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"We could learn a lot from crayons; some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, while others bright, some have weird names, but they have all learned to live together in the same box!"

Friday 3 February 2012

Shedding white supremacy- easy as it sounds!

Usually when i post something i have a great catchy Title... Havent thought of it yet. Hopefully it will come to me soon.
The following post on the DAILY MAVERICK http://dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2012-02-01-umlungu-mdala#.TyqCVPyu98A.email was brought to my attention yesterday.
What an interesting and well written article. Please read and let me know what you think!
A lot of what he touches on is what i tried to highlight in my earler posts about "whiteliness".
However i think Xhanti Payi is a bit more eloquent than me!
i partly agree with his statement that white people refuse to shed their supremacy. He is right, because, honestly who wants to not be supreme;-)! The subtelty that he misses is that as apartheid has screwed up futures and pasts of black people it has done the same to white people. i am not excusing racism, white supremacy or whiteliness but i think there is so much wrongness in how we were brought up that it is hard to "shed it" as Xhanti Payi would have us do.
i think the first thing in shedding supremacy is recognising our position of supremacy and many white SA dont. They proclaim non- racism and no direct involvement in apartheid which they feel absolves them. i would argue it doesnt! (another post for another day!)
Once we, as white people have recognised supremacy we can start to step out of supremacist (sp??) skins. But it is hard to relinquish power- ask Mugabe and the rest of the dictators scattering our continent! Practically i am not sure how we do this?
 
I will post a bit more about this later! But comments so far?

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