Racism is such an interesting topic, especially in South Africa. Many of class topics have focused on the history of apartheid and racism in South Africa, and it always amazes me how we can study history and yet somehow neglect to see that history is repeating itself at this very moment. Because race segregation was so blatant in South Africa, it is easy to critique it and question how a society could ever get to that point. But, my question is how we can fail to see that, more or less, the same thing is happening right now in the United States, and all over the world.
Here, we have learned about the segregation that takes place in education, and how that perpetuates one’s socioeconomic status and makes it incredibly difficult to get out of the impoverished conditions in which they grew up. Recently, we were able to talk to a documentary filmmaker who made the film Testing Hope, which is about education in South Africa. The film focuses on a few students who live in a township and struggle to do well in school with such limited resources, support, and time to study. In the film, one of the students talks about how she hasn’t had anything to eat since the previous day, and I have to wonder how anyone can complete any tasks or maintain any real sort of motivation when there is not even food to eat.
In one of our last classes, we also watched a movie that talked about one theory of how racism began (Race the Power of an Illusion, part II), and also one about how, in the United States, whites and blacks are treated differently and unequally in identical situations. It was so crazy to me to hear how we have, throughout history, used science to justify everything we do. It is so clear how this still happens today, but we are just unaware of it. We talk about how blatant racism was in the past, how blatant it is in other areas of the world, but never how blatant it is in the United States.
Segregation within the educational sector in the United States is almost identical to that in South Africa. People who live in impoverished areas have ridiculously poor opportunities in their schools, next to no resources, and are pretty much disregarded in the rest of society. In the United States, we always talk about how if one just works hard enough, we can create our own opportunities and those who continue to live in poverty do so because of their own lack of motivation. This concept infuriates me, and I just do not understand how people can still believe this, when it is so clear that the reason there is such a gap in income and socioeconomic status is because of the systematic inequality that exists, and that it is in no way a reflection of the individual.
For the most part, people who are rich are rich because they were offered opportunities while they were growing up, had a good education, and had the opportunity to go to college. They also came from a family that already had money, and as we all know, people ra rely drop below their original class status. Spending time in South Africa has just made me more aware of how easy it is to critique racism in other areas of the world, and how hesitant we are to see it in our own country.
