Dear Sir/Madam

It is with a heavy heart that I must inform you that I am resigning, after only five months of service.  I must begin by telling you that I don't want to want  to leave.  I don't want to want to because I believe the world is unjust and cruel to young black South Africans, and that the beleaguered education system is one of the things that needs to change in order for any of this to change.  I don't want to want to go because I believe that the impetus for change lies not in big government, but in groups of individuals who form communities who form movements.  Oh, how I wish I didn't want to go.  But I do, and so here we are.  

Why do I want to go, though?  Well, where to start.  Maybe it is because, in my heart of hearts, I am a romantic idealist.  I believe in social change and justice, and I believed that I could make a career and save the world all at once.  When you offered me the job, you unwittingly offered me a chance to do research and make a difference: you told me, with one acceptance letter sent on a sunny Saturday morning, that I could become a save-the-worldologist!  Such glorious news! And so I gladly believed you; I took the weight of all my hopes and dreams that this fucked up racist, classist, sexist world can change and placed them in this job, my first forray into the realm of the real (read 'my first real job outside of university', or 'my first job that I wasn't doing just to make quick change').  It's possible that that's the heart of the matter.  I put too much at stake when I arrived at your doorstep five months ago, pencils sharpened, save-the-world senses tingling.  You had me at "It gives us great pleasure to inform you", but you never quite stood a chance against my blind idealism.  

No matter, my eyes were quickly opened.  I remember thinking in my first few weeks here how, as a group, the people I worked with were not entirely welcoming.  At first I put it down to my self-consciousness and my incredible neediness.  But I started to realise that maybe the reason I perceived this place as unfriendly was because it rejected me as a black woman.  I am black, but I complicate your closely-held and defended assumptions about what that means.  I can write eloquently, I can speak for myself, I can decide for myself how best to address racism when I encounter it.  I allow you into my life, but on entirely different terms than you are used to: I see you as a fellow save-the-worldologist, not as my personal saviour.  Therefore you have trouble recognising my blackness.  You also seem unable to recognise my identity as a woman.   I am a feminist, which means I subscribe to the idea that I am no less a human being than a man (in fact, I may be more so, but that's womanism), and I will not try to approximate masculinity in order to get ahead in life.  So, when the only women who are able to 'get ahead' or have their views heard are those who approximate masculinity (and its attendant patriarchy) that sends a clear message about what you think of me as a feminist woman.  This place that you created didn't like the things that make me, from the word go.  I don't foresee a future in which it will.  

On a related note, my save-the-worldology aspirations, idealistic as they may be, are fully informed by all of those things about me.  I am black, I am a woman, and I want to see social change.  This means (for me) that I want to empower people, in the same way that I have been empowered, to create their own sustainable change.  I know to impose my own ideas would be tantamount to reinscribing oppression that I have experienced in my own life.  For me, sustainable change means financial independence, job security (though, so much for that for now), freedom from racial and sexual harassment, and a world in which I can engage with fellow citizens and state structures alike about the best way forward for this world.  I have the good sense to know that my sustainable change is another woman's privilege, and that I cannot impose my definition on another human being.  I realise - and I know you do as well - that the power to define sustainable change is in itself a function of my privilege.  Unlike you, I choose to grapple with the complexities of promoting social change by empowering people with the tools to define their own change.  You see the complexities and the grey, and you choose to ignore it in favour of simple black and white solutions.  I understand you do it not because it is the easier option but because it is the popular option: one quick survey of news stories and you'll see just how black and white (literally and figuratively) the global political discourse can be.  But that's just the thing: you don't claim to be just another voice in the current discourse, you claim to be the voice. Of an entire generation? Really, guys? Isn't it dangerous to claim omnipotence when you are only representing a particular viewpoint?  Especially when that representation doesn't carry any of the nuance or complexities you know it should?

Ultimately, that's why I am leaving.  I have been party to a dangerous game that has veered me off my righteous save-the-worldology path.  In all seriousness, I know I have been using that as a joke, but I am dead serious about changing this world.  It is not nearly what it should and could be, and it is a cruel and unjust place for too many of its citizens.  I need to devote my life to changing that.  But in the last five months, I have been a part of something that looks like that's what it is, but that will ultimately do more harm than good.  You can't save the world if you are in the business of black and white, and if you cannot see it for the complex, mutli-narrative place it is.  

And, so, as much as I deeply regret it, as much as I wish I weren't too chicken-shit to tell you the truth about what I see in you, I will leave without much of a fuss.  As sad as I am about this experience, I will take from it a deeper knowledge of just how deep the damage to our world runs, and a renewed commitment to save-the-worldology.  I wish you every success in your endeavours, as I am sure you wish me in mine.  

Do your worst.  

Steve Biko, white guilt and me

*As much as I would love to write about Buffy some more, I have had this post in the works for a while and I have to get it off my chest.

In response to the post, On white maleness, one commentor contemplated whether social change is "an only black thing".  She confesses to having struggled with this particular part of Bantu Stephen Biko's ideas; the idea that in order for there to be real change (which in Biko's time meant the end of Apartheid), black people need to define their struggle and engage with that struggle seperately from the efforts of well-meaning white liberals. 

A few weeks ago, when I was really starting to understand who I was working for, and what was expected of my identity as a black woman at the place where I work, I revisited I Write What I Like, at the suggestion of my white male partner.  My relationship with this book, and with Biko is a complicated one.  I first encountered I Write What I Like four years ago, as part of a course I took on race and social identity.  We were assigned Biko, along with Frantz Fanon as part of our course work.  Funnily enough, I didn't struggle too much with Fanon.  It was Biko I had a problem with. I was especially bothered by the second chapter in I Write What I Like on white liberals.  Titled 'Black Souls in White Skins?' the chapter explores the role of white liberals in the fight against Apartheid.  Biko characterises liberal white South Africa thus:

...that curious bunch of nonconformists who explain their participation in negative terms: that bunch of do-gooders that goes under all sorts of names -liberals, leftists etc. These are the people who argue that they are not responsible for white racism and the country’s “inhumanity to the black man”. These are the people who claim that they too feel the oppression just as acutely as the blacks and therefore should be jointly involved in the black man’s struggle for a place under the sun. In short, these are the people who say that they have black souls wrapped up in white skins.

That palpable irony you detect is quite intentional.  Biko goes on to declare:

Nowhere is the arrogance of the liberal ideology demonstrated so well as in their insistence that the problems of the country can only be solved by a bilateral approach involving both black and white. This has, by and large, come to be taken in all seriousness as the modus operandi in South Africa by all those who claim they would like a change in the status quo.

Biko insists that these champions of change are not what they seem: in continuing to interfere and, in many cases, define and run 'the struggle' these so-called liberals are recreating Apartheid hierarchies within the heart of the struggle against Apartheid.  He suggests that the place for white people truly committed to social change, and to the end of Apartheid lies not in the black struggle but in their own community.  It's basically a case of "white person, heal thyself":

Rather, all true liberals should realise that the place for their fight for justice is within their white society. The liberals must realise that they themselves are oppressed if they are true liberals and therefore they must fight for their own freedom and not that of the nebulous “they” with whom they can hardly claim identification. The liberal must apply himself with absolute dedication to the idea of educating his white brothers that the history of the country may have to be rewritten at some stage and that we may live in “a country where colour will not serve to put a man in a box”. The.blacks have heard enough of this. In other words, the Liberal must serve as a lubricating material so that as we change gears in trying to find a better direction for South Africa, there should be no grinding noises of metal against metal but a free and easy flowing movement which will be characteristic of a well-looked -after vehicle.

When I read this, I was volunteering for a large student-run civil society organisations, and many of my fellow volunteers (who were also my best friends - nothing quite like spending all your time volunteering together to bond you to people) were white.  I believed them to be genuinely committed to addressing the injustices Apartheid and colonialism had wrought on their country.  I also struggled with Biko because I struggle, in general, with black men who I feel make pronouncements about blackness that do not take the particular struggles of black women into account.  I remember a classmate telling me the story of how Biko used to dictate passages of I Write What I Like for some woman in his life (mother, sister, lover?) to record.  What about her ideas and what she liked?  What did blackness mean for her?

I also struggled with Biko because, for all intents and purposes, he could have been speaking about me.  I am not South African, I do not speak Xhosa, Zulu or any other African South African language, I am middle class.  I do not belong in 'the struggle' by Biko's accounts, but did that mean that I was not black?  Did the fact that I worked side by side with white people mean that I was an accessory to the perpetuation of white privilege?  I never quite answered any of my questions.  I subsequently left the student-volunteering world, due to unrelated burn out.  I'm ashamed to say that I didn't confront any of my race and identity issues until I entered into my current relationship.  I'm equally ashamed to admit that I didn't think about or revisit Steve Biko until I started my current job.  

Over the last few weeks, Biko has been on my mind a great deal more.  I find that he no longer makes me uneasy.  In sharp contrast to the confusion and anger he called up in me four years ago, Biko and his writing now serve as a source of sanity and as a way for me topull together the chaos of my workplace into a coherent narrative.  In other words, I Write What I Like, which I read all those moons ago, shortly before my first encounter with burnout and depression, has helped keep a fast-approaching second episode of burnout at bay.

Reading my experiences at work - and my white colleagues - through  Biko lens has helped me make some sense of the hot emotional mess that is currently my career.  Though Biko was writing about the anti-apartheid struggle, much of what he said applies to civil society in South Africa, with one key difference.  Apartheid (and its evil stepfather, colonialism) were - excuse the pun - black and white issues.  I am fortunate enough to not have lived through any of those, but I know enough to imagine that you could see the evil during those periods.  It manifested itself in every aspect of one's life, and in every interaction one had with fellow South Africans.  It was easier back then to reject the evil, purge it from one's identity and choose a new identity that was based on opposing the evil.  I believe that is what created white liberals: they saw apartheid and the particular segment of white society it was associated with, and decided to remake whiteness that was based on resistance to that which they saw as evil.

In post-apartheid South Africa, it is less clear where the lines are, and who the enemy is.  Where apartheid allowed clear lines to be drawn between white whites and whites, post-apartheid South Africa has pulled back the curtains that the apartheid regime so violently policed to reveal what was done in the name of all whites.  Note that it is not about what was done by all whites, it is what was done in the name of  all whites, on the basis that they occupied the same place in some imaginary (biological? metaphysical?) hierarchy, no matter what their politics were.  Where there once were white liberals, who drew lines in the sand to separate themselves from evil, there are now white liberals who, having seen what was done in the name of whiteness (theirs included) draw lines in the sand to cope with their guilt.  It is no longer easy to separate whiteness from apartheid in post-apartheid South Africa.  The result of this is white guilt, which is what I believe spurs some of the white liberals I have encountered to the work they do.  Instead of the development of black agency and black solutions for black problems, as Biko advocated way back when, there has been a rush of white liberals to the spots that stand as indictments on their whiteness - spots that could have been the sites of the development of black agency, but are now into sites on which white liberals work out their existential angst and guilt.

I know how harsh that sounds, I do.  But I am not saying that the same 'evil' as during apartheid is at play here. I am not saying there is anything evil about guilt (though, I was raised Catholic and could write a book debating that).  Of course any thinking white South African experiences guilt.  Of course the natural inclination is to do something to make right what went so wrong on (effectively) your watch.  But the mistake those of us who carry our (white or middle class, private school black) guilt into our work in civil society make  is to assume that the responsibility to 'make things right' is ours.  Yes, it is the social responsibility of those of us who are privileged to do what we can to change this country, but it is not our responsibility to define change for those who are less privileged.  Going into this kind of work from a place of guilt is both admirable and dangerous.  It is admirable because it signals a willingness to face the demons in one's self.  It is dangerous because guilt is all-consuming: you can never do enough to be rid of it, and the more you do, the more you do (did Imention I was raised Catholic?).  And so you do and do and do, until all you are is a flurry of activity, and you forget to reflect on the impact of your guilt and your privilege on the work you are currently doing.

So, Biko was right, I am sorry to say.  His work has given me some sense of comfort, and a frame with which to analyse what has been a difficult emotional journey (into unemployment, amongst other things).  However, my overwhelming emotion as I write this is one of sadness.  I am depressed at the thought that 34 years after I Write What I Like was published, Biko's work is still this frighyteningly on the nose.  What does this mean for men and women like Biko who died in the hopes that  their children's children would be born into an enitirely different world? And what does this mean for my children's children? 

 

Donald Trump vs. Joss Whedon

The Donald...and his hair

Joss Whedon, entertainer and feminist extraordinaire

So, it's been a busy two or three weeks on the world stage.  The royals put on a show that will rival all shows to come for a while.  Whilst I admit to having 'accidentally' watched the vows section of the ceremony, I am very glad that's done with.  And after all that, we still don't really know what it is the royal family actually does.

In other news, The (extremely loud, unbelievably obnoxious) Donald has been Shut Up! For now anyway.  Donald Trump, of Trump Towers and The Apprentice, has decided to officially 'flirt' with a 2012 Republican run for President of the United States.  This has involved many a rerun of episodes in the media circus that is The Donald's life, including a new episode centering on current US president Barack Obama's American citizenship.  For weeks now, The Donald has guffawed, hollered, whispered loudly, insinuated that Obama has perpetrated the ultimate fraudulent act against the American people (and bla bla bla) and concealed that he was born in Mombasa, Kenya and not Honolulu, Hawaii (which he would need to be in order to be eligible for the presidency job).  Finally, Obama had enough, and on Wednesday, he released a longer version of a document he already released three years ago proving that he is, in fact, an Amrikan.  So, The Donald has official proof and can now, hopefully, knock it off.  

This whole Trump kerfuffle, along with a few episodes of one of Joss Whedon's genius creations, Dollhouse, has led me to the conclusion that there are two kinds of privilege in the world: Donald Trump privilege and Joss Whedon privilege.  Joss is the creator of, amongst many, many other works of feminist genius, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  For years of my life, I tuned in to week after week of Buffy, watching her and her misfit gang (the Scoobies) defeating evils that ranged from insane gods intent on bleeding teenage girls to the death of a parent and depression.  Joss - and his all of his colleagues and all of the heroines they created - helped hold me together, and assured me that being a girl meant awesomeness and power, and was something to be celebrated.  Buffy and Joss also taught me that no matter how bad things were, things were never so bad that I felt the need to retreat into an alternate universe in which I was in a mental asylum, and all my friends were figments of my schizophrenic imagination.  The appeal of Buffy was that it was (as Whedon himself puts it)
"the story of a young woman's journey that involve[d] a great deal of horror, and some heroics".  And really isn't that every woman's story?

Joss and The Donald are both American white men who wield substantial power in their respective fields.  And in their own way, the represent the best and the worst parts of American white male privilege.  Where Joss privilege is marked by a keen awareness of the experiences of those whose world views are not central, Donald privilege barely knows you exist for anything other than serving its own ends.  Donald Trump took all of his privilege and his wealth and decided to lead a charge against the current US president.  Not a charge around the president's take on a social, or economic issue, not a charge of any national, global or other consequence, but a charge about how he may have been born in Africa.  I realise that that point has constitutional consequence, but seriously, think about it: had John McCain, a white man, born in Panama been elected, there would be no fuss over his legitimacy as leader of the free world.  Joss Whedon, on the other hand, chooses to create stories about women whose stories reflect the lives of real-life women.  In a world where popular culture is infused with super-skinny, vapid, (hopefully) unrealistic womanhood that usually defers to a male love interest, Joss rode in and created girls and women who run their own lives and the world, without fanfare, or male leadership.  Where The Donald's privilege exists to create a world of black and white, with little consideration of nuance, Joss's privilege (I believe) is painfully aware of its divisive power, and its ability to wreak havoc.  Knowing this, it chooses instead to provide platforms where 'others' who are not as privileged or powerful can speak.

If I have to live with privilege (especially that of the white male Western variety), and I think I might have to for a while to come, I choose Joss over The Donald anyday.