both sides of the conversation – but done with respect, empathy, love, appreciation of the other person’s story and more.

If only we weren’t all so fragile, maybe we could see these conversations move forwards…

[For the rest of the article ‘Why White People Freak out when they’re Called Out About Race, click here]

[To see some of the posts we put together on ‘White Privilege’ click here]

On Coming to Terms with Our Arseholery

Wow, this piece just resonated so much with me. It is SO MUCH EASIER when the easily recognised racists are out there, but when i see him staring back at me when i am standing in front of the mirror… Wow! And yet so much of truth. How honest are we willing to be with ourselves?

#Contains slightly stronger language than i normally use, but get over yourselves…

The Disco Pants Blog

Nobody wants to think of themselves as being a bad person. Bad people are ISIS soldiers, child molesters, Shrien Dewani. They do bad things which are blatant and obvious and talked about in the media. But in the last few months I have found myself in spaces where I’ve had to take a long and careful look at who I am in the world, the attitudes that have formed me and how I conduct myself in certain situations. And to say that it’s been an uncomfortable awakening is an understatement. Because many of you who follow my blog know that I’m relatively outspoken about race issues in this country. I have strong feelings about the socio-economic disparities and the white attitudes that feed them, and while I sit behind my computer screen in my nice study on the Atlantic Seaboard it’s easy to wax lyrical about egalitarianism and the way…

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