I find myself amazed at my long-legged, beautiful co-worker, whose vibrant and vivacious energy is simultaneously delightful and oppressive. She possesses an excitement for life that is so common for newly-graduated 20-somethings who are experiencing city life for the first time, and learning the nuances of the professional world with raw emotion. She grows before our very eyes everyday.
Today I learned that she had never heard about Nelson Mandela, or apartheid, or that white people even lived in South Africa. This from a comment about a South African band she recently discovered (made up of young white men) that she wanted to tell me about, and a song she wanted to play for me.
"I didn't even know there WERE white people in South Africa, that's crazy to me! So I looked it up and now I know all about the different cultures that are there, it's so interesting.." And she went on about how she would like to visit and learn more, and she was so surprised at what there was to learn that she didn't know. And she committed to educating herself.. I love this young woman.
But I am amazed, as I mentioned earlier, at how little she knows about things like apartheid, and Jim Crow and other basic parts of world and American history. It makes me wonder what they are teaching in schools. I knew about all of this as a teenager, and I wonder if it is because I am a person of color, from a mixed race family and diverse community, or is it because my school simply educated us about these things? Where and when did I first hear the name of Nelson Mandela?
Is this phenomenon in part the reason why so many ignorant people claim that racism is dead? Do we lack the basic knowledge about our country's history and outcomes and side effects of these traumas? This is the knowledge that would perhaps offer a widened perspective on the state of race relations today. I don't know.
But it's something to think about, certainly. If we are a nation of undereducated individuals, how do we change that?
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