Disclaimer: If at any point during this blog post you think I sound a little bit racist (or a lot a bit racist) you’re probably right. I’m sorry for it, but just know that everyone can be a little bit racist sometimes, and lets just say people are very open about race in South Africa.
It occurred to me the other day that I spend a lot of time with white people. Now, back home in Utah this would not be anything special. In fact, if you are in Utah and spending most of your time with people who are not white, you are an aberration. Anyway, with a project on rugby, I think you would be hard pressed to not spend a lot of time with white people in South Africa. For a while this really bothered me. For some reason I thought that I wasn’t getting a real cultural experience. In the other field studies programs the students don’t have western toilets and don’t see another white person for three months, whereas I spend me time with westerners who own Playstations, live in mansions, and go boating on weekends (not that all white people in South Africa are this wealthy. Just the ones I spend time with). I thought that I needed to be a little bit more “legit.” However, after spending more time with the white folk, I realized that they have a distinct culture all their own. Just because so many of them are wealthy does not mean that they are no less South African than coloured people, or Indians, or the amaXhosa, or any other ethnic group for that matter. Just because I am learning about white people in South Africa, doesn’t mean I’m not learning anything significant or interesting, I’m just learning different things than my facilitators learned. And my experience is still a cultural experience, and it is definitely a South African experience.
8 comments:
Au contraire! We definitely have some western toilets in McLeod, as well as plenty of Westerners! That is why Ashley wants to move this location to Bylakuppe.
I really like it here, though, and not just because I can buy Cadbury's chocolate and Snickers. The fact that this city is packed with Tibetans, Indians, and tourists from India, Europe, and America makes it the most diverse place I have ever encountered. The white people have interesting lives and stories just like the Tibetans and Indians do.
Sounds like you're having a great time! I can't wait to hear about it!
Forgive me Kristen, I was going off information given to me during a staff meeting quiz. My apologies.
I think as white Americans living in a state full of white Americans, we tend to think that "real culture" is found in Tibet or the African bush or in small villages in Eastern Europe, in places radically different from us. It's almost as if we don't believe that we even have a culture. I remember an experience in high school when my English teacher asked us to raise our hands if we were "ethnic." I thought that this was a weird question, because doesn't everyone have an ethnicity, so isn't everyone "ethnic"? I raised my hand, and she told me to stop joking around, and that she could see by my skin that I wasn't "ethnic." According to her, people who were European or Caucasian weren't ethnic, they were just blah white people.
You're right, your experience is definitely a culturally South African experience. Just because people have cars or ipods doesn't mean they're not worth studying. All cultures are worth researching, not just the ones with different races or different languages.
Oh, Heather, I am sorry. I didn't mean to be rude, I just thought it was funny that our experiences are similar in that way :)
Oh no! I didn't think you were rude! I didn't want you to think that I didn't know anything about the India program! That was what my reply was all about. Can we hug on it and promise to tell each other all our stories when we get home?
Deal :) I'm excited for your stories! We met a girl named Kristen here from South Africa and I thought of you
Definitely. I think that you can find many different subcultures of white people even in Utah- and so of course you would find that these people are their own culture as well. In Mexico, race was quite a big issue but it was interesting to note the differences in culture within Mexicans. The people that lived in the cities were different than those that lived in the villages. Even within the villages, there were different subcultures- women who worked and women who didn't. The older generation versus the younger generation.
So, over time, I've come to boil culture down simply to identity. We all strive to establish/discover our identity. When a group of people live in close proximity, experience the same things together, deal with the same challenges, eat the same things, etc. voila! you have culture i.e. a group of people with mostly overlapping identities. This definition of identity also helped me to distill apart what is truly culture and what is simply poverty. I would ask myself, would a wealthy Malagasy do this the same as a poor one? If they would (a marriage ceremony for example) then I pegged it on culture. If not though (such as washing clothes by hand), then I assumed it was a matter of being poor. To pull the culture out of it, I would have to think about how they wash their clothes by hand that differed from other places, like using their hands to rub the cloth rather than a wash board.
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