Two short pieces on racism that you might find very helpful: THREE LEVELS OF RACISM My friend Matt Talley, who i met in Americaland but who is currently living and working with his family in Spain, sent me this from a class he is doing. It's super simple but I don't think I had heard the three levels labeled this way before. Of course I've heard the labels of personal racism and institutional/structural racism. But [...]
i remember it like it was just last night. But mostly because it WAS just last night. This is the status i wrote minutes after it happened: Holy craps. After months of #NotOnOurWatch preaching I had my first real experience of it - old motorcycle guy in a car park going off at a car guard and I marched in and let him have it. So much adrenalin. Body shaking. I had the advantage of [...]
i attended a race panel last night called Real Talk where we got to hear stories from a black, coloured and white person [tbV]. It was a really great time and hopefully more churches and organisations will start hosting these moments of just getting to hear each other and catch glimpses into journeys that have been quite different from ours. One of the stories that Mbulelo shared was about the time he was on a plane [...]
This is a follow on from yesterday's All Lives Smatter post so if you haven't read that yet, start over there... Some key thoughts from part I: # It would have taken an absolute miracle for someone to grow up in apartheid South Africa and be completely not affected or indoctrinated by racism in some shape or form, hence my resonance with other white people who refer to themselves as Recovering Racist - not because [...]
This has been on my mind for a while and feels like a very delicate subject to broach, although a necessary one. For the last two to five years i have been on a personal journey of understanding the causes and effects of apartheid a lot more, as well as the negative consequences that continue to effect a lot of people. Let me put this up front: i have a long way to go... but [...]
All lives matter? True. i thought we had gotten to a point where we didn't need to have this conversation again. But after explaining it on two or three different conversations threads this week i figured i would give it another go - some people are still catching on to this one. And i get it - it is quite subtle and nuanced and until you get it, you don't get it... so we need [...]
i am busy reading Eusebius McKaiser's "Run Racist Run!" It has some great and helpful insights, but this piece on white people expecting people of colour to help us not be racist i found really helpful in terms of putting words to something i've started to understand for a while. Also as a helpful response to those people who have tried to understand things and get involved in the race conversation only to receive push back [...]
Have you heard about the #NotOnOurWatch movement of interrupting racism? i have really enjoyed having some back and forth conversations with my friend Trevor [whose work you can see on his Swart Donkey blog] and this one we had in the last few weeks, that has now been converted to a blog post, was one of my favourite... just in terms of getting a conversation started and hopefully there is some food for thought in [...]
i really loved this post i read from a friend of mine on Facebook today: My friend just got kicked out a crime watch Whatsapp group in Morningside, Sandton for posting "Just spotted a white male walking up my street! Be careful everyone!" Well, loved and hated, because it sadly just proved something i have heard on many occasions - that a lot of Neighbourhood Watch Whatsapp groups are hives for both subtle and quite [...]
What does it mean to Interrupt Whiteness? Well, in a world where Whiteness has been raised as a more-than better-than higher-than standard of beauty/worth/intelligence/rightness and so much more, this is clearly something we need to figure out, if we in fact do believe that all races are created equal - not the same, but equal. Colourblindness is not a healthy option because on the one hand it refuses to acknowledge that many people have been [...]
