Ok, weird realization: I actually like having work to do at work. Who would have thought? Today was soooooooo boooooooring in the office. I would much rather be scrambling to finish an assignment then peddling around on my computer for 6/7 hours of my work day. I think you can guess that’s what happened today yes? After I finished up the women’s report for Phillip, I emailed him the draft and told him that I’d take another assignment. No response all day. He hasn’t been in the office lately so the only form of communication I have with him is via email, so if I don’t have that, I’m stuck. That happened today. Of course there are some perks to not having an assignment. I can blog, read ESPN and CNN, find out what’s going on around the world, facebook stalk some people, skype whoever is online. But really though, I have a lot of trouble keeping myself entertained on a computer for extensive periods of time. Also, if anyone would like to email me some new songs, I’m dying on my itunes right now and youtube is blocked at work. Lame South Africa for having the most expensive internet on the planet. The only semi-interesting thing that happened to me today was getting hit on by a little man who was at least two feet shorter than me.
After the gym today, we headed back to the B&B for an in-house dinner and speaker. The speaker, whose name is Dr. Mohammed Something-or-Another teaches at the University of Cape Town. I hated him. I actually loathed every phrase that came out of the man’s mouth. He’s this little Indian guy, except he doesn’t acknowledge that about himself at all. I don’t even know if I can relay my feelings about him with going on a blogging rampage, but the man was completely regressive in his thoughts and actions regarding racial views. Note: this is clearly my opinion, but remember I did say in my first entry that I was not going to be poltically correct at times. Case in point.
I should explain why I disliked this man so much. Let me begin by saying that I most definitely gave him a chance. I was excited to hear about the Coloured experience in South Africa because I feel like that is a side that gets left out in a lot of history lessons. I was interested to see how the Coloured community of South Africa had progressed post-apartheid. Yes, for once, I was actively interested in a speaker. I sat across from him at the dinner table before the formal discussion began. He, Naomi, Anthony and I were having a discussion the differences in the way that people are classified around the world. Seems to be a pretty common conversation topic during this trip which I’m frankly almost- only almost-tired of focusing on. At first the man was still on my good side, having a legitimate discussion about the word Coloured vs. Black, whatever whatever. Oh, also, he has these horrible shifty eyes and doesn’t make eye-contact with you whether it’s at a dinnertime conversation or during the group discussion. But moving on to what he said to heat me up for the remainder of the evening...
Our dicussion came around to the topic of how Americans from immigrant families choose their identities in the US. Well golly gee, I wonder who would be able to contribute to that discussion from firsthand experience. Oh, I don’t know, maybe me? Duh. I said my polite piece concerning my opinion that one’s identity changes according to their surroundings and the context in which that person find’s themselves. Like I said, my polite piece. This man, who very clearly said that his parents were Indian immigrants who “grew up on rice patties” (his quote), somehow felt that he could deny his culture and religion by instead looking at the world as containing humanity. While that sounds like a nice theory being written out here, the way man said it was so irrational and almost mocking that I wanted to smack him over the head. He was clearly ashamed of his ancestry, and stated that he didn’t hold any value to neither his Indian nor Muslim background. Bull****. P.s. this has nothing to do with him being Muslim because I think some people in the group definitely thought that was what was annoying me about him. No, this had much more to do with the fact that this bastard (pardon the language, but again not PC here). Then I got rude. I basically told him that I thought his argument was completely bogus because I did not think that it was in any way appropriate for someone of a different background to choose to disassociate themselves from that in order to stop racism because all that was doing was encouraging that person (or society) to maintain there racist standards seeing as how those who were being undermined were conforming to their “humanity.” Bull****. I told him that I thought his approach was doing nothing more than reinforcing racism and that the more active approach should be to instead show those who are undermining you that despite your differences from them and despite those characteristics that they consider to make you worse than them, you should show them that you are their equivalent. Or just by virtue of the fact that they let their racism define their lifestyles, that oyu are their superior. End of story. Do not try to ever argue with me on this point because I will not bend. I understand the concept of “humanity” being all the same. Trust me, I’m a BAA major. I know that there is more genetic variation within a “race” than between “races,” that humans have all evolved from the same bipedal hominid, that race has no genetic basis and is defined differently according to context, I know all that. But I also FULLY recognize that there are differences among different groups of people, and these differences have been exploited so that one group considers themselves better than others, often at that “lower group’s” detriment. To make an argument by disassociating yourself from your differences in a society that has condemned you for them is nothing but regressive in my eyes.
Anyway, the group discussion went on for way too long and all the professor did was manage to disgust me more than educate me. At the end of his lecture, we were given the opportunity to ask questions. I asked him the following: “Not as an academic, not as an intellectual, not as a scholar, but as a Coloured person, what strides do you think that Coloured population has taken since apartheid, and what do you hope to still see in your lifetime?” I wanted him to answer that he didn’t consider himself Coloured and that he didn’t see the Coloured population as having made any progression. And he did. I wanted the entire group to hear him say, despite the fact that he had been telling us for his ENTIRE lecture that everyone who wasn’t White or African Black had been seen as Coloured, that he himself as the son of Indian immigrants parents was not Coloured. Bull****. I got what I wanted out of him, and I can’t wait to have a group discussion about it.
After our sit-in with Dr. Crackhead, a couple of us went to Rafiki’s (a restaurant close to our B&B) to watch the soccer game before going out for a little bit in the evening. Highlight: Egypt wonnnnnn! Yaaaaaay! We went to Dubliner’s afterwards for afterwards where I had my yummy hot chocolate again. I was feeling calm and content by the end of the evening, but the thought of that man still makes me want to smack him. Figurately speaking, of course.
Ukuthula,
Lynn
No comments:
Post a Comment