Friday, November 25, 2011

Love Is In The House-TobyMac

I keep saying that I will talk about race, apartheid, and all that difficult stuff, but I put it off time and time again. I think part of it is that everything is so very complex, and it is hard to explain. Also, I still feel like I don’t have a complete understanding of everything, and I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. But, it is a huge part of SA history and I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you anything. So, I am not even going to try to give you an overview of things, but will instead just tell you some of the things that I have learned, noticed or experienced since coming here. If you don’t know what Apartheid is, go read a book (I would recommend A Rainbow in the Night, I found it helpful for me before I came). Also, if I have gotten any of this wrong, please forgive me and don’t be offended. Just remember that I really love SA, and that it is a very complicated place.

Deracialization seem to be the catchphrase and the goal of everything. We are ‘de-racializing the schools’, ‘deracializing the workplace’, ‘deracializing the country’ (actually, if you want to be accurate, you should probably replace the “z” with an “s”). However, Grahamstown, like most places, is not really deracialized. There are no laws prohibiting black people from moving into a white area, and the rise of black middle class has led to some semblance of mixing. However, in reality, the town is still surrounded by townships (the name used to describe shantytowns and impromptu communities that grew up around “white only” towns during apartheid), which are often still referred to by their old names and do not appear on most of the maps of Grahamstown I can find. The main divide is caused by economic disparities… the conditions in the townships are very different compared to Grahamstown proper, and people in the townships largely couldn’t afford to move to white areas if they wanted to (When I went to some of the townships during my orientation, my guide, who lives there himself, said that many people who could afford to move to white neighborhoods didn’t want to anyway, because their friends and family lived here, and the atmosphere in white neighborhoods felt restrictive compared to the communal nature of the townships). However, the thing that I wanted to point out was that everything is still described as ‘the white neighborhoods,’ ‘the black township,’ ‘the coloured area,’ ‘the Indian area,’ etc. The fact that these places exist is a remnant of apartheid law, but the fact that they are still described this way is a remnant of apartheid ideology.

Not that people are outwardly racist (for the most part). Its just that the country was harshly segregated less than 20 years ago, and it takes awhile for people’s minds to let go of the things they were taught. This doesn’t show explicitly, but rather in subtle ways that I think are less-than-conscious practices. Race is just there, and it has been used to differentiate between people for a long time. I hate to get all psychology on you, but the best way I contextualize is using research that was done on race divisions in the workplace (in the US). Basically, researchers described two different methodologies that people use when interacting among different races. The first is the “colorblind” approach, which is basically viewing everyone as the same and seeing no difference between people of different races. The second methodology was termed “celebrating diversity,” which acknowledges that there are differences between people, but assumes that people from other races have something valuable to add to the community. It is my opinion that when people say that they are colorblind, it is because they have been told that everyone is equal and that it is wrong to divide people based on race. However, this results in trying to suppress or ignore any differences, because they feel that to acknowledge them would somehow be impolite or even racist. This in turn creates some level of tension and awkwardness, which I think exists to some degree in the US and even more here. People are extremely aware that they are white and the person next to them is black, but they aren’t supposed to be noticing this, so they can’t address whatever separates them from the other person (because those things aren’t supposed to exist, either!). Does that make sense at all? For example, I am fairly ignorant about the concept of a weave (although I know a lot more now than I did before I came… which just goes to show how much I didn’t know before), but I would feel totally rude if I said to one of my friends, “please tell me all about your weave because I am white and I have never had one and I just really don’t understand all of the details.” Okay, perhaps that was not the best example, but I hope that you can possibly relate to that awkward feeling I am describing.

I am not saying that this applies to everyone, but I do sense that awkwardness often here. People tend to form friend groups according to color, and I don’t think it is on purpose, but it is still pretty stark. All of the churches I went to were either white or black with a handful of people mixing it up (this wasn’t quite so pronounced at Fronteirs, but was still true). Even the classes were surprisingly separated… in a university where the majority of students were black, there was only one girl in the entire third year zoology class, which was definitely not the case in my history class. In our dinning hall, it was clear that friend groups were divided along racial line for the most part. And I am totally not immune to this. I realized about midway through the semester that most of my friend here are white, and if you asked me how that happened, I really have no idea. I am not really proud of it, but at the same time I love the friends that I met here, so I don’t regret the friendships I made. It’s just something that happened along the way, and I honestly don’t know what to make of it. But it is a part of my time here, so I think it bears mentioning to you.

What does it mean to be racist? Is it thinking less of people whose skin is a different color than yours? Is it thinking that people whose skin color is different than yours are different than you? Is it noticing that someone’s skin color is different from yours at all? The lines blur, and it is hard to tell the difference when it is a matter of the heart. But matters of the heart have a sneaky way of creeping into your actions without you noticing, so it is important to think about these issues. Race relations are strained here sometimes, and they are strained at home as well. If we want to stop being politically correct and actually loving our brothers and sisters, it is something that we all have to address. A matter of the heart. 

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