About a year ago, my wife, Olga, found herself in a very interesting conversation with two friends of hers. They happened to be on speaker phone, so I did the natural husband thing and listened to every single word that was said.
Ok, but seriously, I wasn’t listening to everything just for the sake of being nosy; I knew why the phone conversation started in the first place. My wife found herself face to face with an ideology that she’s known about, but being an African is not as familiar with; not as familiar as I would be, having grown up in America.
You can call it ‘woke,’ ‘antiracist,’ ‘equity-minded’ or ‘higgledy-piggledy’ for all I care. I tend to describe it with words like ‘corrosive’ and ‘self-destructive.’
It is an ideology that says Black American living in America, no matter how high we as a collective or as individuals may rise, no matter how much economic power I attain, and no matter how much legislation gets pushed through in our favor, we will always have the short end of the stick. I and our people group will always be oppressed. We will always be powerless. Always have been, and always will be. The ideology says we as Black people are not just descendents of slaves, but slavery personified. And if we are slavery personified, then White people are slave masters, oppressors, colonizers, murderers, rapists, and every other evil one can think of. Period. It doesn’t matter how much they agree with me or not. Even our White allies belong in this category because of the sins of their forefathers.
Listening in on the conversation, I knew this train was on a one way trip to nowheresville, and fast. This conversation was based on a post my wife made about power. She pointed out the simple flaw in the aforementioned ideology’s take on Black and White power dynamics. She made a statement that if there was a famine, and she owned a farm with fruits and veggies, and there wasn’t enough for everyone, that would mean she, a Black South African woman, had to decide who got fed and who did not. This includes White, Black, and any other people coming to her farm for produce. My wife made that example because it has been a real scenario in her life. She was never a farmer, but such predicaments are ones that have been a reality in South Africa. She stated that if she, a Black farmer, had decided to only give food to the Black people, and disregarded anyone who wasn’t Black, that would not only further display her power, it would make her a racist.
A Facebook debate ensued which led to this phone conversation.
What turned the conversation ugly was my wife’s friends embracing of this corrosive ideology. I listened as my wife was taken aback a few times in the conversation when she heard things like “... yeah, but Black people can’t be racist because that requires power which we don’t have…” and other such nonsense. This, mind you, was being said by some of the most privileged American people that I happen to know. Not Black people. American people. But I digress.
The conversation finally got to a point where Olga shared a story with her friends, in her last attempt to reason with the seemingly unreasonable. She told a story about herself when she was in college. For context, Olga grew up in South Africa, is a Black South African, and went to a mixed-race university just a few years after the fall of apartheid in 1994. She was attending college at a time when though the system of apartheid had just ended, high tensions as a result, were very much present. So many of the White students were not happy about what they saw as ‘their’ schools now being open to Blacks, Coloreds, Indians, and other non-White citizens.
Even in this tense environment, Olga was (and still is) an achiever. She managed to get elected to the executive council of the student body which upset some of the White students, but none were more upset than those who were supposed to be her cabinet members. Olga found it hard to get anything done as an executive as her White colleagues - particularly the male ones - would not attend meetings she would call, and generally would not speak with her at all.
In this climate, my wife had a revelation, which she shared with her friends. Just as apartheid was a way of life for many decades for Black South Africans, it was also for White South Africans. The White students didn't even understand why apartheid falling was actually good for the entire country. It was very plausible that their parents may have taught them from childhood that Blacks were inferior and so belonged in subservient positions. Rightly or wrongly, these White students saw this new era as a threat to their way of life. They were right, and their feelings about it were honest, albeit wrong.
Because my wife had this higher level of self and social awareness, she decided to do something very different. She extended an olive branch. From that point on, Olga decided to only speak Afrikaans to her White cabinet members. This was the language everyone was forced to learn during apartheid, and a language many call “the language of our oppressors,” but it was a common language between them nonetheless. This simple language shift not only caused the cabinet members to change their attitudes, they began to see Olga as a human being, not a Black person. Not only that, but soon, they respected her as their leader and attended meetings she ran, ensured the success of her portfolio, and genuinely became her friend and became friendly with other Black people.
I had never heard that story before, and was really proud of my wife for overcoming something that was so socially and culturally embedded in these students and actually changing their perception entirely. To me, this is how you heal a country and move it forward.
There is a pretty famous passage of scripture in the book of Matthew 7:6. Jesus is speaking, and he says:
“Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.
Many of us are familiar with the “pearls before swine’ bit; even those who have no idea where it actually came from. Yes, it came from Jesus, and very parallel sentiments are found in the Babylonian Talmud, Ket. 111a:
"God made Israel swear that they should not reveal the [Messianic] end, and should not reveal the secrets of [of the Torah] to the idolaters."
But I digress again.
I never understood the part of Matthew 7:6 that said “...and turn to attack you.” I understood pigs trampling pearls. Maybe they tried to eat them and realized they were not edible. Being completely ignorant of the value of a pearl, perhaps the pigs tried to dispose of, or even destroy the pearls. And I guess that may make them attack the one who gave them pearls. I get hangry sometimes (hangry = hungry + angry). If someone gave me something I thought was food, and I discovered it wasn’t food as I was eating it, I would probably be furious too.
But I saw the scripture in a whole new light when I saw my wife’s friends respond to her.
Not only did they dismiss the whole story, they were upset that she didn’t basically cuss the White students out, told them to kiss her Black behind, and went on her merry way “like the queen that you are!” Nevermind the fact that her method actually got them to see the error of their ways, and nevermind the fact that she is friends with her former White classmates to this day. No - forget that. She should have told them off.
In the same breath the friends attacked Olga herself; called her weak, and said the story actually made them lose respect for her. Told her the fact that she extended an olive branch proved their point that she was subservient to them. Again, nevermind the fact that she was, in fact, still an executive member of the student body. Nevermind the fact that they literally did anything she asked of them during her tenure. Nevermind the fact that they are friends today. No - forget that. She’s a weakling, undeserving of respect because of how she chose to navigate a newly post-apartheid South Africa with peace and understanding.
Needless to say, the conversation ended just seconds after that. I wanted to step in a few times, but she would motion me not to, and I’m actually glad she did. In retrospect, I think the whole experience with that phone call was for her benefit. Just as she was wise enough to come up with a peaceful and bridge-building solution as a college student in a newly racially mixed school, she will deal a debilitating blow to this self-destructive ideology.
Unfortunately, I don’t believe people like the ones she conversed with can simply have their doctrine reasoned away, and certainly their relationship has taken a drastic shift since that day. They have to first realize there is something fatally wrong with it, and right now, like so many others, they hold onto, embrace, and adhere to it like it is its own religion.
Constantly seeing oneself as a victim really is a drug, and unless one decides to get off of it, one will always find an excuse to keep shooting it in their veins. This goes beyond politics. I know conservatives may agree with not being a victim as a talking point, but can not move on from their own hardships, or push through their own difficulties, real or perceived. Moving forward is a very spiritual principle. Sometimes it can be very difficult, but the end result is so much better than the alternative.
When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”
The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground.
-Exodus 14:10-16
The phone conversation was both frustrating and painful for my wife, but it underscored a principle for both of us again.
Everything for you is ahead of you.
Keep moving forward.