DukeEngage | Duke Center for Civic Engagement

    Today at the Daily Deli, an adorable local café nestled into the mountainside, I had by far the most fascinating, inspiring conversation of the last two months. I was working on my fourth Black Sash educational presentation, when a kind-eyed, middle-aged man moseyed across the terrace and took a seat at an adjacent table. Immediately, he introduced himself as Michael Copley, a real Irishman turned South African citizen and connoisseur of global culture. I spoke about five words before Michael identified me as an American and inquired after my specific hometown. When I named the Boston area, he nearly leapt out of his seat with excitement and began to tell me of his Northeastern adventures with various girlfriends in his youth.
   

     However, the conversation quickly grew more serious as he asked me about my impressions of South Africa. We soon agreed that this is a powerful place- epitomized by the majestic Table Mountain, which never fails to impress and to spiritually move. But the real magic of this power, in a uniquely South African sense, is its ability to inspire positive confrontation. Never have I perceived such a  palpable effort to reconcile and to come to terms with competing historical perspectives. Here, people generally seem committed to confronting past injustices in order to build a unified nation. 

     Now it is important to note that my observation of this “commitment” is a relative statement; I am not blind to the obvious, upsetting, and gross inequalities that currently exist in South Africa. But the mere existence of a conscious effort toward reconciliation impresses me. In the U.S., we have never deliberately opened a popular social dialogue of the histories of race and class in our nation. Maybe this is why we so easily gloss over our own issues of poverty and inequality hidden just below the glimmering façade of American promise.
   

      As Michael said, “With the light comes darkness. With newfound consciousness and awareness emerge the shadows.” Perhaps an understanding of these shadows is a signal of increasing empowerment. In reality, confronting society’s very darkest problems is the first step toward recognizing previously marginalized populations and identifying workable solutions.
 

This week, I began my work at the Black Sash, a prominent NGO focused on achieving the realization of human rights as promised by the extraordinarily progressive South African Constitution. For now, it seems that my days will consist mainly of policy research, archival work, and logistical coordination for upcoming conferences. The most interesting aspect of my time here so far has been the informal conversations with my employer and coworkers. For example, while I was sorting through piles of old historical documents in storage at the Black Sash, I spoke with one woman about her experience as a young Indian girl growing up in a rural community outside of Durban. She candidly explained that as a child, race in her community (even under the stringent segregation of the apartheid regime) was a non-issue. Although she was Indian, she played frequently with children of all colors because they all shared the common background of a rural upbringing. When she married her husband and moved to Cape Town for his work as a structural engineer, however, this young woman was immediately struck by the blatant racial divisions readily apparent in the urban setting. She explained that under apartheid, non-whites had been removed from the city’s interior and that the residual tension of this removal was still palpable, even 15 years after the end of legal segregation. Ultimately, she concluded that she frequently can’t relate to many of the stories that her peers tell of the humiliations of discrimination because she herself simply does not have such memories or experiences to draw from.
 This story reminded me that even when people have experiences different than those of the general collective, those stories are still valid and actually vital to gaining a more complete understanding of a situation. One thing that has confronted me here is the idea that some people have a better understanding of the world than others, that some people’s ideas are more relevant or legitimate. This is not at all true. The minute we dismiss alternative views, we lose the opportunity to enrich our own perspectives and to learn from each other. I am excited to learn from the experiences of my coworkers in the coming weeks and to allow their stories to enrich my grasp of the world.