Apartheid

There really is nothing quite like watching hundreds of schoolchildren being beaten, gassed, and shot at by police and military officials to make you feel guilty for being Western. I don't consider myself racist and I don't condone anyone harming anyone else for any reason, but nevertheless I feel like my very existence as an educated, white American is so unfair that it's wrong in light of other people's misfortune.

Today I watched a film entitled "Witness to Apartheid" for my African History class. It consisted of interviews and live footage of large-scale political violence in South Africa in 1985. I don't know how readily available this film is and if anyone else has seen it but the images it shows are utterly terrifying, and made more so by the fact that they're real. To say the least it'll stay with me for a while. The race-based violence, consisting almost entirely (in the film) of white military attacks on peaceful black protests was so nonsensical that you'd think it impossible. They were shot because they wanted equality, the ability to have a job, the ability to provide for themselves and their families, the ability to be educated and fed and left alone. It never occurred to me until today that I should appreciate the fact that it is safe for me to go to school. That I don't wonder if my class is going to be disrupted by armed men and my classmates and I hauled to jail because they caught wind that we disagreed with public policy.

If anything in this country we are wary of our schoolmates who might get disgruntled for no readily apparent reason and bring a gun to school. But at least in that situation there's an outcry. There's a public inquiry. The law gets involved and there are criminal repercussions. In South Africa, under Apartheid, there was nothing. Not even an attempt at or pretense of justice. No comfort for the bereaved and often no medical aid for the wounded. Doctors who offered their services to those hurt in these clashes would be jailed.

One's own problems seem so petty by contrast. I wonder where I'll be in five years, if i'll be making enough money to make ends meet. A small part of me fears I'll be so unsuccessful that I'll end up on the street, but I don't really believe it. I join the rallying against injustice in my own country, but where does it stand in comparison? Millions of people forced into cramped, unplumbed, unelectrified, fenced and frequently firebombed camps because folks of the opposite color believe they're somehow better than them. Laws enacted against them to prevent them from getting jobs because white folks fear they'll work for cheaper and their employment would be at risk. White people convincing themselves--or being outrightly told by their politicians and teachers--that black people are happy in their situation, or that they're genetically inclined toward violence so they must be strictly supervised for their own safety.

I don't have a leg to stand on in complaining. I'm never going to be rich or famous, beautiful, brilliant, or any way special. I don't expect i'll ever have a beautiful house or be able to keep a good companion. These are things I think and worry about because they're what my society values. The thing we seem to fear most here is mediocrity, the quality of not being better than those around us. But I really should appreciate my sensibly-shod, bodily-clad, overweight American mediocrity.

I'm not going to fall down on my knees and thank my maker for the bounteous gifts i've received in my life because frankly that's selfish. One of the most obvious debunkers of religion is the abject horror of so many people's daily lives in light of our own roofed and furnished existence. The fact that most of it is inflicted on them by other humans only heightens my awareness that we are floating through the universe unsupervised. Justice is a nice idea that we came up with to make sense of the anger we feel when we are harmed. I am not thankful for the life I lead because the only reason I know it is pretty easy is because I see people who don't have things as nice as I do. Because people exist who know nothing but suffering. I don't appreciate it. I feel bad for it. Bad that I didn't...i dunno, pay extra for it somehow. Bad because I don't deserve it, just like black South Africans don't deserve to be punished for wanting it. Bad because I'm one of the "haves" and I still manage to be discontent, angry, and afraid though I know others have it much worse. Bad because I'm wealthy, which is interesting, because I'm not.

I know that Apartheid ended. It shouldn't have ever started, but it only took about a century of enforced represison of an entire race for a few people to finally warm to the idea of inalienable human rights. Things aren't vastly improved, but they're a little better. They've gotten worse elsewhere and when that improves they'll suck further somewhere else again, but at least one situation had the capacity to get a little better. It is a strange, frustrating world we live in.

"This planet has, or rather had, a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small, green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

"And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches." -- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy