What is Your Race?

 

"Selfie" of Mom and I -1955

I am taking a couple of courses at Coursera.org and one of them is Anti-Racism 1. I read several books on race in the past year in an attempt to understand the meaning of Critical Race Theory and the definition of anti-racism. Our brains are wired for bias and humans are tribal beings based on any number of physical and behavioural identifiers. Defense of our tribal view can lead to us to be aggressive toward those different than ourselves. People who benefit most from racial privilege often are the most resistant to change that would dismantle heirarchies that promote bias. As I wrote on March 11, 2021, our biases can be based on a variety of characteristics including, gender, age, occupation, disability, religion, beauty, wealth, as well as ethnicity. 

I like to think that I do not engage in conscious negative racist behaviours, but I have been the recipient of unmerited benefits throughout life based on my ethnicity. Since childhood, I kept diaries and reading some of my youthful reflections is truly cringe worthy. Racial slurs rolled off the tip of my pen as I parroted phrases I heard in every day conversation. My parents were good people but they were white, English-speaking citizens of the British Colonial Empire. Indigenous people of other cultures were often referred to as "savages" in the missionary stories we had at home. Racism is deeply rooted in my being.

My assignment this week is to answer the question, "What is your race?" The next question is, "Reflect on the first time you learned what race you were." 

I first identified as a member of the "European" race. 

I was born in South Africa in 1955 when apartheid policies were firmly in place. My father took the picture of me on the left in 1960 and it illustrates well what I normalized in racial identity as far back as I can remember. Everything was segregated as "European" or "Non-European";- buses, neighbourhoods, park benches, restaurants. We were not wealthy, but we had a black servant like every other white family. The servant lived in a small concrete room at the back of our property. 

I am the young girl in the school uniform of my all white primary school. We had no contact with children of other races other than in the church where my parents taught as lay missionaries. My brothers and I sat on the front row and never mixed with the Coloured (mixed-race) people who attended. I learned to be fearful of the "natives" as they were prone to violence and robbery. We returned to Canada in July 1962 when resistance against South Africa's apartheid policies increased within the country and internationally. I never remember race or privilege being discussed in our home and I was an adult before I read about South Africa's colonial history. 

My mother was a primary school teacher and she also taught Sunday School. She had a big box of flannelgraph figures and picture books for telling Bible stories. Every Bible character was white but I never considered for a moment what that looked like for the black children she taught. I loved books and had a set of Enid Blyton's Noddy stories. I grew up reading about Golliwogs, including Golly, Wolly and Ni**er in the series "The Three Golliwogs".  (These books were revised in later editions)

Of course, Noddy's Milk Bar in Durban, South Africa was for white families only. 

It is never too late to reflect on personal biases and the privileges I still have because of my race. I continue to participate in systems that promote ongoing racial inequalities because they are imbedded in our social and economic structures. 

I will conclude with a definition of Critical Race Theory from Britannica.

...Racial inequality emerges from the social, economic, and legal differences that white people create between “races” to maintain elite white interests in labour markets and politics, giving rise to poverty and criminality in many minority communities.