PUBLIC HOLIDAY...then again maybe not
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
So here I am working on the public holiday, for all those tax paying South Africans out there you will be pleased to know that the pressure is on and Gautrain workers are on the job. But as no one else in the country is working there really isn't much I can do, so I thought I'd sieze the moment and post!
Something I have been meaning to write about is EURICHT. She is the woman that sits next to me at reception and one of the reasons I find her interesting is that a lot of things about her are very "new South African". Firstly she is black, but she grew up in Mitchells Plain in the Cape and speaks no 'black SA language', ie Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, but is fluent in Afrikaans. Because of this it is really interesting to see the way other black South Africans respond to her. People coming into the building automatically assume that I will speak Afrikaans and she will be fluent in at least one 'black SA language'. Wow are they wrong, and the response (to her far more commonly than me) is "why?". To which Euricht usually gets pretty agro and asks why she should speak a black African language when the white chick sitting next to her doesn't. A very good question in my opinion.
Another interesting thing is that Eurie has never dated a black guy, only white guys. She just doesn't.
I know these things seem pretty small and insignificant but in the bigger scheme of things its the little things that count and I think that in time people may be defined by the language they speak or maybe it will focus on the area they live in, but if you compare Eurie and myself, its really only her complexion that makes her black or more 'African' than me. And grates me that people belive that because of her skin colour it is she that should be speaking an African language, but in their eyes Im not really African anyway so they aren't phased.
Its all about perceptions and according another persons perceptions we are boxed. I think we will start to see more and more people that are breaking out of this box, not intentionally but just because they haven't been brought up to fit inside a box.
Something I have been meaning to write about is EURICHT. She is the woman that sits next to me at reception and one of the reasons I find her interesting is that a lot of things about her are very "new South African". Firstly she is black, but she grew up in Mitchells Plain in the Cape and speaks no 'black SA language', ie Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, but is fluent in Afrikaans. Because of this it is really interesting to see the way other black South Africans respond to her. People coming into the building automatically assume that I will speak Afrikaans and she will be fluent in at least one 'black SA language'. Wow are they wrong, and the response (to her far more commonly than me) is "why?". To which Euricht usually gets pretty agro and asks why she should speak a black African language when the white chick sitting next to her doesn't. A very good question in my opinion.
Another interesting thing is that Eurie has never dated a black guy, only white guys. She just doesn't.
I know these things seem pretty small and insignificant but in the bigger scheme of things its the little things that count and I think that in time people may be defined by the language they speak or maybe it will focus on the area they live in, but if you compare Eurie and myself, its really only her complexion that makes her black or more 'African' than me. And grates me that people belive that because of her skin colour it is she that should be speaking an African language, but in their eyes Im not really African anyway so they aren't phased.
Its all about perceptions and according another persons perceptions we are boxed. I think we will start to see more and more people that are breaking out of this box, not intentionally but just because they haven't been brought up to fit inside a box.
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