She was sitting in class then started speaking to the girl across her in vernac. The white math teacher then said “stop that, it’s not Africa time now.” the class went quiet. That is just a day to day thing you can expect in school. With the growth of the black middle class we assume such utterances of racism are normal. Not only that but our society is in denial with the fact that people can still be and are racist. I go to a model-C school in Pretoria, it is owned by Advtech a company listed in the JSE. School fees alone are just well over R100k per year. Kids of a lot of important people go to my school and the only interest that my school has is that they silence the voices of its students. For instance a child posted on snapchat about the issue of a leaking drain that took the school forever to fix, and immediately the child was going to face possible suspension if they did not take the Snap down, that is one of the few instances where the power of the school has been used as an intimidation technique. What happened at Pretoria girls high is rough, and coming out like that was scary. Even the black kids at my school including school administration were holding their breath; there was and still is tension in the corridors. School is no longer an institute of learning, it has become a place where you are forced to conform, a space where you have to constantly fear and further a space authority exercises autonomy over you.
What I have noticed is that black kids in most model C schools or kids from the growing black middle class are silent with regards to issues of race. Our South African society is filled with instances of white supremacy and privileges; it’s as if we fear an exclusion from the environment and society our parents have worked to surround us with. I have this grading system set up on how harsh school is on people who are marginalised, from 1-3 one being the least harsh and 3 being the worst concoction ever:
1. Being black is horrible, I mean we’re excellent in all aspects of life *does hair flip* but going to school where you have to suffer due to institutionalized racism and further through indirect racism in classrooms that many learners in basic education experience.
2. Being black and female, so add the above paragraph to this point. Already women are sidelined and viewed as irregularities of humanity. There is rape culture, over sexualisation and further the denial that the female sexuality exists. We all know that things such as unequal pay and the undermining of women exists but don’t forget to add all that to being black. Being alive is a workout for me, but it still continues.
3. Being gay, black, and female. I am all three, *weeps silently*. No jokes people are homophobic as hell, especially in high school. I have even experienced teachers first hand saying things such as “the right one (being male) is still on his way”. Especially teenage boys that oversexualise being lesbian cause I fit into their porno category. Even the school syllabus is heteronormative. This added to being black and female is really painful, sometimes keeping quiet about my sexuality feels safer especially at school since I’m not much of target if I only have my blackness and femininity.
What is written cannot highlight the pain of the black child, especially since whenever you experience your pain it’s as if you’re suffering from the illness of black inferiority. I’m not trying to centre the issue around myself but we need to understand that as black people things will not improve within our learning institutions unless we start up spaces where our black kids can be themselves. We need more black owned schools, we need more black spaces in general and white people within society are not getting the issues that are attached with being black. This is how it starts in terms of shedding the upsetting narrative that black people especially the emerging black middle class that feel that their suffering is a part of the package.
[ABTM id=6645]
