Taboo Topics: Race – The Panel – Questions from you about Race-related things – Q3/Q4

Finishing off this first run of the panel with these last two questions that came in – only two responses at the moment but will add more as they come in…

QUESTION 3:  [Suzane Hoffman]

We have seen our country go down hill. We have watched apartheid in reverse . reconciliation is fantasy. All that happens is now the blacks control and the whites still suffer and get the blame. With real reconciliation there would be tolerance and forgiveness. Instead as whites ,we are now wrong. How would you address this?

Busi Ledibane:

I would just like to say that this whole “apartheid in reverse” thing is being taken a bit too far because there is no such thing. For as long as we live, there will never be anything as atrocious as apartheid in this country. Calling South Africa’s current situation “reverse apartheid” is a complete disregard of the oppression and dehumanization that people went through during apartheid. I do think that there are issues that need to be addressed around reconciliation and equality but the situation in South Africa is nowhere near apartheid in reverse.

Tasha Melissa Govender:

I think we need to remember that our democracy is still young. We’re still learning to cope with this new found freedom to be who we want and live how we want. And like a child with no defined boundaries I think at times it’s simple to go overboard. Having said that I don’t believe reconciliation is a fantasy, it’s an amazing ideal that we should all work hard to strive for, daily. I do acknowledge that there have been many who have been hurt amidst apartheid and within the years of freedom that has followed. 

The one thing I feel we should strive to move away from is generalization. As much as it can be said “the blacks control and the whites still suffer…” we must remember that the majority of the ‘black’ population live below the poverty line and whilst BEE may be seen as reverse racism it really is a system, if implemented the way it was intended, that works well.

The only way we will be able to move past the hurt is to forgive. I’ve heard horror stories from my parents and grandparents concerning things that happened to them during apartheid- friends of my parents going into exile, many we’re killed and my mother being arrested whilst she was pregnant for me purely because she wore a shirt that held an image of the Black Panthers. My family has adopted the stance of forgiveness, it is a core pillar of our faith and I believe it is the only way for us to move forward and find a way to be released from the sins of the past.

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QUESTION 4:  [Nancy Strauss] 

Why do black men feel it’s okay to blatantly hit on/harass me? Is it a cultural thing ie. they hit on all young looking women on their own regardless of race/culture OR is it because I am of another race that my status as “other” makes me more “desirable” and less worthy of respect? I literally had this conversation yesterday:

“Hi”

“Hello”

“I need a pretty wife”

(Nervous laugh) that’s nice.

“You should come be my wife”

“Sorry but I have a husband”

“You should have two husbands. You so beautiful”

“Bye”

 

If it’s cultural and “the norm” maybe I would feel less violated and nervous? 

2nd question maybe for black women – how does one respond in these situations?? Cos I would give a white guy a sarcastic cut down…

 

Tasha Melissa Govender:

Hi Nancy! I cannot even begin to tell you how much I understand your outrage and anger, I’ve been on the receiving end and at the most inopportune moments. Once I was standing in line to board a flight, thinking about the mass amounts of work I had to do, only to be interrupted by someone who I thought wanted a friendly chat but rather used it as a moment to harass- although I clearly stated I was uninterested.

I have to say from the get go that I will refer to myself as a feminist and I think a large portion of my worldview comes with that particular context in mind.

Having said that i think there was a point in my life that I assumed it was cultural, but I think to simplify this sort of behaviour into something as insular as ethnicity or culture is to truly ignore and negate the pandemic that is sexual harassment. I really believe this is not a race thing but an individual male thing thing.

It’s the behaviours that you and I as women have experienced that has contributed to the growing issue of rape culture and the reason why we see so many violent acts against women in our media and news. The only way this behaviour can be combated is by educating future parents on how to raise their children. Young girls should not be taught that they should be ‘all things nice’ or think that when a boy is mean to them it’s only because they have a crush. Young boys should be taught the proper way to treat a female, to always have respect and to understand that a ‘want’ does not necessitate a ‘take’.

I’m not sure if this answered your question but I really hope it shed a bit of light in some way or possibly gave you a new avenue of thought.

Busi Ledibane:

Here’s what I think and I can be corrected if I’m wrong. What happened to you happens on a daily basis to me and several friends of mine. I’m a black woman who is the size of a ten-year-old and I get that and I’ve seen different women of all shapes and sizes being treated the same way.

To guys like that a woman is a woman (or maybe even just a thing) and that’s it. That’s why your marital status didn’t even matter. As to whether this is a cultural norm or not… Well, calling it a norm makes it somehow justifiable and it’s not. It’s disrespectful and it hurts. To be honest with you, there are a lot of things, dark clouds that hover over black culture when it comes to gender but more specifically the male gender that we as black people have allowed to sort of become norms in our failure to address them.

Like absent fathers (SERIOUSLY, THOUGH. What is up with that?!), promiscuity and generally irresponsible behaviour for which black mothers would even defend their sons. There are serious conversations that black people need to have about the brokenness that is so prevalent within our culture and I say culture because these things aren’t just in South Africa, black Americans also have the same issues. [I might get a lot of flack for the paragraph above, but I stand by it]

You already said that not all black men are like this and it is true. There are some really great black men who would never speak to you the way that guy did, but they are hard to find. That is mainly because fatherhood is a serious issue within black culture and a lot black men have a poor sense of self and a warped view of manhood. I’m not making excuses, I’m just saying it like it is. No self-respecting, well-raised black man would treat a woman with such disrespect.

Lastly, on how to respond. You learn over time that you can’t have the same response for every situation, obviously but most of the time, you can just walk away. For example, construction workers. You must know about those! Just keep walking, there is no need to say anything. And generally in a situation like with the guy, I think you handled it well. Especially if you were in a situation where you couldn’t walk away.

[To return to the beginning of the Panel and see all the questions they looked at, click here]

[For a wider variety of race-related topics, click here]

Whose Taboo Topic is it anyway?

My favourite space on my blog is probably the Taboo Topics section where we look at topics rarely spoken about such as losing a baby or infertility, singleness or being a parent of young children when it’s really really hard, abortion and adoption, issues of race and many more… with one exception these posts take the form of stories of real live people who put their names and faces on them to help make them more relatable and i think they have been extremely powerful and will hopefully continue to be so…

For the most part i have not had a strategy or plan of what topics i would like to see happening on Taboo Topics but have rather let it create itself in a sense. As i have heard a story from someone and asked them if they would be up to sharing or as i have felt a particular topic weigh more heavily on my heart, so i have introduced it and stories have followed. So there are probably fifty more topics waiting to happen, but until i feel it is the right time or i receive a story that feels like it needs to be shared, i will continue with what i have…

A topic i posted on recently was about people who have lost people in their lives – now while losing a baby and losing a child are both obviously that, this was one i started to cover people who have had more grown up people in their lives die and because these can cover so many different relationships [parent, sibling, good friend, grandparent] there is a lot of space for a whole host of different stories to be added there. I understand that for some people this can be an extremely difficult piece to write on but i imagine these stories in particular can be so helpful for other people who have suffered recent loss to read. So if you have lost someone and feel up to writing a story to share, please get hold of me [brettfish@hotmail.com] and let’s chat:

Two Brand New Topics i was asked to share on in the last week were these:

[1] People dissing/hating on South Africa – i guess this might be those still there who are always whining about the place or else those who have fled the country and are constantly breaking it down from outside. So i guess i would be looking at someone who has something to say to those people and maybe thinks differently…

[2] The second topic i was asked to share about was Sexual Abuse, which i am going to put on hold at the moment, simply because it is such a sensitive topic and i need to figure out the best way to deal with and share a topic of such a nature so as to make sure it is handled in the best possible way. So i think i need to put a pause on that for now. This is definitely something i would like to see addressed in some way and maybe i have an older friend who i know well and trust who has a post they can write on it rather than treating it as another Taboo Topic… so let me think about that one and get back to you… if anyone has good links to sites where people have shared stories like this well in the meantime it would be helpful if you could provide a link in the comments section. Thank you.

So if you have a story to share that is prompted by anything you have read in this post so far, drop me an email at brettfish@hotmail.com and let me know what you’re thinking and i can give you some tips on how your share might be shaped and we can take it from there. [i cannot guarantee that i will share it – this is my blog and i always have final say on what i choose to post, but i have rarely said no to anyone and so the chances are good].

Don’t nominate someone else’s story, but if you know someone who has a story that fits well into any of the topics we have run and you think they might be up to sharing it, then please have a conversation with them and if they are up to it get them to contact me directly.

i trust and hope this continued conversation will both encourage those who are struggling in silence and also just help us overall to feel more comfortable in talking about rarely spoken of things…

also if you see a topic that you know relates to someone you know but are struggling to figure out how to share it with them directly, why not SHARE the topic link on your facebook or twitterer page and give them the option of choosing to view it or not? Or else if EVERYONE who reads this can share the Taboo Topics intro link:

taboo topics

There are bound to be many people you know who would benefit from some of the stories here…

[To see the Taboo Topics that have already been covered, click here]

Taboo Topics: Race – The Panel – Questions from you about Race-related things – Q1: Framing our Identity?

A short while ago i introduced this panel to you made up of friends of mine from South Africa who are from a variety of different race groups/backgrounds and then invited you to ask any race-related questions you might have. The opinions of the members of the panel are in no way expected to represent the thoughts, feelings and ideas of a whole race group or culture, nor are they anticipated to be complete expositions into the heart and soul and depth of every question asked. They are simply opinions, thoughts and feelings of that individual, who is someone i deeply respect and think is worth hearing from and collectively i hope they will bring a strong degree of variety and depth to answering every question we look at. Not every panel member will necessarily answer each question, but i am hoping to have a few different perspectives on each question we tackle.

Because the answers were slightly longer and worth thinking about a little more deeply, i decided to simply use the first question in this post and i may add some answers as more come in, but in the meantime:

QUESTION 1: [Dave Child]

 “As South Africans, in 2014, how do we begin to frame our identities (as whites, blacks, coloureds etc) in a young democracy with such a long and deep history of racial hatred and discrimination?”

Caley Daniels:

I think we’ve all experienced one or two human beings who are still caught up in the culture of discrimination. What’s sad to me is that it’s usually the opinion of the parents that has been passed on to the children – and I think that is where the problem lies: ignorance breeds ignorance (that’s what it boils down to – racism, sexism, homophobia, whatever). If there are still people of the previous generation whom we can’t rely on to lead us by example, then the change has to come from us. I take my stance from Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 4:12 (But this can apply to everyone in the context of the question) “Don’t let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity.”

I say this with the utmost respect for our parents’ and grandparents’ generations which includes individuals who have been through more than we could ever imagine! But we know better than to continue in those ways. We have better circumstances, and environment more peaceful than it was in their time. We should be building on that and using what’s in our hands right now: an opportunity to use acceptance to eradicate ignorance, discrimination and racial hatred.

Tony Nzanzah: 

That is an excellent question that will sadly be visited for thousands of years to come. The thing that is against us is that our past has been framed through the eyes of race and the reality is that some of these feelings are deeply entrenched.

All one has to do at times is to read one negative article about one of the politicians either from the left or right and follow the online comments. Some of the comments remind me how far we are to fully embrace diversity and celebrate it. I believe this journey of transformation takes root when I choose in my interactions to refrain from referring to “them” or “those people” to us and to see myself as part of the whole. It is probably easier said than done and the recent elections in South Africa were a good reminder. You see some of the racial profiling is sublimely entrenched in our society through the forms that we are forced to fill in that ask us to refer us to our racial tag.

We need to be comfortable with people with a different shade and as a Christian, I believe that we are all created equally. Yes, at times the access to resources plays a role in dividing us further. I need to learn to walk across the room and reach out to others and not feel that I have to be invited. It requires me to be comfortable first in my own skin before I can try to reach out to others. One of the influential post- apartheid presidents, Thabo Mbeki, penned the famous words, “I am an African.” In my own journey I tend to embrace my Africanness as a way to help bridge the huge cultural chasm that exists in South Africa. This to me is a new way of referring to who we are as people that see themselves better than just the pigmentation of their skin colour!

We need a new revolution of finding each other and identifying each other as an African. This is hard work that a lot of us refrain from embarking as this hard work comes with a sprinkling of pain and tears. I have cringed when I hear people from a different cultural group saying things as “I understand those people”; this comes out as condescending and out of touch with reality.

It is dangerous to believe that since one has tuned their taste buds to eat tripe or sheep heads this qualifies them to utter such patronising comments. We all need to undergo a cultural detox that removes preconceived ideologies that silently occupy our minds. The battle is really about how I free about myself as opposed to how others need to be freed. As Africans we need to divorce ourselves from victim mentality that only aims to imprison us in the past. The challenge is not out there in some leafy suburb or township but is in our minds. Fear is a powerful weapon that paralyses us as the unknown outcome can be more daunting. The Bible talks about ‘renewing our minds’ and this is a process that is needed to allow us to see each other beyond racial tags. This also speaks about our view of people.  

A utopia of a colourless society is a figment of our imagination but we need to learn to dance with each other to a new rhythm that celebrates our uniqueness as Africans. A perfect dance is only possible when dancers are willing to step on each other toes, laugh at their mistakes and be enriched by them. Come let’s go dancing!

John Scheepers:

 When it comes to identity our world has such a strong push to what I call unique conformity.  In a world drunk with the quest for individuality there exists somewhat paradoxically a co-dependant drive for conformity.  Somehow the uniqueness of racial identity is seen as an evil thing.  We must strive, we are often told, to “not see colour” anymore.  While this might be admirable when it comes to judging a person’s character or ability, it is not the whole picture when it comes to culture.  It is not wrong to understand, at least in part, your identity racially or culturally. But it is when you understand the values of your race or culture as the normalising values by which you may judge the value or worth of another culture that things go wrong.

The Bible celebrates both the unity (common humanity) and the diversity of our world.  The creation narrative displays both the unity of origin, of structure and of order as well as the diversity of animal and plant life.  Humanity is then given a cultural mandate to take up the raw materials of creation and to shape and use them to fill the earth with God’s glory.  Even sin cannot fully destroy that original intent with the result that in the picture language of Revelation the splendour of the nations are brought into the New Jerusalem.  The riches and beauty of every culture and every nation, I suspect, will somehow be redeemed and included into God’s new creation.  Note also that the picture of the redeemed people of God is not simply one homogeneous church service but a seething mass of diversity, people from every tribe, tongue and nation together under one King.  Equality and diversity are not mutually exclusive. 

As a Christian though, the ultimate thing is not my cultural identity but my identity in Christ.  For so many of us who call ourselves Christ followers, we have simply tacked our Christianity on to our cultural identity and values.  But the biblical picture is far more radical than that.  In Christ we have died to our old self riddled through with sin and self-interest and been raised to a new life of hope, joy and renewed identity.  My primary identity is now no longer rooted in my family, my culture or my race.  My primary identity is as a member of God’s new family, his new people through whom he is bringing hope and restoration to a broken and dying world. 

I do not stop being a white, English-speaking male but it is no longer that which primarily defines me.  I am now set free to, like Christ, lay down my life, my rights, my cultural markers, my skin colour, in service of those who are not like me.  I no longer define my brother by the colour of his skin or the language of his birth but by his inclusion into the people of God.  I have a new identity that both affirms the beauty of my culture or my people and yet sets me free to find my identity in a far bigger and more beautiful story than the shade of my skin.

Tasha Melissa Govender

Hi Dave, you know the question of identity is so tricky. There comes the process of defining identity and defining what constitutes as identity. As with everyone else, I can only give you my own opinion on what I believe it to be – it may be biased but I’ll try to be as honest as I possibly can. 

I identify myself first and foremost as a female and then as a South African. I always find there is a tendency to classifying ourselves by race and then nationality, I don’t necessarily agree with this – I simply see my Indian ethnicity as my heritage as opposed to my identity. 

Given our very young democracy, I feel the notion of identity falls into a very tricky arena. I think the crucial factor is that within a society that has so many different facets be it interracial relationships or individuals being adopted into families with different ethnicities than themselves there is a large arena in which the individual begins to define and determine their own identity. I may be simplifying it too much but I truly believe it depends on the individual and the space in which they feel comfortable calling home. At this point it now becomes the responsibilities of those the individual comes in contact with to be open to the possibility of this person identifying with something that may seem other than what they are. I really hope this made sense!
 

Do you have any thoughts, ideas or feelings to add? Please jump on to the comments section and voice them respectfully – we would LOVE to hear from you.

Did you find this question and answer helpful in any way? Well then please SHARE it across your social networks so more people can become a part of this conversation.

Is there a question you would like to ask the panel that relates to an aspect of race and culture? Pop it in an email and send it to me at brettfish@hotmail.com

[To continue to question 2 of the panel relating to ‘When will we be ‘over’ apartheid?, click here]

[To view other aspects of our race-related conversations on this blog, click here]

some thoughts on Truth in terms of coffee and life and race-related things [meet Susan Hayden]

This is a reblogged post courtesy of Susan Hayden who posts some worthwhile musings over at Disco Pants & A Mountain – you should check her out… but this felt really relevant to some of our recent race conversations and so i asked her if i could add it here…

 

When you’re told a coffee shop is the best coffee shop in the world and that coffee shop is not in New York or Berlin or Copenhagen but in Buitenkant Street, Cape Town, it’s normal to be a bit skeptical and to think it got that vote because they feel a bit sorry for us with our accents, but I have to say, I’ve been to coffee shops in all of those places and Truth kicks every one of their butts. It’s freaking amazing, and even though I had on my best H&M and blow dried hair I felt decidedly uncool amongst the Afros and metal and sleek, industrial finishings. The menu is as modern and chic as the interior, with things like wild mushrooms and thyme on toast with a perfectly poached egg, English breakfast with hollandaise sauce (because that sauce should actually be served with everything) and what I ordered, the organic three egg omelette with herbs and mascarpone cheese which was delicious. And the service is friendly and the people who wander in and out are interesting to look at, so if you live in Cape Town and haven’t been there, go. It’s really awesome.

The reason I chose that venue that morning is because truth has been on my mind. A while back I hosted a meeting of my discussion group, The Dialogue Thing, and as I sat there in my courtyard while the south-easter died down and a sickle moon appeared over the rooftops, listening to black and white women talk about their lives and their experiences of race and identity I felt gratitude for another opportunity to listen and talk and be heard and – for the love of God – to be acknowledging the big, fat elephant in the room called ‘race’. Because these spaces don’t present themselves in normal life. Instead, we all vok maar voort, in a mass disacknowledgement of our history and our past, and we pretend it’s not an issue anymore because 20 years have gone by, but it is an issue. It is. You can’t have lived like that for so many years – in segregated schools, on whites-only beaches, our minds warped by the twisted ideologies of our elders – and emerge unscathed and go on like nothing ever happened.

And I’m white and middle class so I can only speak from a white, middle class perspective, but if it’s hard for me sometimes to relate to black South Africans I can’t even imagine what it feels like for a black woman born in the same year I was and who was denied basically every human right and freedom I took for granted to suddenly be in white spaces and have to be cool about it and fit in and accept us as kin. I mean, it was crazy, the way we lived. Yet, somehow these conversations don’t happen. We’re expected to move forward, en masse, and worse – we’re warned not to bring up ‘the past’ because people get uncomfortable and it makes for awkward dinner party conversations. And what’s so amazing about this group of women is that they march head first into the awkward and talk about really difficult subjects. And they welcome the discomfort because they know it’s the only way we’re going to get to the other side of this thing and relate to one another as normal human beings.

And the stories that come up are always incredible. A statuesque, admirably stylishly woman who works in media told the story of her wedding, and how she had the biggest fight with her mom and aunt at the airport because their ID documents still contained their English names, Victoria and Elizabeth – the names they were given in their youth because their Xhosa names were too difficult for the white people to pronounce. And because they hadn’t changed them, their tickets were booked under the wrong names which caused a problem for airport staff. Another woman whose mom is white and British and whose dad is black and Zimbabwean told us about how she went to the bank a while back and had to endure the humiliation of the Xhosa staff chuckling and calling their friends and passing her ID book around because while she is pale-skinned and has European features, her name is a traditional Ndebele one. As she lives in Cape Town she is constantly mistaken for a Cape Coloured, though she is Zimbabwean born and bred, and is regularly told off for not speaking Afrikaans. And this is how she lives, and the kind of nonsense she has to endure on a daily basis.

Because, given our history, it’s incredibly important to us knowing what everyone’s race is. It’s how we grew up and it defined, in the most basic sense, how comfortable or crap our lives were going to be, and it’s an ingrained thing which affects all of us South Africans, irrespective of where we come from. The woman in media recounted an incident where she assumed the person she was speaking to was Xhosa like her but then they spoke with an Afrikaans accent, and how much that confused her, and she was thinking, ‘are you black? Are you coloured? What are you? I need to know!’ Because when we know we can pigeonhole people, but the impact this categorizing has and the damage it continues to do cannot be overemphasized. And she talked about how hard it is being given a good job and always having to worry about whether she was chosen on the basis of her skin colour, and how she works extra hard for fear of letting herself and her people down. And how, being the first ones of their generation to get a tertiary education, the weight of the responsibility and what their families sacrificed and now expect of them gets so cumbersome they can hardly function at times.

And then we white girls were asked about our experience of being white, and it’s not something one is often asked about because (with good reason) nobody really cares, but it was very liberating to be able to admit how tricky I find my relationships with black South Africans and how, no matter who the person is and how much we have in common I’m constantly monitoring what I say and second-guessing what she says and interpreting everything politically and furtively hoping I’m not saying anything stupid or offensive because, god knows, I have done in the past. And I hate it, and I want to not do that anymore. I want things to feel natural and good, but they don’t. And I think the only way to get beyond (if we ever even can) it is to talk our way through it. We have to keep talking and listening and having ourselves reflected back at us because we still operate from positions of great privilege and, frankly, ignorance, and we don’t even realise, I think, how much space we white folk still take up.

And it’s not about harping on the past, it’s about getting it. Getting where we’ve been, where we are now and how we can really move on instead of just pretending we have. My beautiful and deeply insightful psychologist friend drew a great analogy as the evening drew to an end. She said, it’s like having grown up with very abusive parents who have now gone away and left us to fend for ourselves and we’re expected to just get over it and act like nothing ever happened. And it’s not about laying blame because that’s counter-productive and you give your power away when you assume the victim role. Conversely, it’s about taking our power back by taking cognizance of the hectic stuff we’ve lived through in this country, and truly acknowledging it and how much scar tissue we all still carry around.

And there are no immediate solutions, and maybe things will be different in generations to come. And sometimes they’re different now. On the school run yesterday I drove past a bus stop and there was a real old school Afrikaans farmer, dressed in khaki from head to toe, with a boep and a felt hat, in animated conversation with a middle-aged black woman in heels and long, orange braids, and to anyone not from here this would be, so what? But for me, it was the little reminder I needed that, in small but significant ways, we have become a different nation. Still mad, still schizophrenic, still trying to find its feet, but also embracing new ways and discovering new truths. And this – our ability to learn and change – is what will matter in the end.

Truth is at 36 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town and open from 7am to 6pm. My pictures are crappy, but there are some great ones here http://www.truthcoffee.com

 

[A whole host of other conversations happening with regards to Race on this blog, which you can take a look at over here]

Taboo Topics: Race – Identity and What makes me me?

Here are simply a collection of stories from people who have lived in countries or areas of diversity and have a race theme to a part of their story which they have so graciously decided to share with us:

Meet Deborah Dowlath [Trinidad and Tobago]

Meet Kevin Lloyd James Lok [South Africa]

Meet Caley Daniels [South Africa]

Meet Susan Hayden [reblog of ‘Disco Pants & a Mountain’ post]

Taboo Topics: Race – What makes a person? – Meet Kevin Lloyd James Lok

 

What makes a person?

What makes me, me?

For me I’ve struggled with identity for my entire Life – one of the biggest struggles I’ve had over my identity is the one over ‘race’ (now many would consider it strange for a white guy to struggle with identity over race and don’t get me wrong – I’ve never thought I am not white) the reasons being that I was brought up (My mom assisted hugely by our Domestic worker Vivian Mogotsi, who I would often be left with when my Mom was busy sorting out household business, fetching or dropping my brothers off from extramural activities etc. nearly until the end of my primary school education) in a home where though I was not taught to hate people of a different ‘race’, I observed as my parents who didn’t hate people of colour made comments that did not show a love for them either.

At primary school race was not an issue for me as my group of friends represented a large portion of the rainbow nation and would often hang out with my mates regardless of colour. My notion that colour was just that – colour- didn’t last long into High school as friends started to separate themselves into cultural and racial groups, and soon after people began to discriminate (not always openly) against those that were different (while those of the same ‘race’ who dared to venture against the norm being classed as ‘coconuts’, ‘wiggas’ etc.), for me I couldn’t fit into any one of those groups and was thrown into a friendship with three guys (one white and two black) who for a time also did not fully fit into the mould that was pressed upon us. After grade nine we started integrating into different groups and though still friends, walls started being built as the groups of friends’ views and opinions started having an impact. It was in grades 10-12 in my History class that I saw the class divided by ‘racial’ lines in discussions (sometimes more like debates) about apartheid and discrimination – and we learned of how people (across the ‘racial spectrum’) had been taught by their parents/families/elders/communities to either hate, fear, manipulate and look down upon(or up to as superior) ; or befriend, respect, take time to know, understand and view as equals those of other ‘races’.

I have throughout my life struggled within as I’ve had conflicting messages from parents, friends and society telling me who I can love, be friends with or respect; and who should be by enemy, despised and looked down upon. For a time some bad experiences with friends of different ‘races’ helped me choose the easy path (that of lumping all people of a ‘race’ into a stereotype) of being a racist (if that of a closet racist) for a time – until I realised I had been hurt by people regardless of ‘race’ and been loved by and loved regardless of race.

Now I see colour, but I do not make assumptions or judgements on a person because of ‘race’ but I also understand that there have been hurts and wrongs inflicted upon those of other ‘races’ by white people, I admit that some of my ancestors (not all – my heritage is as mixed as they come) probably had a hand in some of that, I admit to the fact that those who still suffer from the effects of Apartheid, I admit that I to some degree have been privileged by what has happened in the past (regardless of the fact that I was born toward the end of apartheid).

But I choose to stand apart and not let how others may view me (whether it is with hatred, resentment, disgust or fear) change me, I choose to love others and help where I can to right the wrongs – even if I did not have a hand in causing them (as best as I can on a personal level and with others), I choose not to fight only the injustices and hurts inflicted by my ‘race’ upon other ‘races’ but to fight against those seeking to cast down, enslave, hurt, or discriminate against anyone.

The reason I am able to choose those things is because of Vivian Mogotsi and other people who not only showed me that love has no borders but pointed me towards a love that I still struggle to comprehend at times (The love that God has for all of us) and have helped me find my identity in God, in whose image we are all made, and who loves all of us so much that He gave His only son to die so that ALL who believe in Him will have eternal life John3:16 (and that not for some or in differing levels according to race) and so that there would no longer be division Colossians 3:11

All of these things (whether good or bad), all of the choices I’ve made and will make, all of the people who have cared enough to look deeper than the skin, how God created me and continues to lead and grow me – that is what makes me.

So if there are some points I would like you to take from this here they are:

#Skin colour does not make anyone less or more of a human being

#Hurt-people, hurt people (No-one can end pain by inflicting more – things need to be spoken of and dealt with in love)

#Love knows no boundaries

#God Loves all – so should we (note God is love, but Love is not God – He is way more than love, and our definition of love can’t even begin to fit what He is – 1 corinthians 13)

#What makes a person is who they choose to be (circumstance determines your viewpoint not your choices)

[For other stories and conversations on different aspects of Race-related things, click here]

Taboo Topics: Race – Don’t be colour blind, be colour brave!

i just watched this TED talk by a woman called Mellody Hobson on the introduction of a topic she called ‘Colour Braveness’

While the focus of the clip is very much from a ‘The American Dream’ point of view, and so doesn’t necessarily have the end point i would focus on [become a CEO of a company!] there are some interesting and helpful points she raises and so it is well worth a viewing…

Some lines that stood out for me were the following:

“Surround yourself with people don’t look look like you, who don’t think like you, who don’t act like you and who don’t come from where you come from” – this is such a powerful idea and i have been inspired over the last year in particular to seek out writers and speakers who are quite different from me [race, culture, background] so as to hear a different voice from the majority of voices i might have heard growing up [typically white male] not because there is anything wrong with white male voices, but definitely because there is a richness that comes from being informed by a variety of sources and influences. “They will challenge your assumptions and help you grow as a person.”

Mellody finished off by challenging the audience to be brave, colour brave, “so that every child knows that their future matters and their dreams are possible.”

 

 

[For a growing list of exciting topics and stories relating to different aspects of Race, click here]