You can tell i’m getting over my pity party.

Well, maybe you didn’t know i was having a pity party but it’s my birthday and i’m trapped at home and my wife is out at work and the one thing i have to look forward to is an Improv show i am doing tonight which a total of seven people have booked for. And a number of those may or may not be related to us.

So yes, plans were afoot, but i’ve decided to shelve them.  Some Twitterer love in the form of birthday messages and memes, a whole lot of Facebook love but particularly a few specific messages which came in video and audio form and obviously Wayne’s winning sarcasmagorical one:

Wayne birthday meme

But that does kinda bring up a pet birthday peeve for me – if my thank you message to you is longer than your birthday message was to me [unless i get carried away] then you can probably do better. People who write words more than ‘Birthday’ and ‘Happy’ to me in a birthday greeting really make my day.

Anyways, back to the point. A lot of white people on social media regularly come up with the refrain, ‘Can’t we please stop making it about race?’ and i was thinking about that as i washed some dishes this morning and was thinking, maybe we’ve got it all wrong.

THE SPAGHETTI SYNDROME

Do you know what i really enjoy? Spaghetti. It’s one of my favourite things.

And you can eat it like this:

just spaghetti

You can also eat it like this:

spaghetti sauce

But do you know when it’s really really good?

spaghetti bolognaise

Holy crap, that looks really really good. Can someone please just pick me up right now and take me out for this spaghetti. Yum!

i think you get my point.

i expressed it as my birthday wish on the Facebook:

If i could ask for a birthday present from each one of you for 2017 [remember what we helped contribute to last year!] it would be a commitment to your friendships with people who don’t look like you.

If you’re in South Africa or Americaland [or let’s face it, pretty much most other countries] then particularly when it comes to race and culture, i would love it if you decided this year to grow those relationships – which would be reflected in the diversity that ends up around your dinner tables and who you watch movies or sporting events or attend music or cultural evenings with.

Growing in relationship and genuine friendship with people from other races is the best solution this country has. There is a lot more to be done, yes, but until we have people over our thresh-hold and at our table and until we sit at theirs, there is still so far to go.

Because that’s really it. And we need to learn to start celebrating people for who they are. Not wish that they were all rolled into one amalgous conglomeration of raceless beings.

i used to say that the moment we move from “This is my black friend” and “This is my coloured friend” to “This is my friend” then we will have arrived. But i’m not so sure now and this is a thought in process so be gentle and feel free to push back, but this is what i am thinking.

SCRIPTURE UNION

John Raible, on his checklist for Allies has this point:

I have joking relationships with individual people of color and with white people.

And i glossed over it yesterday when i read it, but when i was thinking about it at the sink today, it hit me. My friend Lusanda tried to prank me on my phone yesterday by pretending to be someone else, but the fact that her profile picture came through on Whatsapp gave her away. What followed was us being able to share a joke about race. With the key word being ‘share’. When you are comfortable enough with people of a different race and able to share a joke that is not at the expense of either party, but does have race as a focal point, then you have reached a great place.

When i think back to many camps and leadership training times with Scripture Union- stretching back to the late eighties and early nineties – as we prepared to lead on camps and holiday clubs, the thing that strikes me most is that we were always a mixed group of people. The number of coloured and black leaders who i looked up to from that time is not easy to count. And yet when we came together, as we recently did for the reunion that this cover pic is from, there was always a sense of meeting each other with our race group as part of what we brought. So in humour and food and style and more we each brought something different. And it was seen as good. And still is.

If we stop making anything about race, do we risk ending up with a bowl of just spaghetti? How boring and meaningless and tasteless would that be?

Or is the point that we need to stop making everything about race be a negative thing? Which requires us to start celebrating the different things that different race groups and people bring to the table.

i think there’s a lot more here, but that’s the start of my thought. And i would love to hear yours on it.

How do we get better at celebrating each person’s unique and collective individuality and groupality, realising that even within our families and groups and tribes we all end up bringing our own flavour and style.

Is all.