Vintage Lotus

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If I was Jessica Leandre Dos Santos I would also hide after what happened, but I am not Jessica and I probably would never say what Jessica said… firstly because I am black and secondly because I have a functioning brain. Unfortunately and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Jessica was not the first and will not be the last racist South African. I mean we did let them (racist whites) have Orania so, what do we expect now. That place should have been destroyed years ago, but it still stands.
I am a woman, I am black and I live in SA. Never mind the fact that I have half a brain on me. Never mind being a woman working with chauvinistic men, I am also black in CPT and this poses more problems than what has been seemingly the obvious complaint on most social networks. Yes, Jessica deserves to be punished for what she said… hell, Steve Hofmeyer needs to be brought to justice and Orania burnt to the ground, but that is not really what I want to discuss here.
I want to talk about being black and about solving these problems that we face. There is a school of thought that comes from 70’s that believes - people that are ‘considered’ inferior … (note I said ‘considered’) cannot be prejudice. This same school of thought believes that black people cannot be racist and therefore are free to say as they please. Unfortunately this leaves a bad taste in my mouth because it then further suggests that we agree to the notion or rather the idea that we are inferior.
Last night as I sat around wondering what kind of demon had possessed that Leandre woman (she is 20, she is not a child anymore) I stumbled across a tweet by Hlomla Dandala that had former the President of the Republic of South Africa, Botha’s speech. The result of me reading this speech was a violent illness and thereafter deep thought and reflection about then and now. Specifically this quote and I will elaborate on why: “Blacks cannot rule themselves. Give them guns and they will kill each other. They are good in nothing else but making noise, dancing, marrying many wives and indulging in sex”. That immediately reminded me of an article that some white professor wrote that said that all black people ever do is behave like monkey’s by drinking, dancing around, sleeping around and creating more unstable environments to raise more blacks. This wretched man’s name escapes me. But if white people see us that way and consider us intellectually inferior - how do we as blacks see ourselves?
In my experience I have found that we as black people have no respect for each other. The only time we are ever unified is when one white guy says something about us and then all of a sudden we are a community. Truth is we as black people regard each other inferior to each other… that is why we don’t listen, don’t value and don’t trust each other. I like to speak from personal experience because it requires less research and you can’t prove otherwise. It seems that we look at each other and we don’t believe in our own people. We always think that we are smarter than the next black person. Why is that? Why are we fighting amongst ourselves? Yes, there is a handful of us that are thinking forward and trying to unify black youth and create a level of consciousness, but there is not enough. Just go outside for a moment. The real world outside twitter… where you are met with 32 year old men hitting on 17 year old girls at bars. Whose lives have become about dancing, champagne, shagging the next hot thing and waking up tomorrow working in a system designed to fuck them and so the cycle goes. When do we sit down and stop causing this downward spiral of a cycle that we are in. When will we love ourselves? You listen to the music that’s out there… the ‘haters’ the jealous people its all black fighting against other blacks.
In my early career as a Copywriter I used to have regular arguments with a colleague of mine who once asked me why black folk never over powered the idiots that came here on a ship? Surely there was more of us than them? My answer THEN was that… fire sticks must have been scary. But now I look at us and think that we were too busy arguing and thinking we are better than each other to come up with a proper strategy. It pains me to see us like this. I am no political scholar. I am just a girl with an opinion and I too am gatvol of racism. But, we need to be better at being black, so that when the prejudice comes we can look at them and say… Fuck you very much, but my people are awesome. We cannot continue to hate ourselves and love their wealth (I am sure Kanye said that).
I have run out of words
I thank you.