Old Takkies Indaba

I’ve never liked the idea of segregation. Its seems so stupid and self defeating. For most of my schooling I went to a whites only school, it was only in Std 9 when I went to a private school that I realized how closeted I’d been. Suddenly I was sharing classes with every colour, class and creed – and it was amazing.
But even before then I’d never liked the idea of ‘exclusive’ schools. All boys schools or all girls schools, Catholics only, Jews only, rich people only, how can anyone expect their child to get a grasp of the wider world around them when they’re only interacting a specific set of people? It can only lead to ignorance, narrow-mindedness and above all fear. Fear of something you don’t understand.

Is fear a reason for apartheid? Or ignorance? Or is it rooted in intolerance and hatred?

While chatting about this subject a couple of weeks ago on a forum, someone suggested that going to an exclusive (read: all white) school was actually a good thing, because how could you become a racist if you’ve never had interaction with a black person… How could you hate something you know nothing about? That doesn’t sound right to me, in fact, I know it’s wrong, but yet…. But yet… there seems to be something there.
None of the people I went to school with are racists. At least I don’t think so, but at the same time they live in small secluded little worlds that don’t allow them to interact with people of different colour or ethnicity. It’s not hatred… it might be fear… I simply think its ignorance. Is that the same thing as racism?

I don’t know.

I do know this: I don’t like segregation. I don’t think it’s good for the country, or the community or the individual.

And yet I still see it all the time. My nephews go to an all Jewish school – and they have little to no interaction with kids of different faiths or class or colour. To them life is all about keeping up with the Jankolowitz’s.

How sad I think, in a time when it’s cool to diversify, to be a part of something bigger, to be exposed to a larger world.

I love my childhood friends, we’ve grown up together, been through so many of life’s important moments, and I see the same traits in them. And it bugs the hell out of me.

Is this the legacy of segregation? Not hatred, but simply apathetic ignorance.
Shit, I hope not. It’s gonna take a long time to sort out this country, any country, if it is.