Skip to main content

Hey, you know any Zulus?

Image
By

One of the rather surprising things I've noticed here is the fine-grained nature of discrimination. Sure, there's plenty of the standard "all blacks are X" sort of thing, but I often hear more specific complaints. I had heard stories of this sort of thing, but hadn't experienced it myself up close until last weekend. I was buying some blank DVDs at a small shop and, as he was putting the discs into sleeves, he asked, "Hey, you know any Zulus?"

"A couple," I said.

"Are they looking for a job?"

"I don't think so."

He sighed wistfully. "I could use a good Zulu...how about Coloureds?"

"I know a few, but they've got pretty good jobs already."

"You aren't looking for a job, are you?"

I laughed. "Not at the moment, but I'll let you know if something opens up."

"I just don't want to hire another Tswana. I just fired the fourth Tswana this month. They're lazy people, you know. Don't want to work."

I shrugged. "If I run into any industrious folk, I'll send them your way."

One of the more troubling effects I've noticed is that I've become rather inured to blatant racism. Something like that would have provoked an enormous reaction a year ago, but with a dozen conversations with drunken Afrikaners ranting about the "fucking kaffirs," it just rolls off. Hopefully I can regain some perspective when I come home.

Labels:

Comments

  1. JesseSeptember 15, 2010 at 6:21 PM

    Yeah.. heard the K word and wasn't overly shocked, sadly enough. Most Afrikaaner's around my area would never use such a term, but I have heard jokes about Aborigines in Australia, or "Abbos".

    What was shocking is seeing a newspaper title in Boksburg that read

    "Deranged Appie Kills White Couple in Home Invasion!"

    Appie is apparently similar to "Ape"?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Did Reality Winner Leak to the Intercept?

By
So Reality Winner, former NSA contractor, is in federal prison for leaking classified information — for five years and three months, the longest sentence of any whistleblower in history. She gave documents on how Russia had attempted to hack vendors of election machinery and software to The Intercept , which completely bungled basic security procedures (according to a recent New York Times piece from Ben Smith, the main fault lay with Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito ), leading to her capture within hours. Winner recently contracted COVID-19 in prison, and is reportedly suffering some lingering aftereffects. Glenn Greenwald has been furiously denying that he had anything at all to do with the Winner clusterfuck, and I recently got in an argument with him about it on Twitter. I read a New York story about Winner, which clearly implies that she was listening to the Intercepted podcast of March 22, 2017 , where Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill expressed skepticism about Russia actually b
Post a Comment
Read more

Varanus albigularis albigularis

By
That is the Latin name for the white-throated monitor lizard , a large reptile native to southern Africa that can grow up to two meters long (see pictures of one at the Oakland Zoo here ). In Setswana, it's called a "gopane." I saw one of these in my village yesterday on the way back from my run. Some kids from school found it in the riverbed and tortured it to death, stabbing out its eyes, cutting off its tail, and gutting it which finally killed it. It seemed to be a female as there were a bunch of round white things I can only imagine were eggs amongst the guts. I only arrived after it was already dead, but they described what had happened with much hilarity and re-enactment. When I asked why they killed it, they said it was because it would eat their chickens and eggs, which is probably true, and because it sucks blood from people, which is completely ridiculous. It might bite a person, but not unless threatened. It seems roughly the same as killing wolves that
4 comments
Read more

Internet Writing and the Content Vacuum

By
It's been a few times now I've had full weekday control of the Monthly 's headline blog, Political Animal, and I feel like I have a decent idea now what it's like being at the top level of blogging. (Not to say that I am  at the top level, of course, just that I've walked in those shoes for a few days and gotten some blisters.) Anyway, the first thing I've noticed is that it is really, really hard to do well. I've had days before when I just didn't have anything to do and ended up at home writing 4-5 posts in one day on this site, but pro blogging is an entirely different beast. The expectation is that during the day you will write 10-12 posts. This includes an intro music video, a lunch links post, and evening links and/or video. So that means 7-9 short, punchy essays on something , with maybe 1-2 of those being longer and more worked out thoughts. This ferocious demand for content is both good and bad. The iron weight of responsibiliy—the knowledge
7 comments
Read more