Thoughts

It’s a cloudy day. Cloudy days make me introspective.

When I look back at my childhood and teenage years I see that – while my life wasn’t easy – I certainly lived under a giant circus tent which shrouded the reality of the ugliness around me from my understanding. My parents raised me to be quite politically aware: sitting a seven-year-old me down to watch the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first bombs dropped in Desert Storm and showing me on a map what the USSR was and what it meant now that it didn’t exist. I learned of crisis and suffering but I never truly understood what it meant. And as such, in all truthfulness, it didn’t really exist for me.

A lot of that changed on my first move to Russia…and my subsequent years spent studying human rights and politics in University. But, I am finding myself STILL waking up to the reality of oppression and ugliness on a daily basis. Perhaps it’s one of those realizations that will continue to happen for the rest of your life…like finding out you love somebody again, and again.

Needless to say I am living the reality of racism. I believe the first six months of this blog could serve as a chronology for those realizations for me. It’s ugly and torments me on a daily basis.

For example, I asked a member of our Out-of-School-Youth group how he was this morning. He replied, “Well, I’m still black.” This got his peers riled up in a good laugh. But, it cut me rather deeply.

I am also waking up to the plight of the oppressor (or ‘former’ oppressor in South Africa’s case). I say plight because it’s just that. A struggle. They struggle with hatred so deep, so ingrained that it seems they cannot see the trees through the forest. That something rational to the outsiders (like equal rights) is impossibly irrational. What a horrific state of being. (Not all white South Africans are racist, of course)

I am also beginning to get a glimpse of with what it means to be female in the “third world.” I’ll again note that I’ve lived a semi-charmed life. I’ve never felt hindered because of my sex. I’ve never felt the need to apologize because I’m a woman. I’ve never taken NOT doing something into consideration because of my sex, ever.

I’ve already spoken in some length about the incidences of sexism I’ve experienced and won’t go into them again. But, it’s shocking and biting. Especially when it comes from other women.

That being said, I look around me at the other young ladies whose lives are MUCH worse off than mine and think – how could I have missed this reality? Let it stand that I am simply from a life of privilege.

I realize that just because I’m not experiencing something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

The fist in the stomach came while planning our up-coming trip to Zanzibar. I was reading about this fantastic Mosque that was build by an ancient Persian Shah, how it was the oldest Mosque in Eastern Africa. I got really excited because I ADORE history. So I circled it and started figuring out ways to get there etc, when I read the fine print. No non-Muslims are allowed during prayer time, no WOMEN are allowed EVER. Hmmmm. First time I’ve ever been denied entry into something because of factors I couldn’t control, like my sex.

Which led my thinking full circle: Imagine what it would be like to not be allowed entry into a store because you are black, what it would be like to be forced out of your homes and herded onto reservations just because you are black, to be forced into four professions all menial and degrading because you are black. So my tiny, miniscule taste of what it’s like to be oppressed gave me a slightly better understanding of South Africa’s history (although I shy away from even saying that – nobody could really understand it unless they themselves lived it).

It’s no wonder people act the way they do. I read in ‘Black Like Me’ by John Howard Griffin that, in his opinion, oppressed black men sometimes act degradingly to women because it is their last way to show their masculinity as most other ways have been unjustly stolen from him (those being ability to have a stable job, etc). I found that fascinating.

So, the moral of this ‘story?’: (I cannot emphasize this enough) racism is REAL!!! It lives and breathes and permeates every corner of this earth. Sexism is also alive and well, especially in the lesser developed areas. And, unfortunately, it’s people like me who (by not opening my eyes) let it continue to live. My years of keeping my mouth shut about these plagues lend credence to the disease. The longer we remain silent the stronger the beast. Like my all-time hero Sophie Scholl so bravely declared nearly 70 years ago: I WILL NOT BE SILENT.

On another note – I taught a lesson today about building a stronger family to the Out of School Youth. It went pretty well. I used some old Mormon ideas like “Family Home Evening” and others. It was a lot of fun.