Just Because I'm White

None of my blogs so far have mentioned anything controversial, or anything about the thing which has created the most anger and hurt in me when I have visited or lived in developed countries overseas.

It’s striking how different people’s reactions, questions, judgements and observations are when they find out where I am from. I remember when I spent some time in Denmark at a boarding school, it took people time, but everyone eventually asked me some variation of ‘If you’re from Africa, why are you white?’ The same often happened when I was travelling around America. This question, whilst displaying a certain level of ignorance, doesn’t piss me off too much, because when people are asking this question, it means they don’t know the history of colonialism in Africa, so they haven’t formed their opinions of it, and so they don’t start out getting to know me with their own judgements already formed in their mind.

Another question which is significantly more irritating, is when someone asks me “Oh, you have a farm – how many slaves do you have?” It’s often said as a joke, and outwardly I try to take it like that, but it’s also extremely offensive to me, and to all Zimbabweans. Sometimes I can’t help but show my disgust at this question, and people immediately back off, and I hope they realise how stupid the question really is.

However, the thing which makes me the most angry is when I meet someone, and they ask me about my home, but I can tell that they have already formed the opinion, before they’ve heard me utter one word, that because I am a white person from Africa, my family and I must be racist and we must exploit black people for our own gain. Most of the time, these people have never stepped foot on the African continent - and they think of Africa as one big place, rather than 54 separate countries, each with their own people, beliefs, cultures and beauty – yet they think it is their place to

1. Judge me

2. Be offended on behalf of people whose story they don’t know one single piece of.

I'm not saying there is no such thing as white privilege, and I’m not saying there is no racism in Zimbabwe, or South Africa, or any other country where different races live side by side – there definitely is - but this doesn’t only apply to us. Racism exists in every country in the world. Sometimes it’s people being racist to people of the same race from other countries that they consider to be less than them, or who have cultures they don’t approve of, or who they feel are stealing their jobs. Sometimes it’s people who feel that they have suffered an injustice from another race. I think what I wish everyone would understand, is that you can’t paint an entire race, from an entire country or continent, with the same brush just because one or a group of people from that race did something terrible to you or your family. If someone does something terrible to you, chances are they have done something terrible to someone else as well, and that person may have been the same race as them – this is just a horrible person – they don’t come from a horrible race.

In Zimbabwe, people are not afraid to call a white person a white person, or a black person, a black person. As long as you are saying it in the right tone of voice, it’s not offensive. Yet, here, in the first world, it’s somehow offensive if I call a black person black. I don’t understand it, and even though it would make my life easier, I don’t want to change some parts of me, because deep down inside me, I know I am not a bad person – I’m never setting out to put someone down or make them unhappy. I am comfortable with the relationship I have with my black, white and mixed-race friends at home. We make fun of each other’s cultures; my friends sometimes tell me I must be ‘black on the inside’ because of how I sometimes speak – we are comfortable with each other. We aren’t perfect, our entire race isn’t perfect, but we don’t want to be judged by people who have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.

So please, next time you want to judge someone on the basis of what colour they are, what language they speak and where they come from, make sure you know what you’re actually talking about. In fact, if you haven’t been to their country and seen how people live and interact with each other, don’t say a fucking thing.