Wednesday, May 23, 2012

remember to call at my grave

"Being black is not a matter of skin pigmentation. Being black is a reflection of a mental attitude." Steve Biko
A lot of things changed for me when I moved here. Two things, however, stood out more than anything else: how rooted in their culture the black people here are, and how sensitive the issue of race is. 

The latter I totally didn't understand. I looked around and saw people in their 20's, people who don't have the same story Mandela has, or even Raymond Suttner, decry apartheid and how the white person ruined their lives, and I belittled in my mind these people, because from where I stood, they were just using past injustices as an excuse to be mediocre. They weren't old enough to see the worst of what apartheid did. By 1990 they were maybe 3 or 4. They shouldn't know about apartheid. Yes it happened, but it happened a hundred years ago and it happened to different people. I heard black people complain about how the ANC (the "black" party) was no longer doing anything for them, but come elections, they still automatically vote ANC. And I stupidly thought, if you know the DA (a "white" party) would do do a better job, why not vote them in? This interracial animosity I sensed everywhere was totally unfounded, I thought.

I've seen enough now to know the error of my ways. How naive I was. I couldn't possibly have been wrong on more levels.

As I've looked at the history, through a combination of stories from the older ones amongst us, visits to the Apartheid Museum, and countless documentaries on TV, I've started to find that the fundamental mistake I made was to judge a situation I had no insight into, and to judge it through my very narrow scope. I have started to realise that there isn't a limit to how much damage mentally oppression can cause someone. When you grow up and everyone around you tells you you won't amount to much, that you'll never be any better than you currently are, that you can't rise above a certain level, that you're systemically inferior and not worthy of a good life, I guess you believe it. Those limitations become the fabric of your thought. Your glass ceiling becomes a granite wall. You stop dreaming. There's not many things in the world more damaging than seeing your life stolen from under you and being completely powerless to do anything about it. 

One of the pictures I saw at the Apartheid Museum that killed me was of a train station, with I think a train waiting, and there was a whole bunch of black people standing on the one side crowding, obviously looking for transport, but because the station was marked "FOR WHITES ONLY" there was nothing they could do but stand out in the cold. And the caption read something like, despite the fact that there weren't any fences or police presence enforcing segregation at the station, those black people could not even conceive of crossing over to go into the train waiting. That's how strongly imbued into their minds the apartheid system was. The fences were now in the minds of the black people, there didn't need to be any physical ones.

And this is the thing that made me least qualified to judge - I've never had that feeling of being trapped within my own mind. Being shackled by invisible chains. The kind you can't break not because you really can't, but because you don't know that you can. I grew up believing I could have it all. I grew up with that sense of entitlement. My parents made sure they were there every step of the way, supporting me, making me feel like I was superman. To some measure I've seen people's hard work pay off for them. I've even seen a determined people change their government just because they came together. The black people of South Africa, they didn't have that for a very long time. Steve Biko said the most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.

When I was growing up, I read about Rosa Parks refusing to stand up for a white person on a bus. And to me that was literally all she did. It sounded simple enough. I didn't get what all the hoo-hah was about. But I realise now that to the people that know, there aren't enough words to describe the symbolism, the empowerment, that came from such a basic act. And from a natural act like Nelson Mandela unconditionally forgiving his former oppressors after 27 years in jail. I am beginning to understand now why he is such a legend. Not just because he forgave, but because of WHO he forgave. There's a phrase that plays in a loop at the Apartheid Museum, a recording from the conclusion of the Rivonia Trial, at which Mandela and his cohorts were to be found guilty of treason and possibly sentenced to death. I have not been able to get this line out of my mind since I heard it.
I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for, and to see realised. But my Lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
And so I don't judge anymore. I don't judge because I cannot possibly understand. I don't judge because I've never been through what the people in SA went through. On the contrary, I marvel sometimes at how grounded it's made them. At how fiercely strong they've grown to be in the face of such adversity. At how being black has to them become something much more than just the skin color it is to me. If I can learn that from the, I will leave here having become a much better person than I came in.

Sarah Britten is a modern-day writer of note, and she wrote a story recently that covers just this subject. She said, "...we seem incapable of resolving conflict without resorting to racist generalisations. Somehow, if we see bad behaviour, we immediately attribute it to race rather than a failure of character; every time somebody behaves like a total doos [dumbass], the entire premise of post-apartheid South Africa goes on trial..." The first time I read it I agreed completely. I felt as though she had read my mind. But when I think about it, I'm not so sure anymore. Maybe race keeps coming up, and will continue to keep coming up, because it's just that big a deal. Maybe it keeps coming up because those wounds just run that deep.

END