Mandela and King

From the very beginning, both Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. emerged into paths of leadership. King's father, the baptist minister, and his mother, the schoolteacher, passed on to their son the qualities of a natural public speaker capable of expressing ideas fluidly. It is no surprise that he went on to become a minister himself-however briefly. Mandela was born into royalty and later transferred into the hands of a tribal government official who groomed the young boy for leadership. During their campaigns, the two leaders faced similar challenges against differing foes. While King fought to bring about legislation through nonviolent resistance and dramatic example, Mandela and his followers squared off against an oppressive and brutal government. "It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle." This quote from Nelson Mandela embodies the practical approach towards segregation by Martin Luther King Jr. but also suggests traces of Malcolm X's ideology. "Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend." Here King's steadfast belief in his approach shines as well as his less radical nature than Mandela. This may be why King maintained a peaceful approach while Mandela was forced to exert more force on his end. At the core of either movement, both men did understand that their struggle would be difficult and would force them to tread carefully through example and public support. While there is heavier air of strategy to Jr's campaign, Nelson's path seems more desperate. Ultimately, King and Mandela displayed incredible perseverance and composure in their mutual quest for social justice. The contexts in which they attained and maintained leadership are interestingly similar but all the same distinctive in their individual methods and consequences. They leave behind a legacy too great to sum up in one blog post.

The New South Africa

Not much really stood out to me in pouring over the history of South Africa. This was mostly because-as everyone else has already noticed-of the clear similarities to US history: the ultimate oppression of the native population, difference of opinions on race between the colonizing white population and eventual civil war, the settler's expansion into otherwise claimed territory, and, of course, the violent and shameful history of racism and oppression. It is particularly interesting to notice that, until recently, apartheid, the counterpart to our era of Civil Rights Issues, was officially done away with. I imagine that as we see much of post-apartheid South Africa we will be able to draw parallels to our own society in the years following the long fought battle to grant blacks and other minorities full civil rights. I am especially interested to see how South Africa regards the late Nelson Mandela. It would seem that as an idol that delivers the hope of a better future, he is a strong asset to the nation's morale. However the country seems to have a weakness in the form of another of its leaders, Vice-President Jacob Zuma-if the charges against him prove to be true. I was really interested to read about Cape Town's decision to launch an Open Data Portal, which will grant free public sector data to the public. It looks promising as a milestone for public access and citizen involvement in the area. 

My question for Mr. Gilmour is: "What are some of the challenges you have faced in working with African countries?"  

"Race and Freedom Were Born Together"

While its never pleasant to retrace the many shameful episodes of this country's carefully organized past, it is difficult to ignore the irony in this fact. At the same time this system of equality was introduced to justify freedom so was another system of inequality created to justify slavery. I doubt many people know this fact and doubt even more that I could find it in your standard middle school textbook. One pattern I always thought existed was the tendency for civilizations to focus on, or even create, new issues of separation or categorization once the previous issues had either been resolved or reached a climax. For example, in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, Britain operated under a class system. People were separated by wealth and status from birth. Colonists then migrated to the Americas to escape this socio-economic inequality in mother England but immediately introduced blacks as a race and put them to work in the fields. Post-Civil War US took over 100 years to finally grant citizen rights to minorities and another 40 or so years to even begin honoring these rights. At around the same time, the Women's Rights Movement rose up and also fought for equality. While certainly not resolved, these conflicts have ebbed down from their utmost intensities and seem to be slowly, steadily improving-though with notable setbacks. With that progression of race and gender inequality, discrimination against the LGBT community is a recent phenomenon. It's also interesting to note that homosexuality was actually a fairly common and (although hotly debated) acceptable practice among the Ancient Greeks, one of the more civilized societies from the ancient world. Admittedly, they did separate citizens from foreigners and women were also denied certain rights. India has a caste system. Apartheid recently ended in South Africa. And so on. It seems like some people need or just invent forms of inequality to either allow categorization or justify certain actions. I'm not exactly sure, but it's an idea worth exploring.

"The Complexity of Identity: 'Who am I?'"

I don't really have many initial thoughts on this article. In some ways, the idea is kind of similar to the McIntosh article. Perception and assumptions kind of play a similar role. For some reason, while reading this article I was reminded of a scene from the AMC series Mad Men (its an adult period drama about ad executives in 1960s New York City). In it, Don Draper, the series protagonist monologues to his business associate, Rachel. He presents his cynical perception of love as a fictitious, manufactured notion-or slogan-created by people like him to sell nylons. Rachel, in turn, responds that until that moment she had never realized that "it must be hard being a man too." I never completely understood the deeper meaning behind Don's little speech or the implications of it but I think I understand Rachel's words. Whether or not Don believes his own words, it is apparent that they have been influenced in some part by the standards of his society, or rather, his community. Whatever traits are associated with the ideal man of the time, his character is responding to and being shaped by them, whether by exuding a cold persona immune to romanticism or allowing self-deception to shape his feelings on love. Just like Rachel earlier on expected men to scoff at the idea of a woman owning a business and displayed a high level of confidence and assertiveness to combat her prejudices, Don is adapting to his social environment. He is a product of it. In Tatum's class exercises, her students identify more with the physical traits that have been pointed out to them. The same occurs with surveys of other age groups. "Woman usually mention being female while men don't usually mention their maleness" because maleness is the dominant normality. "The parts of our identity that do capture our identity are those that other people notice, and that reflect back to us." How others view us, or how we believe others view us, seems to be very important to shaping our identity. I think this article does a good job of supporting some overlooked arguments about race and prejudice. We do respond strongly to the most subtle remarks of our appearance and this response has a significant hand in shaping our personality. I feel like I have a deeper understanding of race and culture and how it relates to our identity. It was always a tricky subject for me and much easier to avoid. I'm convinced that race and racism is a fairly complex issue and does deserve a lot of study and interpretation. I'm now also convinced that Mad Men is pretty awesome as a character study and feel like I should start binging the entire series (I only ever watched the first episode).

Sorry again for the long post.

Unpacking the Knapsack of Privilege Reaction

I remember one day while I was eating at the dining hall, the television above was airing Fox News. A blonde, middle aged reporter and a man whose face I don't remember seemed to be in a debate on split screen over some issue concerning race. The man seemed to be building up to an effective closing statement when the reporter suddenly cut him off. "No, I don't want to hear it. There is no more racism in this country," she said. Initially, her comment made me feel angry at her arrogance and frustrated at her ignorance. But after reading McIntosh, I thought back to those feelings and realized how abrupt they may have been. After all, this reporter, most likely enjoying a more financially comfortable lifestyle would have much less exposure and interaction with the major issues plaguing those who had to work just a little bit harder and had less systematic advantages to making a living in this country. Living a life of ease does make one inexperienced with hardship. Or maybe she just was that ignorant. I'm not sure. But that may not matter. What does matter is that I didn't know her background-whether she was born into privilege or worked hard to climb up that ladder-so making assumptions about her remark was pretty premature. In turn, she may not have been well-informed about racism (either building up this idea of racism as all about slavery and lynchings but ignoring more subtle aspects such as unspoken prejudices and stereotypes) or maybe her awareness of modern race issues in the US was very limited. Either way, her response to the idea of racism and my response to her comment both relied on assumptions based on perception. And I think this may be the point of McIntosh's article. With the knapsack metaphor, she is merely circling back to the central issue of racism: it's a matter of perception. Because the idea of white normality has been subtly embedded into the social conscious, she had not been aware of these privileges to being white because white is not thought of in racial terms as other minorities are. The idea that whites are a normality is so because history was written that way after having followed that pattern.

Anyways this is what I thought after reading the article. Sorry if its a little confusing in some places but I do a lot of 'stream of thought' writing. Thanks for reading!