Hi and welcome to my blog! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting and do come back.

I have just received an email outlining the difference between the white race and any other race having racial pride. The email illustrates (very well I might add) that it is OK for Black people to have rallies, groups, parades, protests, pride, dedicated funds, colleges, schools and many other things, but when a school is explicitly for white people it is a racist school. Oprah’s new school is a good example I think.

This email is more American-centric than South African-centric so much of it is not applicable. However I do think that there is a lot of truth to this sort of mentality. The race card is played very often by various demographics in SA. I am classified (I am not sure who does this sort of classification any more) as a white male although I have never looked like any classically white male in my life. This has really never had an impact on my life. Yet I have dealt with the race card in various situations.

I studied Politics back at Rhodes University. I will never forget the day that I almost received the beating of my life when I tried to proclaim that I was an African. I believe that I am African. I am born and bred in Africa and that makes me African. Mark Shuttleworth has launched his Ubuntu Linux System and I believe that he is a man who truly understands the concept of Ubuntu. So is he not African?

In the end, I am all for having pride for oneself, for ones culture and for anything else that anyone wished to be proud of as long as that pride is not inflicting some sort of harm on anyone else. I am not talking about a perceived harm here, where one persons belief system conflicts with another persons belief system, that is avoidable and resolvable to a certain livable extent. I am talking about harm in the true sense of the word.
Read the rest of this entry »