My lovely wife Val was of course the hostess for Friday's dinner and deep dive into Race, Boundary and Location conversation that i wrote about over here, and she shares some of her thoughts from the evening:
The idea is simple: gather good people around good food and good discussion and see what happens. So we did. We turned off technology and tuned in to people. It was messy and it was chaotic, it was painful and it was personal and it was powerful. It was raw and it was redemptive. Some of us ate spaghetti with a spoon cos we ran out of cutlery. We sat on the floor and on stools and really close to each other – three people thigh to thigh on a chair made for two. We talked and told stories, argued and challenged, wrestled and sat in silence – the good kind and the uncomfortable kind. We left with heads and hearts aching, but full.
Here’s some of what I learnt:
1. White privilege is less about access to “stuff” and more about access to choices or, in Sen’s theorizing, capabilities – the real opportunities of being and doing available to attain well-being. Here’s an example: consider a priest who is fasting and a man in a famine-stricken country who is starving. The key element in determining a person’s well-being here is not whether both are experiencing hunger, but whether the person has access to food and is choosing not to eat. The functioning is starving but the capability to obtain an adequate amount of food is the key element in evaluating well-being between these two individuals. Having a lifestyle is not the same as choosing it; well-being depends on how that lifestyle came to be.
Here’s another example. Consider a bike as a commodity which enables the functioning of mobility. Personal, social and environmental conversion factors impact an individual’s ability to convert the commodity (the bike) into functioning (getting from A to B). If a person is physically disabled, never learnt to ride a bike, if women are not allowed to ride bikes, or if there are no roads, then a person’s capacity to convert the potential of the bike into movement is limited. It’s not enough to give someone a bike if they don’t have the ability, the capacity, the enabling conditions to ride it in a way that moves them forward (or if they don’t have access to a pump, if they cannot take the bike out without being physically threatened by a mugging, etc)
2. In a post-industrial/post-agricultural world, we believe that we too are living in the Information Age, where the primary means of production is Knowledge and the accumulation of knowledge (i.e. education) is the means by which individuals access livelihood, opportunity, resource, jobs etc. I simply don’t believe this is true in South Africa. I wonder if perhaps we are actually in the Age of Connection. Knowledge might be power, but it’s less about what you know and more about who you know. The primary means of production might be Social Capital – the contacts and connections which enable us to network, navigate and negotiate the economic landscape. Perhaps education is the capability, but the functioning is all about social capital – it’s the people we know, the professional contacts, the personal networks that enable us to actualize opportunity. White privilege is at its core all about social capital.
3. While I can sympathize with the pain and anger of black friends, I don’t think I can actually empathize. I can show compassion for, seek to understand, commiserate with, experience anger on behalf of but I can never really experience “from within another’s frame of reference”. As one of our guests so rightly pointed out “We do not and cannot experience EQUAL frustration. You had a choice.”
4. I need to shut up more. Perhaps one of our greatest failings as white people in South Africa is our inability to sit in silence. When we listen to the voices of our black brothers/sisters expressing pain, anger, frustration, or simply sharing their experience, we want to immediately question, clarify, push-back, argue, dissect, debate, wrestle, show the other side, point out the discrepancies or inconsistencies, locate within the “larger picture”, propose solutions, and find “action steps”. We don’t know how to sit – just SIT – with a rage that fills a room, sucks all the air from it, and leaves our friends shaking. We have ears but do not hear, and eyes but do not see.
5. Reconciliation is not the path towards Justice but rather Justice is the path towards Reconciliation. Until and unless Justice has been enacted we can not experience right relationship. (Thanks, Nkosi!)
[To read more reflections from the other guests, click here]
[For more from tbV, like this piece explaining her tattoo, click here]
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[…] Take in my wife, Val’s thoughts about the evening… […]
I think your idea about the ‘Age of Connection’ is so true. Just look at the ‘old boys network’ that is so rife in Cape Town particularly… And your point no 4, about just ‘shutting up’, is so profound and beautifully expressed.
Andrea, so true. The “old boys network” is insidious and is part of what has woken me up to this idea of the Age of Connection. Last week I heard someone telling how a friend had recommended he apply to a prestigious all boys school in CT for his son. When he arrived and asked for application forms, the secretary told him there were no spots available. He called his friend, who was outraged. She was on the board of the school and knew there were spots. A quick call from her to the secretary and when he returned he was met with graciousness and smiles and application forms.
So beautifully expressed! Thanx. Val
To understand things better, one needs to look at the big picture:
1600: Xhosa and Zulu were killing one another. They themselves were settlers in this land.
1652: The first official European colony. There had been some Europeans living in Cape Town for a few decades already.
Fast Forward to about 1800 and Europeans and Xhosa/Zulu finally meet one another. The inequality was staggering. The differences in culture too great. Where does one begin?
1900: After centuries of trying, the cultures are still too different. The Europeans have not the resources to teach and look after the Xhosa/Zulu.
1950s: Its been a long time – still not integrating. Cows being slaughtered in the streets, not working. Maybe easier to have separation.
And that is how it happened.
I like black people and many of my friends are black. They are educated. We often talk about the past and how it all came to be. They agree that it is more CULTURAL than race based. There are white people who are low-class, as well as black people who are low-class. It is CLASS based and many times CULTURE is linked to a CLASS.
Please understand this in order to move forward.
i think it will end up being a socio-economic thing, Grant… after much time… but BECAUSE the socio-economic situations of the majority of people were strongly influenced by colour [race, apartheid, official government policy] it will remain looking like a colour thing, with growing exceptions, until the damage that was done intentionally and effectively by apartheid has been dealt with and overturned. We have a long way to go before we get there.
Before apartheid it was still not equal. Think about it a bit.
I’ve been thinking about it a lot. The aim is not to get things the same way they were before apartheid. The aim is to try and find a more balanced way of living where resources and opportunities are more equally shared and enjoyed.
So in 1900 we could have said the same thing yes/no? In 1900 we could have spread the resources more evenly possibly maybe… ? But opportunities were still not equal as many black people could not read or write. Many had only recently left villages and met white people. You see there was an uneven playing field at all times since 1600.
But jumping to the present. I suppose we can try if blame against whites were removed.
i am interested in why you would possibly want blame against whites removed? Whites did an offensive evil thing. If you and your family and extended family had been treated in the way they treated others, there is nothing that would possibly make you want to forget it and move on without at the very least dealing with it, making reconciliation and some form of restitution. It’s laughable to think otherwise. Really.
I find passing blame on young white people ridiculous. They may have benefitted from it, but didn’t do it. Are you saying whites should not have settled in Africa?
No Norman. No I am not. That’s a hard one to change anyways and besides I kinda like it here. What I am suggesting is we look around and go wow a whole bunch of white people, either directly or indirectly by not standing up against it, did some REALLY mean and hurtful stuff to a lot of black and other race people WHICH IS STILL affecting them today and so maybe it is our responsibility to use the benefits we have inherited from those times and systems to make things a little more balanced and fair for everyone.
You are right. It was unequal the minute whites and blacks met. That is the actual cause of all this inequality.
Yes, before apartheid it was ‘not equal’ because of the effects of colonialism (ideological, economic, social). Even before ‘whites and blacks met’ in SA, there were ideological biases against racial others amongst Europeans. So we’re not talking about getting back to some specific historical time, or reversing all colonial effects, which would be impossible, but to reach some kind of just and fair situation in which l South Africans can live dignified lives. Also, your historical schema is very oversimplified. The English did not just ‘get tired’ of educating the black people. In fact it was the discovery of minerals in South Africa which changed the relationship between the British and black South Africans, as there was suddenly a demand for lots of unskilled labour. Thus the benevolent but arguably patronising system of educating black people to make them ‘civilized’ was swapped for a focus on black labour, encouraged, I might add, by old Cecil John Rhodes and his cronies! So, as Brett says, there’s longstanding socio-economic inequality, and that should really be addressed. And as Val says, let’s listen more and develop our own theories less – I’m not content to just pessimistically declared that black and white South Africans can’t coexist, so let’s reach towards justice on the road to reconciliation…
What do you suggest? How do we make things equal? Surely it can’t work if we use Marxist policies in this country.
Survival of the fittest or smartest perhaps?
Norman, I think the first step, as Nkosi said via Val, is to admit that there is systematic inequality. And then we need to attempt to redress that equality in the small and big ways we can – I’m not a politician or economist, so I don’t know how to tackle the bigger economic issues, but we first need to acknowledge they exist. (Also Marxism and Socialism are not the same thing). But anyway, we can all do what we can where we are.