January 30, 2009all of these dwellings are within a mile of one another. my perspective on race/class has shifted in a profound way with my visit to south africa. you want social disparities? you want racial invisibility? visit beautiful cape town south africa where squatter towns border all white gated communities and all colored communities. millions of blacks live without running water, toilets, unemployment ranges between 60 - 70%, TB rates crest at 45% and 1 out of 4 are HIV+.
pam's cousin, a black american telecomm professional, lives in a mostly-white community. his 3000+ sq ft condo is nestled in a bay with table mountain behind and the indian ocean in the front. we sat by the pool drinking a fabulous pinotage that is produced locally. as we watched the moon settle in the horizon i couldn't help but acknowledge "life is damned good" even as i was sobered by the doom of apartheid's legacy.
in nigeria, my african colleagues told me that i am not black but rather muzengi, that is, foreigner. there are very few mixed race peoples. you're either a dark skinned black or you're a white. i'm not soul sister number one in abuja, i'm vanilla cha (WTF?).
then there's south africa....where the shit gets deep and raw. racial categories: white, coloured, asian, black. i, apparently, am coloured and it comes with privileges! in education, employment and housing. people that pass the paper bag test still mostly marry one another or whites/asians exclusively (you can be outed in the newspaper for going black!). they've created generations of light skinned people who proudly call themselves coloured (WTF?). american blacks don't know disparites. when SCIENTIFIC data are presented, coloured is a racial category. my social standing has improved in cape town. it's fucking scary.
segregation is alive and well in this "post-racial" Mandela society, NOT. thousands upon thousands live in shanty towns with no running water, bootleg electricity and no toilets. unemployment ranges from 60 - 70%. eduation is severely under resourced. there's a raging "tik" (crystal meth) epidemic. there are NO recreational facilities, parks, supermarkets in these communities. these people are dooomed (and it's mostly black people).
more scary is that everyone says shit like "ja, it's a shame but what can you do?" i say burn the mother fucker, BURN IT!
email from reggie:
OMG! Shug, thanks so much for sharing this! I can't imagine what that must feel like. Honestly, I think that's why my research focuses on domestic issues as the international ones seem too insurmountable. Although the domestic issues usually make me angry, the international ones make me feel angry and guilty. There was a student in my doctoral program (Cassandra O.) who usually put all of our African American complaining into perspective too. Whenever we (black students) would be sitting around complaing about how hard we had it growing up..she would chime in..where I grew up in Nigeria we didn't have a roof (game over! none of us had anything else to say after that...). I heard something at a recent conference where someone said that "race is a cohort experience" (that is race is experienced by our parent's cohort very differently from the way our age cohort experiences it) and it appears we should add that it is also a country specific experience as well.
email from carmen
email from joanne
I always find that when I travel extensively as you are doing now I feel more grounded and connected. Outside of the US I've been to Morocco, Spain, Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, St. Lucia, Ecuador, Chile, and a few other countries. There is not one year of my "formal education" that compares to one month in any of these countries. Living in the US we are raised to believe how big we are. We believe everything going on here and now is the center of the universe. I believe it myself most of the time unless I purposefully stop the spiral. Then it takes something major (health/sickness of a loved one, an inspirational trip, some other hippy-dippy self-actualizing moment) for me to be catapulted back to reality and remember what matters. Looking at people as individuals with perspectives that are both deeply rooted and fluid. Realizing that everybody has something to teach.
January 31, 2009
pam's cousin, a black american telecomm professional, lives in a mostly-white community. his 3000+ sq ft condo is nestled in a bay with table mountain behind and the indian ocean in the front. we sat by the pool drinking a fabulous pinotage that is produced locally. as we watched the moon settle in the horizon i couldn't help but acknowledge "life is damned good" even as i was sobered by the doom of apartheid's legacy.
in nigeria, my african colleagues told me that i am not black but rather muzengi, that is, foreigner. there are very few mixed race peoples. you're either a dark skinned black or you're a white. i'm not soul sister number one in abuja, i'm vanilla cha (WTF?).
then there's south africa....where the shit gets deep and raw. racial categories: white, coloured, asian, black. i, apparently, am coloured and it comes with privileges! in education, employment and housing. people that pass the paper bag test still mostly marry one another or whites/asians exclusively (you can be outed in the newspaper for going black!). they've created generations of light skinned people who proudly call themselves coloured (WTF?). american blacks don't know disparites. when SCIENTIFIC data are presented, coloured is a racial category. my social standing has improved in cape town. it's fucking scary.
segregation is alive and well in this "post-racial" Mandela society, NOT. thousands upon thousands live in shanty towns with no running water, bootleg electricity and no toilets. unemployment ranges from 60 - 70%. eduation is severely under resourced. there's a raging "tik" (crystal meth) epidemic. there are NO recreational facilities, parks, supermarkets in these communities. these people are dooomed (and it's mostly black people).
more scary is that everyone says shit like "ja, it's a shame but what can you do?" i say burn the mother fucker, BURN IT!
email from reggie:
OMG! Shug, thanks so much for sharing this! I can't imagine what that must feel like. Honestly, I think that's why my research focuses on domestic issues as the international ones seem too insurmountable. Although the domestic issues usually make me angry, the international ones make me feel angry and guilty. There was a student in my doctoral program (Cassandra O.) who usually put all of our African American complaining into perspective too. Whenever we (black students) would be sitting around complaing about how hard we had it growing up..she would chime in..where I grew up in Nigeria we didn't have a roof (game over! none of us had anything else to say after that...). I heard something at a recent conference where someone said that "race is a cohort experience" (that is race is experienced by our parent's cohort very differently from the way our age cohort experiences it) and it appears we should add that it is also a country specific experience as well.
email from carmen
Darling few Americans know the reality of life around the world. Even those who travel, rarely travel to where the indigenous people live or have a clue as to what day-to-day survival really means. We worry about our economy while others worry about having food to eat and clean drinking water. Africa probably is the worse because the contrasts are so great and divided along color lines, but India, China, the Middle East, South America, Central America, it is hardly different except that the divisions aren't based on color. This is the reality as hard as it must be on you to see it so blatantly in action. It takes travel and I don't mean tourist vacations to get an understanding about life and I'm glad you are able to do it. It's not pretty, but in spite of it, people still can smile, be welcoming and loving. It is the life they know, not necessarily the life they want to live and certainly not the life that an American - no matter how poor - could even fathom.
email from joanne
I always find that when I travel extensively as you are doing now I feel more grounded and connected. Outside of the US I've been to Morocco, Spain, Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, St. Lucia, Ecuador, Chile, and a few other countries. There is not one year of my "formal education" that compares to one month in any of these countries. Living in the US we are raised to believe how big we are. We believe everything going on here and now is the center of the universe. I believe it myself most of the time unless I purposefully stop the spiral. Then it takes something major (health/sickness of a loved one, an inspirational trip, some other hippy-dippy self-actualizing moment) for me to be catapulted back to reality and remember what matters. Looking at people as individuals with perspectives that are both deeply rooted and fluid. Realizing that everybody has something to teach.
January 31, 2009
i'm trying not to be judgmental because in spite of this system i recognize ours is quite imperfect. america after all has doomed its indigenous people to reservations -- which are hardly better than these shanty towns.
the good news is that there are many people, influential powerful people, who understand their responsibility and obligation to change and not in the remote sense. we had breakfast today with the rector of stellenbosch university (i think this is equivalent to the president of the university -- the role larry somers played and that drew faust is now playing at harvard, impressive). he was hired in 2007 and has increased the enrollment of blacks at the university from less than 20% to just under 40% (and has a goal to increase it to 50% by 2011). they purposefully seek rural and urban poor blacks to cultivate (and fund their entire education as well as providing other aggressive support. this is due in no small measure to the fact that the stellenbosch is housed on land that the blacks were ousted from).
good work is being done. it's just stunning to see the disparity. especially when ignorance lulled me into thinking Mandela's freedom liberated the blacks.
like Obama's election, we've still got serious work to do.
like Obama's election, we've still got serious work to do.
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