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Despite the tempting simplicity of reductionist approaches to making sense of our world, many of us are beginning to grapple with the irreducible White women, black men: Same WhatsApp group. Despite the tempting simplicity of reductionist approaches to making sense of our world, many of us are beginning to grapple with the irreducible complexity of life. It is rightly, if slowly, becoming less fashionable to persist in looking at humanity and society through only one lens.
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That is how it should be. We do not live single-story lives, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reminds us, which is an invitation to us all to go beyond seeking to validate our personal and settled views and to move through the world with a curiosity to see what lies beyond them. This is hard work because it means we must be willing to challenge our own convictions, which can be unsettling, not least because the world contains so much danger and uncertainty and we are socialised to seek comfort from it rather than adventure and novelty. I was thinking about all this as I worked my way through Professor Christi van der Westhuizen’s latest book, Sitting Pretty: White Afrikaans Women in Postapartheid South Africa . White, heterosexual, middle-class Afrikaner women are a fascinating lot. They are, on the one hand, victims and survivors of patriarchy and, on the other, beneficiaries of white privilege and, more specifically in the context of South African political history, the apartheid state’s racist accumulation of resources for the chief benefit of the Afrikaner. The proximity of white women to white men means access to resources not available to other race groups and that means one cannot reduce white women to their gender. There is an irreducible complexity in how sex, gender, race, language and class play out on the position of white Afrikaner women. This group finds itself struggling to fit comfortably into a post-apartheid society in which the political power their brothers, fathers, uncles, cousins and sons wielded previously has been ruptured. These women still have intergenerational economic and social power but this comes with the simultaneous struggle of surviving toxic masculinity in and out of their homes, which mimics the experiences of other women. But not all women’s experiences of patriarchy are the same because not all women are equally oppressed or not oppressed in the same way. One caller on my radio show this week identified herself as an Afrikaans-speaking, white, middle-class woman. She recalled growing up outside Kimberley and of having many coloured friends as a child. Now, as an adult in post-apartheid South Africa, she claims it is tough for women like her because economic opportunities have become scarce. She was not rich as a child and now, as an adult, she is not entirely certain of her prospects. She meant well but her story reveals precisely the nature of life at the intersection of oppression and being oppressed. Her story reveals how dangerous it is to view ourselves and the world around us through a single lens. She is a journalist and an author. She survived her childhood and moved through apartheid into a post-apartheid world with much of her livelihood intact, with a career and a sense of purpose. Her name and voice were instantly recognised by my in-studio guest, Van der Westhuizen. What this caller to my show did not consider is the fate of the coloured children she befriended. Does she know what happened to them? Does she know if any of them became journalists and authors? Has she reflected on what it says about her mobility that those childhood friendships that she reflects on with nostalgia are frozen in time? Are they still friends? What of the statistical reality that white women enjoy single-digit unemployment but coloured people like her childhood friends must bear the burden of very high double-digit unemployment levels? The complex truth is that, although this Afrikaner woman may not have a maximally happy life (does anyone?), she has far more privileges, luck, opportunities and resources than many black women, white lesbian women, white working-class women and even black men. One is not either oppressed or an oppressor.
White female seeking black male
White male seeking black female
Despite the tempting simplicity of reductionist approaches to making sense of our world, many of us are beginning to grapple with the irreducible White women, black men: Same WhatsApp group. Despite the tempting simplicity of reductionist approaches to making sense of our world, many of us are beginning to grapple with the irreducible complexity of life. It is rightly, if slowly, becoming less fashionable to persist in looking at humanity and society through only one lens.
ENTER TO THE SITE
That is how it should be. We do not live single-story lives, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reminds us, which is an invitation to us all to go beyond seeking to validate our personal and settled views and to move through the world with a curiosity to see what lies beyond them. This is hard work because it means we must be willing to challenge our own convictions, which can be unsettling, not least because the world contains so much danger and uncertainty and we are socialised to seek comfort from it rather than adventure and novelty. I was thinking about all this as I worked my way through Professor Christi van der Westhuizen’s latest book, Sitting Pretty: White Afrikaans Women in Postapartheid South Africa . White, heterosexual, middle-class Afrikaner women are a fascinating lot. They are, on the one hand, victims and survivors of patriarchy and, on the other, beneficiaries of white privilege and, more specifically in the context of South African political history, the apartheid state’s racist accumulation of resources for the chief benefit of the Afrikaner. The proximity of white women to white men means access to resources not available to other race groups and that means one cannot reduce white women to their gender. There is an irreducible complexity in how sex, gender, race, language and class play out on the position of white Afrikaner women. This group finds itself struggling to fit comfortably into a post-apartheid society in which the political power their brothers, fathers, uncles, cousins and sons wielded previously has been ruptured. These women still have intergenerational economic and social power but this comes with the simultaneous struggle of surviving toxic masculinity in and out of their homes, which mimics the experiences of other women. But not all women’s experiences of patriarchy are the same because not all women are equally oppressed or not oppressed in the same way. One caller on my radio show this week identified herself as an Afrikaans-speaking, white, middle-class woman. She recalled growing up outside Kimberley and of having many coloured friends as a child. Now, as an adult in post-apartheid South Africa, she claims it is tough for women like her because economic opportunities have become scarce. She was not rich as a child and now, as an adult, she is not entirely certain of her prospects. She meant well but her story reveals precisely the nature of life at the intersection of oppression and being oppressed. Her story reveals how dangerous it is to view ourselves and the world around us through a single lens. She is a journalist and an author. She survived her childhood and moved through apartheid into a post-apartheid world with much of her livelihood intact, with a career and a sense of purpose. Her name and voice were instantly recognised by my in-studio guest, Van der Westhuizen. What this caller to my show did not consider is the fate of the coloured children she befriended. Does she know what happened to them? Does she know if any of them became journalists and authors? Has she reflected on what it says about her mobility that those childhood friendships that she reflects on with nostalgia are frozen in time? Are they still friends? What of the statistical reality that white women enjoy single-digit unemployment but coloured people like her childhood friends must bear the burden of very high double-digit unemployment levels? The complex truth is that, although this Afrikaner woman may not have a maximally happy life (does anyone?), she has far more privileges, luck, opportunities and resources than many black women, white lesbian women, white working-class women and even black men. One is not either oppressed or an oppressor.
White female seeking black male
White male seeking black female