apartheid is not over yet. i’ve been thinking about this ever since we went to Johannesburg for LDW (leadership development weekend) in between Haiti and Botswana. i see it in restaurants, in work places, in big organizations, in the stores, everything. so often i see white people be the head of organizations, the manager or the shop owner. and it’s the black people that are the workers, the second class citizens.
it’s saddening and sickening that the color of one’s skin determines power, determines their place in society. something they can’t help determines their status. their socioeconomic place in society is based off of something that doesn’t even have a direct correlation to either of those things, but the world tells them that it does.
i’m a middle class white female, the only thing that would make me have more power would be to have something hanging between my legs and to have my parents make more money. honestly.
the only thing that i can compare this struggle to in my personal life would be the struggle for women’s rights. the men have power in the workplace and society in general, where women are thought as less than because we are seen as weak or inferior. my sexual organs shouldn’t be what defines my power or my purpose. i’m more than my gender and more than what society tells me i am. and apartheid was “resolved” 80 years after the rights of women in America. (don’t get me wrong, i’m not a modern feminist who thinks that women should be superior to men by any means. i don’t think there’s even any comparison but that is for another blog post.) these humans who remember the struggle for freedom have more rights being angry than i do in having resentment toward monotony in society.
these African men and women who were robbed of their homes many years ago are not defined by the color of their skin. they aren’t more or less powerful because of the greater melanin in their cells.
but these people resent whites. we went to the grocery store today and a young child, about 12, tripped me and then told the security guard that i was stealing. i mean i don’t blame this kid for his hatred of white people on sight for his negative connotation with such people, but i want to change that for him, for the people i’ll be reaching.
my team is living with another team here in Soshonguve, which is a settlement outside of Pretoria, a place where i have yet to see any other white people and where cat calls and honks come in abundance. we stick out like sore thumbs. but i hope that this is something that can change, that these men and women will see us as regular men and women, not people who view themselves as superior. that they will see that God sees us like that too, as equals. God doesn’t play favorites, it’s an equal love for all of this children, one that blows societal expectations and norms out of the water, out of the universe.
i pray that these people view themselves as beautiful, as a masterpiece of the Creator of the stars. that the color He painted them is as equally as appealing as the color He painted me. i pray that the resentment and bitterness in the hearts of these people will fade into joy. i pray for big things, for life change, for the Spirit to move. i pray for light. i pray for the unexpected to come, for Jesus to seep into every crack and crevice in these people’s lives. i pray for redemption, for renewal, for rejuvenation. i have hope that big things are going to happen and i have faith in an even greater God. so, Jesus, please move in this place, in the greater Pretoria area, in all of South Africa.
but i pray these things for America too. i see men and women of color, all colors, that are seen as less than because of that, that aren’t given the opportunity that whites are given. this reminds me of the movie “Freedom Writers” when the main character, Eva, says that she hates white people on sight because of the white men that arrested her father for a crime he didn’t commit. i can’t blame these people for this resentment in their hearts for what they have stereotyped white people as from their pasts, but i just pray that the Lord replaces that bitterness with joy. i pray that racial oppression in these first world countries will come to a halt solely because of the realization of harmony in being sons and daughters of the Creator of the Universe, the King of kings and the Lord of lords. i don’t think that this is even possible without that. i pray that people of one color will see people of another as complementary not competitively.
