On Turning 18

My daughter turned 18 two days ago. She is in her final year of school and the world is her oyster. Over the years she has put together quite an impressive CV. She has met queens and presidents, dug trenches in rural villages, been interviewed on television and the radio, and travelled to some of the most exotic places in the world. She is excited about registering to vote and getting her driver's licence. She has decisions to make about what and where she wants to study.  Someone asked me if I remember what it was like when I turned 18. It was nothing like that.

At 18 I had completed school (in those days we started school a year earlier) and was embarking on a very different voyage. In the apartheid days it was no easy feat being accepted to the mainly "white" University of Cape Town and I needed to acquire a permit. 

Entering university was such a cultural onslaught - I might as well have been in a different country. The campus was huge - I think my school could have fitted into the Jagger Hall. There were lecture halls and sports centres,  different campuses, buses shuttling back and forth, and more "white" people than I had ever seen in my life. And I was able to sit next to them in class, on the bus and in the library.  There were students from all over the country and beyond its borders. Read more about that experience by clicking on this link -  http://saaray-livinginsa.blogspot.com/2010/09/of-black-alumni-and-other-apartheid.html.

I caught buses and trains to campus, wrote out assignments (which I researched in the library in BOOKS!) by hand (or typed them on my dad's typewriter; and no, it was not electric). I could not register to vote. My identity book classified me by race. Overseas travel was some far off fantasy (in fact, I was almost thirty before I went overseas for the first time).

But how exciting to have lived in an era where there have been so many changes. How fortunate to be able to see our children have opportunities and privileges we only dreamt of. And how blessed to have children who use those opportunities and privileges to make a difference. 

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.