Musings on Race: Doing the best i know how

The first time they said i was a racist, it was because everytime i got the opportunity to watch something, i would pick something with black people. Not like one black person in a cast full of white people and then a few black people sprinkled here and there, or one where by black people they meant the lightest skinned actors who somehow qualified to play the black characters. No, i wanted films and shows made by and  starring black people (Especially African productions)  so that is what i always watched and enjoyed. I found depth in the storytelling of black people, especially Africans and it just felt right for me to sit and watch relatable African content that i could actually see myself in.

The next time i was called racist it was because i was not pandering to a group of missionary Christians ( or is it Christian missionaries?) who came to my city back in the pre-pandemic era. My relationship with white people had always been awkard mostly because i am hyper-aware of power dynamics and i might also have an intellectual ego. At that time i had never had that many opportunities to form friendships with white people, save for an ex-boss back in SA whose insistence on us banding together just because we were both Zimbabwean felt weird to me. So here were these children of God, fresh from the land of the brave and high on white saviourism dusguised as obedience to the call of God and robed in the highest privilege in Zimbabwe: the revered US dollar. Their benjamins (and fine i'll admit it, God) had ensured for them a safe passage from the USA( where i have been told several people in need of God's love and their assistance also reside), to South Africa ( where there is poverty but probably not enough orphan babies to satisfy a severe thirst to "help" poor Africans) and then to Zimbabwe (where flies latch onto hungry mother's sagging breasts along with the baby who has spent the day crawling on dirty pavements while her mother tries her best to earn enough for the family to make it to tomorrow.)

Our beautiful Zimbabwe, the land born  of the fire of independence!

I have digressed, i was supposed to be telling you about the girls. 

My relationship with them was complicated, mostly because i felt i was "supposed" to like them based on the fact that they were visitors and yet, i had no feelings about them. I thought they were nice, sure, but i really did not like them as much as i was forced to pretend. I also felt that like most non-African white people, they were always looking for a sob story and although i had one( maybe even more!), i respected myself enough not to sell it for a few minutes of white pity (because really, that was all they had to offer). And so it seemed i did not like any of them which equaled racism.

I realise as i write this that my words have sharp edges that might cut someone deeply and i am already sorry, dear reader. However, i am not sorry enough to stop so here we go.

I am thinking deeply about being labelled a racist not because i want to prove that i am not. I already know that i am not, and not just because i believe that racism can only be practised by those who have some form of institutional power. I find this to be overly simplistic .

I am thinking deeply about race because most people do not fully understand the messed up psychological effect of colonialism and its legacy of inequality. It frustrates me when someone cannot grasp the complexities in how black people view white people and themselves in relation to them. Everytime somebody opens their mouth to praise white people's orderliness and enviable lifestyles and then promptly berate

black people for our inability to escape a lifestlye of hardship as though we chose it, my heart breaks a little.

And people do this ALL THE TIME! They spend time highlighting all the ways in which blackness is bad and whiteness is good. And this is even before the white people appear, because we all know that the level goes up a notch after that. And in my head is this question: why?

Why do you spend time breaking us down like this and then expecting us to stand our ground when we come face to face with white people?

It makes ZERO sense to expect to raise a secure generation who can hopefully "bring back the wealth" if you keep talking them down. I understand the need for constructive criticism, but if you understand the scars and traumas that we carry as a post-colonial generation of black people you would not be so quick to compare us to people who have generational wealth flowing through their veins. Even before i came into contact with the white youth leader who called me a "Darkie"(i wrote about this in my first post on this blog), i already had racial scars simply because i was born to a people that have a history of displacement and oppression.

So i am thinking about race because not enough people take this into consideration when they recite their "economically progressive" speeches. And that is sad.

The first time somebody called me a racist, i wish i had told them that my spirit is weary from carrying the trauma that my mother, my grandmother and my great-grandmother  failed to shake-off. I wish i could have explained that i was searching for home, something to hold on to and make sense of my existence as a black-Ndebele girl in a world that is tailored for people who do not look like me.

The second time i was called a racist, i wish i explained that there were many variables at play in that scenario:

1. I am an intellectual who gravitates towards other intellectuals so my chances of forming strong-bonds with non-intellectuals who probably viewed me as less than they simply because of my color and nationality was not going to happen.

2. I choose my friends according to integrity and kindness and i am not afraid to say i saw none in that group.

3. One of them was getting overly chummy with a guy i was into at the time( yes i am ashamed about it, even now) so my patience for the whole lot was divided by the number of times i switched off my brain so i

could listen to my heart (hint: this equation became a proper fraction) so i was not really in the best position to demonstrate God's love to these girls. 

I wish i explained that even if it was a group of black people i still would have had a hard time making friends.

My opinions on white people, however, do not mean i have not found like-minded white people who i love and thank God for. I also understand that Jesus did not stutter in his commandment to forgive so i do not hold the crimes of colonialism against the current generation. My point in all this is to lament the psychologically damaging legacy of colonialism which seems to alienate me as a black person, not just from wealth through economic inequalities, but also from myself as a person worthy of being loved, celebrated and allowed to be myself.

I wish more people would understand that my racial gripes are not about what they say or do, but about the seeds planted in our psyche the day white settlers set foot on African shores. The seeds of never-enoughness that make black Africans spend enough money to keep the skin-lightening cream industry going, that keep black people running towards whiteness and all it entails like sinners to the messiah, and form the ugly undercurrent beneath our beauty standards and so much more aspects of contemporary African life. 

It is these seeds and my hyper-sensitivity to them that makes me spend hours philosophizing about what it means to live as a black person, in light of whiteness and all it entails.

There is more i want to tell you, dear reader. So much more. But let us stop here for today.

To conclude my lengthy sermon on race, i would like to make it clear that i am a young woman trying my best to live a life i have never seen anyone live before and to make choices that i do not have a precedent for. Being alive has taught me that i have to dig deep to find that centre where who i am and who i want to be are not at odds and that my love and appreciation for what i am matter way more than all the gold in the world. I have disliked and resented myself long enough to understand that this self-hate, even a little bit of it can seep into your bones and break you down from the inside out. I also wager that if God can forgive white people for all they put black people through, then he can have grace with me as i work out the relationship between my self-actualization and love for them as people. I wager that i do not have to give away my personhood just to prove i have  nothing on them.

I am doing the best i know how to do, with 24years of experience and i am not sorry for that.

May the ones you love (white, black or in between) live long.

Siboe.