I have a friend I met in South Korea, she's White, I'm Black. Mind you, this was not my first rodeo, I've had plenty a Caucasian friends before and no matter how much we hung out, color found its way in the way we non-verbally communicated. There were things done and unsaid that would remind me that I'm Black and somehow less human.
Now this new found White chick of mine is strange. I'm unsure as to whether she's never had Black friends or has had too many, she can't see colour. See I'm South African and she's not.
I bought a pair of shoes, boots in fact.
South Korea has skinny people with tiny feet, you walk around feeling like a giant if you want a size 7 shoe as a woman. Many times I felt like an overweight bigfoot who has to check every step , less she steps on a poor unsuspecting Asian.
Fee fi fo fum watch out China here I come, sort of thing.
It is customary in South Korea, that when you enter someone's house, you need to leave your shoes at the entrance and enter either bare-footed or wearing socks. Why we continued this custom in our own apartments, I have no clue.
So I knocked , walked in and took of my boots. We exchanged the usual pleasantries hugs and hellos. Then she did something very strange. She inquired about my boots then plunked her naked feet in them for size. I wasn't disturbed at her naked feet plunking but rather that she did it in my boot, I'm Black for goodness sake.
In my country, with my national White friends, they won't even touch your shoe with their hand. It becomes so common that you accept it as a way of life. If you bring something over for dinner, it better be bought and very much sealed or else you will be greatly thanked and it will be placed in the fridge. "It looks to good to share, I just want to have it alone." so they say.
This strange White friend of mine didn't stop there, with her colorless, actual, unrehearsed, honestly friendly and human making gestures. I was combing my hair for the night, when I was done , she just took my comb and combed her own....without even wiping it! She had gone too far, I just had to ask her if they had Black people in her country.
She of course looked at me as if I'd snuck in some Soju (alcohol). "Of course dummy!", she said. I explained that in High School ( I went to a model C High school where I was one of 2 Black girls in my grade, so you knew you were Black, even the corner air that you breathed was Black) my so-called friends (no not the left-over Black girl) would brush my head in a loving gesture and then almost immediately wipe their hands thoroughly on their skirts. I did not have greasy hair at all, I had an afro. It was not just my "hair" they wiped off but any part of me that they touched. I could share their food and they would be "too full" to eat mine, even if it was food they knew.
This type of relationship didn't end their, it continued even at Varsity with my other friends of colour, until I somehow accepted it as a way we live, until this crazy White chick showed me a White person totally oblivious to colour! Then I re-learnt that being Black is the wonderful colour of my skin and not a contagious leprositic condition. By the way, HOW DARE SHE DE-COLOUR ME?!!!
I got used to having friends who didn't see colour (dumb move). I returned to South Africa a year later, full of love for a colour-less Human race; until I went to Gateway and needed the bathroom after a movie.
The line at the ladies was long and colourful. The lady in front of me was Indian, when a Black lady (well- dressed and clean looking) came out of the bathroom, she moved aside to indicate that I could go before her, as I motioned forward, a White lady exited a bathroom stall and she leapt for that bathroom.
It didn't strike me as racist at first until I kept seeing it at every mall and every interaction. I walked in at Shimansky in Cape Town, looking for a specific ring I had seen in a magazine, the White sales lady whispered loud enough for my friend to hear "Here come some Black chancers." Lucky for her I didn't hear her and my friend told me when we were on the highway!! She's not the only person who stereotypes and makes such remarks. You see it everywhere, more especially in Durban and Cape Town.
Rainbow nation, that's very true there are many colours in my country. Non-racist, fair, equity centered....my foot!!!! We South Africans don't even know how to describe non-racist let alone what it looks like.
Ps: By the way my South-Korean-met White friend believes that I can melt her AFRO comb with my hair relaxer...oh well, we all have our blond moments but that doesn't make us less lovable!! lol.
Today is your lucky day, I will give you 3 conditions to choose from. Infact you can use all 3 at rotational times and then feel better about yourself, so you can go and eat that yummy sandwich I just ate.
" Forgive me South Africa, pweetty pwease."
WISER AND BADDER!!!!!
