things to wrestle with : Brett Fish

Getting Real with some White South Africans

This rollercoaster looks familiar. i had just posted a link to an article titled Get Real White South Africa, written by Milisuthando Bongela on the Times Lives site. It contained this challenging and eye-opening statement: Only white people can end white supremacy from within their communities - from their churches, schools, dinner tables, clamber clubs, sports clubs, boardrooms, banting restaurants, neighbourhood-watch WhatsApp groups, advertising agency brainstorms, rebranded Broederbond organisations, newsrooms, coffee roasteries, and homes. Which [...]

By brettfish|2015-07-23T09:10:06+02:00July 23rd, 2015|challenging thorts, change the world, pain and Hope, things to wrestle with, thorts of other people|4 Comments

Of Bacon and Vegetarians and looking after our little planet…

i saw this picture of a giant stack of bacon on Facebook the other day: And fortunately someone hadn't yet shared this particular piece on my wall [although give it time] but it still made me a little angry. It had the message "Tag someone you know who would eat this" and fortunately no one had yet, because you know what? i would not eat that much bacon. Gasp! Shock! Horror! WHAT? Surely you jest? [...]

By brettfish|2015-07-21T09:46:07+02:00July 21st, 2015|activities, challenging thorts, change the world, things to wrestle with|6 Comments

Micropoem: Triple threat

i woke up this morning to the Twitterer hashtag #IfIDieInCustody sparked by yet another police vs person of colour incident in Americaland. i have already blogged about it here, but the semi-poet in me kept screaming words and phrases and so eventually i sat down and came up with three different flavoured micropoems, for three different groups of people: = = = = = = = white america to those of you who have made [...]

By brettfish|2015-07-17T11:48:36+02:00July 17th, 2015|inspire-ations, pain and Hope, poems and other creativity, things to wrestle with, tricky things|1 Comment

If i die in police custody…

If i was a pastor in Americaland this coming Sunday, my sermon would definitely contain the words 'If i die in police custody' which is a trending hashtag on The Twitterer right now. TAKE A MOMENT WITH THAT. #IfIDieInPoliceCustody Last Friday, a black woman was returning home from a job interview in Waller County, Texas, when she was stopped by police after failing to properly signal a lane change. Two days later, she was dead [...]

By brettfish|2015-07-17T08:54:16+02:00July 17th, 2015|challenging thorts, pain and Hope, things to wrestle with, thorts of other people, world news|1 Comment

How to be One bit Less Racist: part ‘The They’

i have decided to resume the series on 'How to be One bit Less Racist' with this piece by my friend, Andy Vaughn. The interruption and focus on some of the bigger questions i though was completely important and necessary, but i also still see these seemingly tinier aspects as crucial to us starting to retrain our minds and thoughts and become less racist in the day to day interactions we have with people, while keeping in [...]

By brettfish|2015-07-13T13:23:35+02:00July 13th, 2015|change the world, things to wrestle with, thorts of other people|2 Comments

How to be One bit Less Racist: We interrupt this series to take a bit of a step back…

i received two sets of comments after the last post in this series and felt that both were worth sharing. The first was from Sabrina and was really helpful in reminding me that racism can be localised. One strong example we came against when we were in the States is that the term 'coloured' there when referring to a person of colour, is very strongly racist, whereas in South Africa, for the most part, it [...]

By brettfish|2015-07-09T15:49:50+02:00July 9th, 2015|challenging thorts, things to wrestle with, thorts of other people|10 Comments

I Write What I Like – Steve Biko: Part human face

Another passage from the chapter titled 'Some African Cultural Concepts': 'Yet it is difficult to kill the African heritage. There remains, in spite of the superficial cultural similarities between the detribalised and the Westerner, a number of cultural characteristics that mark out the detribalised as an African. I am not here making a case for separation on the basis of cultural differences. I am sufficiently proud to believe that under a normal situation, Africans can [...]

By brettfish|2019-09-12T16:38:44+02:00July 9th, 2015|things to wrestle with, thorts of other people, what i am reading|2 Comments

How to be One bit Less Racist: part Calling someone ‘boy’ or ‘girl’

One of the areas of racist behaviour that grates me the most is when a white person refers to the person working in their garden or looking after the upkeep of their house or perhaps watching their children as 'boy' or 'girl'. Especially when the person they are referring to is often older then them, but i think it should be a standard rule that once someone hits what 20? 18? they are no longer [...]

By brettfish|2015-07-08T12:45:21+02:00July 8th, 2015|change the world, pain and Hope, things to wrestle with|10 Comments

I Write What I Like – Steve Biko: Part community over individualism

i am still slowly making my way through Steve Biko's 'I write what I like' and here is a passage that i marked a while ago from Chapter 8: Some African Cultural Concepts: One of the most fundamental aspects of our culture is the importance we attach to Man [by which i think he is referring to people as opposed to individual - brett] . Ours has always been a Man-centered society. Westerners have on [...]

By brettfish|2019-01-28T12:27:59+02:00July 8th, 2015|things to wrestle with, thorts of other people, what i am reading|2 Comments

How to be One bit Less Racist: Intro

Race is one of the big issues we are dealing with in South Africa [and in Americaland, and most probably in pretty much every other country in the world, right?] and there is still a lot of work to be done. The idea of this series came from my understanding that most of us have some kind of racism or prejudice towards other people, particularly those of other cultures or race - some are quite overt [...]

By brettfish|2015-07-05T23:09:54+02:00July 5th, 2015|challenging thorts, change the world, pain and Hope, things to wrestle with|8 Comments