Lindsay reflecting on what she's learned

As this is a collegiate study abroad trip and we have been taking classes, I feel like I should write a little bit about what I’ve learned since being on this trip. For those that don’t know my schedule for the past few months has been working at Christel House Monday-Wednesday, class Tuesday night, and 2 classes Thursday. The three classes we take are; South African History and Politics, an Interdisciplinary course which focuses on the structure and function of NGOs, and Comparative Study of Race & Gender in South Africa and the United States. Considering that I have never previously learned anything about these subjects I have had a lot of learning to do. Our group is a whole mix of majors ranging from Allied Health to Political Science to Secondary Earth Science (that last one is me).

This trip was my first exposure to studying human rights and looking at social systems critically. Probably the most interesting thing has been looking into social injustice at home and seeing how similar it is to here in South Africa even though legal discrimination was only ended some 20 years ago. I’ve learned how silently racism works, mainly because it is never addressed. I can’t remember the last time, or even if ever that I talked openly about race. If you are out somewhere and are trying to point a person out to someone before addressing skin color its what they’re wearing or other attributes like what their hair looks like. Even if they are the only black person in the room there’s a weird taboo about saying, ‘Oh you see that black person…’ the word black would have to be whispered or just spoken under your breath. I’ve grown up not acknowledging race and playing along with the invisibility of racism.

Here in South Africa race is overt. They frequently refer to each other by race because in their recent history their government classified them into these races. There’s no hiding from race, and I think that works globally. Ignoring other people’s race is ignoring their culture, the disadvantages that come with being that color, being ‘colorblind’ doesn’t help anyone and that is an important lesson I’ve learned. The idea of white privilege is one that I knew of but wasn’t comfortable with accepting. After one movie I walked away frustrated and guilty for being white, unable to answer why I was given advantages and yet blamed for having them. I came to the conclusion that I don’t know why I was born the way I was or why I was treated differently because of it and it took me stating this about myself to understand racism as seen from those that racism works against.

 Racism is just one thing that I have learned about on top of more concrete things such as the history of South Africa, how the political system is structured, and the functioning of NGOs. This has been one of the most educational semesters of my college experience, although I am only 4 semesters in. But even though I’m taking 7 classes next semester, I don’t think any course load will teach me as much as I have learned on this trip