Running Parallel

After interacting with schools, organizations, and folks from South Africa for three weeks, I can't help but to find similarities with the States.

Even though slavery and Jim Crow segregation laws ended several decades ago and Apartheid ended only two decades ago, they both have had long lasting impacts. These impacts can be seen both on interpersonal and institutional level. Institutionally, schools are still incredibly unequal in terms of resources and quality of education.  Schools with majority Black learners in the townships produce significantly less matriculating students than those with primarily White/Afrikaans learners. The one university program we visited in Soweto had a fairly diverse mix of students at the BA level, but diversity was lacking when I looked at the racial makeup of the MA students and professorial staff.

The poverty disparity in terms of race is also incredibly visible in almost every area we've been in. To be fair I haven't seen every part of South Africa, but after having visited Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, and several townships I feel as though I've observed a fair amount of the major areas. But I didn't realize just how unequally wealth is distributed here until I found myself shocked in Durban to see White people asking for spare change. For the entire trip, up until this past weekend, I had only seen Black faces on the streets asking for food or money.  I didn't realize how desensitized I was to the racial background of , to a certain extent, until I was in a more urban area where the population wasn't as homogeneous as the townships.

In many communities, there is also a distrust and lack of emphasis on the importance of education.  The affects of an inoperable government and education system are still evident. Even though in theory everyone has access to some form of education now and the system is compulsory until grade ten, our observations show that students are held to the same expectations nor are they provided with the same affirmations. A course called Life Orientation is offered at many secondary schools, and is meant to provide practical life skills. It was discussed in my class that many White students are taught how to be good bosses/employers, while many Black students are taught how to be good employees. Expectations definitely affect performance and aspirations. If those who educate you tell you, either implicitly or explicitly, that you can only amount to subservient professions, you may begin to believe it.

Some of this may sound a bit bleak, but I have to ask myself, is it really all that unfamiliar?

I grew up in urban areas where the faces of those living in poverty were almost entirely the same color. The school districts New Jersey are also segregated along the lines of class with large implications of race.  School districts had unequal resources and student achievement suffered greatly. the majority of students in colleges are White, especially for upper-level degrees. Granted, the disparities are more striking in South Africa because the majority of the population is Black and not White, but both countries suffer from distorted representations in higher education.

Of course the countries are different, especially in terms of recent past versus distance past of government-sanctioned racism, but as I spend more time here I become more and more shocked by just how similar our current systems are.