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Ask yourself these questions. As the child of a doctor, should you be ashamed that you may have had greater opportunities than the child of a maid? Why do you have greater opportunity? Was it due to the hard work of your doctor father (or mother)? .
As a child of a doctor I know better than to look at the child of a maid and call him lazy because he has had a harder time in life than I had. If he achieves the success that I have, he had to work harder to get it, and maybe have some level of luck besides.
You do know that children from middle class homes enjoy numerous advantages in developing their cognitive skills, which then gives them a head start once they enter the educational system. Given that access to education is critical, both to the middle class and to the poor if they are going to improve (or in the case of the middle class maintain) their position in life, clearly the child from a household of middle class parents starts life with advantages, and enjoys middle class privilege.
In addition this child has the psychological advantage of being an "insider" and not like the kid from the poor family who is trying to get inside, who fears that his attempts will be rejected, and who will have to develop a whole raft of social skills to be accepted.
Clearly I enjoyed middle class privilege, and should be honest enough to admit it. When some one from a less advantaged background points that out I will NEVER deny that fact. It is the TRUTH. Nothing to be ashamed of, but just the facts of life.
Nor do I allow it to make me feel superior to people who have aspirations in life, and who attempt achieve their goals, but who encounter more barriers doing so than I did.
So I am NOT going to write nonsense implying that we start at the same position in life, and that I deserve some medal if I do better in life than he did.
What my father and mother did to succeed in life is due to THEIR efforts. Yes THEIR efforts provided advantages for me, as indeed did the efforts of their parents. For me to feel superior based on THEIR efforts is quite silly, don't you think?
So let us look at South Africa. By the time apartheid ended I would have been in my early 30s, so would have lost many opportunities for no reason aside from being black. My parents and grand parents would most likely have been dirt poor and emotionally stressed from the extreme psychological abuse that they would have endured under that hideous system.
Even the child of a POOR white South African would have started life with more advantages. So why should their child look down their nose at my child, who would have had much less exposure to opportunity because I would have been less able to expose him to it, or provide with the critical tools that he would need to move forward?
Now you do not want an honest discussion on this topic, and maybe cannot deal with the fact that it was an unfair system of APARTHEID which gave advantages to white South Africans over their fellow black citizens. So you try to salve your guilt by trying to hide that FACT!
Unless and until you begin the debate by admitting that apartheid gave advantages at many levels to whites, and that the legacy of that advantage exists even today then there is really nothing to talk about.
Now what is up to debate will be discussions as to the future and how South Africa will deal with the legacy of its horrendous past. But to pretend as if all is well and we can erase the past and forget its legacy on the tools that people have to improve their lives is DISHONEST!
And learn to use the quote function properly. You can't just snip out everything except a few words. You remove the context completely.
My point exactly...you were the first to inject those words into the conversation. Such words make zero sense within the "context" of any construct of Africans or Africa. Perhaps you should experience the continent more by travel, though i doubt those who use or attempt to justify such words care to.
"Reverse racism", another foolish jargon...along with the word "race" created out of thin air to cause separation. Humans are a race. When a person of color is being "racist" it's most definitely a singular act. Whereas the inverse, is deeply institutionalized and anchored by white supremacy. Quite the disparity.
My original comment wasn't necessarily directed at you, but generalized.
Saw a movie called I, Afrikaner today. One of the whites, having just killed a jackal to protect his small livestock, remarked that this animal is the only creature in Africa more trouble some than the black. These comments were made within the last year or two.
So those who wish to pretend as if any thing to do with apartheid isn't relevant can continue to peddle that lie. As with the USA, so with South Africa, these societies are still trying to come to terms with the legacy of being two of the most bigoted Western societies. With all the complexities involved. In both instances there are attempts to "blame the victim" or to pretend as if history can be ignored, and even to pretend as if it is now the white male who is the most victimized. And yes in both there are blacks who will exploit this legacy for their own greed and lust for power.
Saw a movie called I, Afrikaner today. One of the whites, having just killed a jackal to protect his small livestock, remarked that this animal is the only creature in Africa more trouble some than the black. These comments were made within the last year or two.
So those who wish to pretend as if any thing to do with apartheid isn't relevant can continue to peddle that lie. As with the USA, so with South Africa, these societies are still trying to come to terms with the legacy of being two of the most bigoted Western societies. With all the complexities involved. In both instances there are attempts to "blame the victim" or to pretend as if history can be ignored, and even to pretend as if it is now the white male who is the most victimized. And yes in both there are blacks who will exploit this legacy for their own greed and lust for power.
According to the synopsis, it was filmed over 9 years and depicts how 4 generations deal with change in post Apartheid. No one is arguing that the older generations aren't possibly holding onto their own internal struggles with everything, cause there will be the few who will but don't try and project the comment of 1 person onto the rest of the population.
The thread is about the average folk in South Africa, this kind of comment is certainly not the average.
I find it interesting from a psychological point of view how some whites react in a similar fashion when they lose power
or think they lose power in two countries which are originally white settler societies...The United States and South Africa
and in both cases blacks have been a part of those countries before their inception...
Recently, I met an older gentleman who is very nice,sociable...I assumed he was British by his accent, I later found out he was from South Africa..had a pen friend once from South Africa...I have met 3 South Africans so far, 2 white and 1 black and
as an Afro-American I had no problem with them...just my experience..
According to the synopsis, it was filmed over 9 years and depicts how 4 generations deal with change in post Apartheid. No one is arguing that the older generations aren't possibly holding onto their own internal struggles with everything, cause there will be the few who will but don't try and project the comment of 1 person onto the rest of the population.
The thread is about the average folk in South Africa, this kind of comment is certainly not the average.
This film was made in 2013, basically just last year. So it is based on CONTEMPORARY South Africa. It was filmed OVER a 9 year period, not made 9 years ago. There was NO evolution of racial attitudes during this period. Attitudes were set. None of the whites, except for this one girl, felt comfortable around blacks and indeed the behavior of this girl towards blacks, was viewed as odd.
The film maker based her documentary on her family, and wanted to show the complexity of racial attitudes among Afrikaners.
It also wasn't one person. All in his company laughed. These were men in their 40s, so not old men.Indeed men whose adult life would have been in the post apartheid era. A person doesn't make bigoted statements to this extent unless socially sanctioned within the circles within which he mixes. So these attitudes aren't as rare as you would have us believe.
In addition the film could well have been made in the Netherlands. Not in a nation with a 70% black population. Aside from interactions with the black workers there was no cross racial interface.
The ONLY person who mixed with blacks and who had black friends with this girl, who was born in 1997. She was quite disturbed about how the whites in her family viewed blacks.
Indeed even at her high school there was no interaction between black and white kids outside of the class room. We are talking about a generation who know NOTHING about apartheid and were not directly impacted by it!
The film maker ( who spoke) describes POCKETS of racial integration in SA and that such interaction has slowed down in recent years. I can well imagine that most of this will be among the highly educated post apartheid urban generation. The blacks who are benefitting from the New South Africa, and the whites who realize that it does themselves no good to ignore what this New South Africa represents.
To what degree are these attitudes that of your average South African? If your average South African didn't have issues surrounding race I doubt that this film would have been made, as the topic would be a non issue.
Indeed the film maker pointed out that the South African blacks who saw the movie praised it for bringing out the elephant in the room, and that is the siege mentality of many white South Africans, and not just the older ones who cannot adjust.
Like it or not apparently South Africa has yet to meet a point where there is comfortable interaction and dialogue, and a coming to terms with the legacy of apartheid and what that means for today's South Africa. It seems more like a nation where peoples from different races AND different social classes look at each other with a high degree of wariness and distrust.
.
I find it interesting from a psychological point of view how some whites react in a similar fashion when they lose power
or think they lose power in two countries which are originally white settler societies...The United States and South Africa
and in both cases blacks have been a part of those countries before their inception...
When humans lose power they react like this. Not just whites.
I remember an Indian in the UK who was very involved in the anti racism struggle there in the 80s. this because he as a South Asian was on the receiving end of it.
I spoke to him about the situation of the Dalits in India, thinking that he would be sympathetic, as they face similar discrimination. His attitude changed and he spoke scathingly of them and declared that social order determines that they remain where they are. He had nothing positive to say about attempts in India to reduce bigotry shown towards Dalits.
Within an Indian context he had power, whereas in the UK he didn't.
I can well imagine in South Africa the most extreme bigotry will come from the lower middle class and poorer Afrikaners as we see in the USA from the "red necks". All they had to privilege themselves was race, and when discrimination towards others was no longer LEGALLY sanctioned, and when a middle class of non whites emerged, these groups feel strangely "wronged" and think the phenomenon to be unfair.
I hear a lot of this which comes from the low-end of the white population in the U.S. Recently,I was on the bus and a well-
dressed black woman was trying to read her e-book....Well this redneck looking white guy was talking very loud on his cell-phone....the woman complained to the driver if she has to pay $80 for a monthly pass she should be able to read in
peace and quiet...
Well, he then said he had the right to free speech and if she didn't like it,"You can take it up with YOUR President Obama"
So the President has something to do with this woman complaining on the bus? She then verbally went off on him and I thought they might get into a fist fight..until the driver threw the guy off.
So I guess in his mind, they are getting uppity now because they have a half-African President in the White House..
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