"For me, it's always interesting to see how people react when they find out I'm colored."
By Fadia Williams
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It's been eleven years since democracy was forged in South Africa, and black and so-called colored youth are making gains in employment and education. But some young people say when it comes to race, the attitudes of the older generation can make it difficult to completely leave apartheid behind. Youth Radio's Fadia Williams is a 22-year-old student at the University of Cape Town and describes her experiences growing up. (December 9 on NPR's News & Notes with Ed Gordon)
My dad is colored, but he looks white. His dad is Scottish and his mom is Egyptian; so under the apartheid rules, my dad was "Colored Other" because he had foreign parents. My mom, she looks very Indian, and she was plain "Colored" because she had South African colored parents. So when they walked down the street, he'd walk on one side of the street and she'd walk down the other side, because it was against the law for them to be together.
For me, it's always interesting to see how people react when they find out I'm colored. Actually, I exaggerate my accent so they know I'm colored, because I want to be open about who I am.
For example, I work for Clinique, so we're working with beauty products, we're working with makeup. It's in a really posh mall - predominantly white ladies coming up to you and wanting beauty products and makeup, and the funny thing is when they realize you're colored and not white, they'll treat you differently. They'll ask, "Do you know if your supervisor's around?" or "Can I speak to your manager?"
Our parents made us feel that, as young girls growing up in the colored community, makeup and beauty and things were for older white ladies and we shouldn't even go there. Because our parents were a part of the apartheid era, they're making us more aware and conscious of: "You're colored, so you can do this now. Uh, you're colored, where are you going? Do you have white friends? Let's invite your white friends over for dinner. Hmm, I see she's going out with a black guy, that's interesting."
We are becoming more self-conscious of our blackness and our whiteness and our colored-ness. We have to grow up with this and teach our own children, that is not what you're supposed to be thinking about. How do you teach your children, don't look at color and don't look at race, if it's all over and all around us?
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