I am whiteness I will not condescend to your infuriating attempts to single me out as the single biggest cause of all your problems I am whiteness You had better believe that everything I have is due to hard work and persistence After all, the silver spoon in my mouth that I was born with had ugly flecks of bronze all over its handle Who in their right mind would be satisfied with that? [...]
What a week, South Africa. Of old flags and racist rants and countrywide demonstrations and polarised conversations and threats of rape and questions of intelligence and more. How do we move on from here? i wrote this post to try and invite people from both sides to consider the opinion of the other and step towards them, at least in understanding if not agreement. One aspect of last week that came up was conversations about [...]
So last night was the annual Outliers event and it was incredible - six speakers, six talks, ten minutes each, with ten slides accompanying them. With my wife tbV kicking it off and setting the foundation and then just amazing speaker after amazing speaker knocking it out of the park. The edited videos will be up in a while, but i think some of the talks are already available on their Facebook page over here. [...]
So the other day i posted my first Race with Me video of a series i plan to run on the topic of the white people question, "When can we stop saying sorry?" and "When have we done enough?". Which you can watch here if you missed it. Then yesterday i posted this question as a status on Facebook: Question for white people in South Africa... in 1994 after decades of apartheid, when the laws [...]
Entitlement is a huge problem in South Africa. i would suggest it is more a problem in the white communities because Apartheid was specifically created with that in mind - the elevation of whiteness and superiority. While white people need to wrestle with their entitlement in different areas, a lot of people of colour are still wrestling with the insecurity and inferiority complexes that systems of stamping them into the mud helped put in place. [...]
There have been a lot of words written this last week with regards to #FeesMustFall and it can be quite overwhelming to try and wade through them all. Sometimes pictures can speak louder than words, so here is a post with some of the better pictures i have found that help to put this past week and some of the related issues into some kind of perspective. Firstly the Ant vs Cricket scenario we witnessed [...]
i have read some REALLY helpful articles about privilege this week. My fear is that the appearance of the word 'privilege' with the assumption of it being specifically 'white privilege' on my blog immediately drives the very people i am wanting to hear and engage with this stuff away. But my hope, which is so much stronger than my fear, is that there are people like Bob [who a bunch of us had this long [...]
About two weeks ago i published an email from a friend of mine who is white, male, South African and presently living in the UK who had some thoughts, feelings, questions and frustrations about life in South Africa and some of the conversations we'd been having on here. i shared his email under the guise of 'Bob' and invited a few of my friends to respond, all of which you can catch up with over [...]
i love love love this piece on Christians not being saved to relax and enjoy the Kingdom of God while living in the midst of chaos in the world: = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = To be a Christian... We need to be alive to the reality that Jesus could not have established the church without dying on the cross and being raised again. [...]
My wife, tbV, has a thing about having a thing about buying me presents, maintaining that i am the hardest person to buy for [mostly cos if i want or need something i often just go and buy it myself]. But for my birthday this year she got it spot on - two books about South Africa by South Africans. The first one i read was Better to be Black by Antjie Krog which i [...]
