What Racism Actually Takes Away
(+ observations from South Africa)
The other day, I was standing in line at the post office waiting to send off a package.
As I stood, I looked up at the advertised stamp offerings, which included a Black History one, something for nature conservancy, a few others, and the standard American flag motif. I started thinking about the last time I was at the post office, buying stamps, and I asked for the stamps, and the guy handed over a book of American flags. I had thought to myself how I would rather have a different set, but I didn’t want to be a bother, so I didn’t ask.
I didn’t want to be a bother to the postman.
As I stood thinking about this, I realized that this behavior is a really old one for me, and it stems from my childhood and the racism I experienced in my formative years. I went to a grade school with only two other brown kids besides myself, and I quickly developed coping mechanisms for keeping a low profile.
When you’re different, as I was, and when you get ostracized for that difference, you might quickly realize that the best course of action is to not draw attention to yourself-- at all costs. Don’t raise your hand in class, even if you have the answer. Don’t try out for choir. Sit out the basketball game. If you don’t participate, there’s nothing for you to lose. These things can, and do, become lifelong anxieties.
Through this act of self-protection, I never developed a competitive streak. You can’t win if you don’t play the game-- but you won’t be a loser, either. Sort of.
Over time, you begin to believe that these things aren’t for you. Even getting the postage stamps you want. It’s not for you. But believing the world’s offerings aren’t for you— that is a loss, isn’t it?
And so you see, racism does exactly what it is designed to do-- offer the world to some people, but not everyone. This is why we call ourselves marginalized people. We learn that we are to operate on the margins.
As the Trump administration continues to erode every part of American culture that doesn’t directly serve or benefit white men, I’m writing this from Cape Town, South Africa. Sean won a humanitarian award, he’s at a retreat here, and we’ve been exploring the area in our free time. In this case, “the area” is the best part of the coastline with powder white sands, crashing Atlantic waves, Caribbean blue sea, and mountain vistas to rival any in the world.
Trendy restaurants and shops seem (are) specifically designed to cater to white people, and this city feels like a playground for them. While apartheid ended in 1994 (I was already 21 years old at the time) Cape Town is still the most segregated city in Africa, and one of the most segregated and unequal in the world. We have heard several times that while apartheid has “ended,” it has not ended. It’s difficult to find anything at all that reflects Indigenous African culture.
Less than ten minutes drive away from the stretch of beach that gives South Beach vibes and is home to the most expensive homes in the country, the majority of Black South Africans still live in townships and “informal housing,” the same townships created by the apartheid government to force non-white people to live in designated areas-- basically shantytowns put together with corrugated iron and other recycled materials like cardboard.
A tour guide told us that he used to live in a “shack,” like this one, and though he has been living in a house for 10 years, he still carries all of his important documents with him everywhere he goes because of the trauma he suffered knowing how frequently fires would break out in the townships, destroy everything.
These areas still have limited access to basic services such as healthcare, education, and sanitation, though Cape Town is the richest city in the entirety of the country, after neighboring Johannesburg, also of course affected by apartheid. It goes without saying that white people still possess the overwhelming majority of the wealth and land in the country, in spite of being only seven percent of the population. Only four percent of privately-held land is owned by Black South Africans who are nearly 80 percent of South Africa's 60 million population. Black people make up the overwhelming majority of the work force.
As the government has attempted to institute affirmative action plans to help even out some of the inequality, some white South Africans have predictably deemed themselves an oppressed class. You might have read about this in the news, as Trump has declared that he is willing to accept them into America as refugees.
Nearly 70 percent of South Africa’s Black population lives in poverty, while one percent of its white population does.
Just as a mentioned in my newsletter about my visit to Dubai, I don’t have to fly across the world to South Africa to see these disparities, and this hypocrisy playing out. I can drive the five minutes from Minneapolis’ gentrified North Loop to Near North, the city’s Blackest neighborhood. Or, god forbid, I could turn on the news.
We often speak about racism in broad strokes. Using facts and figures and stats, the way I am guilty of doing above. Too rarely do we talk to real people and individuals affected by racism’s devastating effects, which can and do lead to intense mental and physical suffering, including disease and myriad kinds of death.
But its more insidious, subtler effects, like those I experienced, are perhaps more relatable. As Trump is trying to push the calendar back 50 years, and make white men the default setting for every benefit America has to offer, including the ability to work and take care of one’s family, I think it’s really important to individualize racism.
This is why we do the work we do at BIPOC Foodways Alliance. By telling stories of individual people of color and their families through the lens of food, we take the aerial view of racism, segregation, and apartheid out of the question. Instead of a township breezed by on the highway, clucking our tongues at the conditions, we bring in an individual human being and ask them to tell us their story, in depth. Using food as the lens equalizes the experience, and brings us together in a manner that mere words cannot. Throughout these experiences, we gain deeper understanding and empathy— and come away with an awareness that we are all more alike than different.
While most good people of the world know that it is “bad” to discriminate against people based on race or skin color, we rarely look under the hood to find out why, exactly, it is bad. We don’t get into the psychology of a little girl who learned she was better off not playing the game— games that could have developed into lifelong passions, game changers, or life changers.
I might have learned that speaking up in class, the choir, or the postage stamps I want aren’t for me. But people all over the world (including here in Minneapolis) are learning that a body free of sickness, the ability to read or write, or clean water to drink are not for them. All based on the color of one’s skin.
It’s been this way. It’s been this way in South Africa, and it’s been this way in Minneapolis, and today it’s getting worse.
Let’s pay attention. Not just to the perpetrators, who are the loudest and the easiest to notice, but let’s also pay attention to the quietest and most affected.
I wish I could go back to that little girl in class and ask her what’s on her mind. Though I can’t, I can start now.
So can you.
***
Reading:
I needed an escape from All The Things, so I dipped back into one of my all time favorite writers, David Sedaris. His collection of essays, Calypso is nothing short of a delight.
Also, my fellow Minnesota chef and all around mensch, JD Fratzke has recently launched a Substack , Melodies in the ether, where he waxes philosophical and poetic about the industry. He’s good. Check it.
Watching:
Severance and White Lotus, obvi, but on the plane I rediscovered Altlanta, and realized that I had only made it through half of the first season. Looking forward to several more seasons feels like a Christmas Tree lined with wrapped prezzies.
Eating:
Last night Sean made beef bourguignon, a genius move on a -10 degree day, and there’s a vat left in the fridge. I also recently rediscovered goulash, midwest style. I guess you could say we’re comfort eating around here.
My sister, who’s Korean, did a similar disappearing act. For someone with a tremendous amount of energy and personality – and plenty of really deep trauma from being abandoned on the streets of Seoul as a newborn and shuttled between orphanages - she would still do this vanishing act, sometimes if she just felt uncomfortable. My wife watched her do it once, where she had to remind herself to look at my sister as she completely withdrew from a conversation at a table.
Glad for you but sad for the necessity. It was only later that I heard and understood some of the early childhood experiences she had that I was able to breeze through and take for granted through skin color, She also pointedly and immediately disliked a couple Asian friends I had as a kid, and probably still to this day goes through (hopefully less) obsessive germ and skin care pharmaceutical regimes. All rooted in the pervasive trauma of being inside her own skin in America.
I cannot imagine how this was compounded as a constant reminder, growing up in a white family. Even though our block and a couple homes on adjacent blocks also had biracial Jewish families of adoptees.
One time when she was 11 or 12 and my best friend Darran had stayed over, as was often the case, she snuck up to my attic room to snoop on us. I was elsewhere in the house at the time. But Darran told me this a few years ago – she asked him how he could even deal with it and not simply hate white people.
My husband has been laughing at that book all week!