Happy New Year!

“You have been formed into tribes and nations so that you may know one another.” Quran

“In order to change things for the better, we need not just smart brains, but warm-heartedness and the values of love, compassion and forgiveness.” 
Dalai Lama

Over the last ten days we have been celebrating Christmas and the New Year with a variety of friends, both old and new. At times the revelling may have been too much, and I felt like I was not getting anything constructive done, but I remind myself that this is necessary time off to follow the rituals which draw the old year to  a close and ring in the new.

We have shared meals with people of all faiths and nationalities.  We have sat around a table where meals have lasted for hours while we discovered how similar we are to American, Nigerian, Italian, Kenyan, Russian, Dutch, Mauritian, Canadian, British and Iranian people, as well as fellow South Africans.

Despite the distances which separate us, the same issues touch us, concern us, mobilise us. I lap it all up; I feel like I am giving the finger to apartheid, racism and many other –isms. I firmly believe that we should be building bridges by getting to know each other. When we step outside of the familiar, outside our comfort zones, we make connections which enrich our lives and shrink the world. We cannot help connecting on a deeper level than we are accustomed to.

One of our passions as a family is travel - precisely because we are forced to step out of the familiar and over the artificial barriers which serve to keep us separate. I like to think that the energy with which we start the New Year is the one that we carry through and so, for 2013 I wish for more understanding, compassion, friendship and connections. Happy New Year.

Love across the Line

Last night my son and I rented the movie Our Family Wedding - a story about a cross-cultural wedding and the difficulties the bridal couple endure. I didn’t expect it to be a good movie (it wasn't) but was curious to see Ugly Betty’s America Ferreira and maybe have a bit of a laugh.

It was interesting to see the levels of racism portrayed in the movie. It's the same issues which have been highlighted in many movies like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and many others which portray love across the “line”. But this movie was quite explicit about the differences between the families, and even the workmen were making fun of the wedding between "Mexicanos" and "Negritos". It's one thing when the two families hold onto their traditions so fiercely that life becomes difficult for the bridal couple but quite another when a whole community is against the wedding. I know it's hardly the definitive word on the state of racism in the US but I believe that it's a close reflection of reality. It's certainly an issue here in South Africa.

I have written about racism in a previous blog but it is a topic I will probably keep coming back to as I battle to make sense of where we come from. I believe that we are not born racist. But we have this instinct to hold onto what is familiar and to protect our traditions to a level where we exclude others. It is such a limiting standpoint. We close ourselves off to new experiences and viewpoints that can only enrich our lives.

I had a very interesting chat to a woman at dinner the other night – she is Swiss-German, her husband Italian and they are living here temporarily. For a while French was their common language until they had children and then decided that they should speak Italian. The children went on to be educated in the UK. The daughter married a Brazilian who she met while working on a project in India. They now live in Australia. The son who was living in the US, not to be outdone by his sister, has a partner of Japanese and American origin and they live in Spain. I think I got that all right!

I find the lack of borders and artificial boundaries wonderful. The family is truly international. They have travelled and worked in different countries and been exposed to diverse people and cultures. They have rich experiences and I am sure that there has to be tolerance and respect for it to work. I am rubbing my hands in glee waiting to see how the grandchildren turn out!

Like Mark Twain said, travel is fatal to bigotry, prejudice and narrow-mindedness. But we don’t need to go far. We can travel to our neighbours and communities, read, watch movies and be open to different experiences. It comes down to respecting each other, embracing differences and understanding that our way is not the only way.

The Human Race

Name. Age. Race. Why am I  being asked to fill this in? "We invite you to..." or "we know it is a sensitive issue but..." or "we need this for transformation purposes..." - these are some of the excuses I am being given. I say excuses because I do not view them as valid reasons for having to fill in race classification. Why after 16 years of democracy are we still so hung up on race classification? Is this not what we fought against for so many years - for non-racialism, to not be classified and treated in a certain way, based on that classification? I can understand that we need some way of addressing the enormous disadvantage of our apartheid legacy, but there has to be a more acceptable way of doing this.

Apparently we have Count Arthur Gobineau, a French diplomat in the 19th century, to thank for all this racial demography. He started writing about the 3 races (yellow, black and white) and laid the foundation for all the Hitlers who came after him. Of course, science has now proved that there is no such thing as different race groups, that differences in skin colour are an adaptation to climate and environment, but that will probably take another century to filter out. 

Racism is a learned trait and the sooner we can change the environment that we live in, the sooner we can change peoples attitudes. As long as we are still being asked to classify ourselves along racial lines, we are entrenching those ideas and have little hope of finding that holy grail, a non-racist society.

This issue also needs tackling at  a university admissions level where students have to earn points for admission. Different points are assigned depending on the student's "race". Surely if the university receives an application they can take into account the social circumstances, schooling and other background details of the student and make decisions on that criteria? The student from the poor township who attended the less than prestigious school, who has succeeded beyond all expectations, deserves a place at university without having to classify him or herself as "black". What about the "black" student who had the fortune of going to a top government or even private school - do they deserve to get a place at university more than  their fellow "white", "indian" or "coloured" students?

I remember getting my new identity book post-1994 - the last 3 digits had to be changed because they previously classified us as being of a certain race. My husband and I come from different "population groups". We rejoice that our children do not have to suffer the indignity of apartheid. Yet we are often asked to fill in forms that classify them. Now do we have to decide on what race they should be? Shall I say that they are "coloured" since they must be mixed to have parents from different population groups? Or is my husband's previous classification more dominant than mine, or vice versa?

My kids will tell you that they are South African and that is all the classification they need. Or their classification is H for Human Race - and that is how it should be. The sooner we start changing the seemingly small things, the less likely they will continue to be firmly entrenched.