FutureChurch

I've always wondered why white South Africans, particularly Christians, didn't live more differently during Apartheid. I keep on hearing about "small things" that people did, and they seem...small.

Steve Biko continues from my last post:

"A game at which the liberals have become masters is that of deliberate evasiveness. The question often comes up "what can I do?". If you ask him to do something like stopping to use segregated facilities or dropping out of varsity to work at menial jobs like all blacks or defying and denouncing all provisions that make him privileged, you always get the answer - "but that's unrealistic!". While this may be true, it only serves to illustrate the fact that no matter what a white man does, the colour of his skin - his passport to privilege - will always put him miles ahead of the black man. Thus in the ultimate analysis no white person can escape being part of the oppresor camp."

Technorati Tags: Apartheid Array Christianity deconstruction Steve Biko Whiteness

Isn't it interesting how some people claim to be colour-blind and not see race? Isn't it interesting how those people are white people?

"I don't believe in racial and ethnic labels," many Whites argue. "I'm an American.

- Changing Multiculturalism, p217

Something else white people love: claiming to be “colourblind”. Hint: doesn’t make you seem less racist. Makes you seem unobservant.

-Seen on StuffWhitePeopleLike.com

"I have never had to confront my race. I’m just me. White, purple, black, polka dotted. What’s the difference? Can’t we all just be colour blind?"

- StuffWhitePeopleLike.com

"It's strange to come to this country and see that all of the waiters are black. I think the white people here have an unconscious expectation to be served by black people."

- A foreign student speaking in race workshop I was at last week at UCT

I came to South Africa not realising I wasn't white. After have been seen as second-rate for such a long time, in spite of me resisting it, I feel like I'm going to leave this country a worse person that before I came.

- A Sri-Lankan UCT student, at the same race workshop. She is in her early 20's, and has never experienced Apartheid South Africa. What she has experienced is the Rainbow Nation.

"That's weird. Those street cleaners are white. Never seen that before."

- Me, to myself, when I first visited England (2000)

Technorati Tags: Apartheid Array South Africa Whiteness