If you want to see the kinds of things I see every day, go rent "Ali" and watch carefully the last part of the movie, set in Zaire. It was actually shot in Maputo and there are some great external shots, including the airport, the streets and the stadium.
We just watched it at a friend's house (!), a good movie, but a little scattered.
I wrote a note to myself to write about racism. I figure that's appropriate having just watched "Ali" and being reminded of the culture of the 60s and 70s, with the implications worldwide of civil rights.
Right now in many countries in Africa, battles are being fought - and many violent - between whites and blacks. This is, of course, in addition to the infighting between black Africans. It's scary for many people, and as I have to tread lightly in this politically sensitive issue, I will leave it at that.
Much that I am told about is reminiscent of what I have learned about the American civil rights movement. There are eerie parallels in South Africa - well after the end of apartheid, tension and inequality still exists. Well after the civil war, tension and equality still existed. Some would argue, still.
But in countries like Mozambique, which are rebuilding from non-racially divided civil wars, the idea of racism is vastly different.
Just the word alone - race - is up for debate. I may have written on this before, when we had a discussion in training about race, but I am very curious about this subject and how thoroughly artificial the whole debate is.
If you define race along the lines of skin color, you run into all sorts of problems. If a white person is someone who looks like me, and a black person is someone who looks like Diamantino (who has very dark skin), then what is a person who is the product of a "white" and "black" person? In America, they are considered "black", as blacks are the minority. In Moz, they are considered essentially mulatto, or a mixture. Go to India or China, and you'll probably receive different responses. Skin color, as we can easily see, is not an absolute. And it is genetically insignificant - it is as different as the ability to roll your tongue, male pattern baldness or wiggling your ears. So are these races? Or just a shortcut so that we can feel a part of a larger group?
We can also take race to mean nationality, in which case racism comes to be fairly equivalent to xenaphobia and many aspects of foreign policy (open border with Canada, closed border with Mexico, etc.) This definition gets tired when you then try to apply it to a 2nd generation foreign national. If my parents were born in Germany, and I was born in the US, does that make me hyphenated? Likewise, if my great-great-great grandparents were slaves, born in Africa, am I then an African-American? Unless you draw the line at where you yourself identify with the most, and not the nationality your ancestors identify with, it begins to be meaningless. So is race nationality? Sure. But this doesn't make it easier.
Race can also signify culture. Often, nations and cultures are synonymous. But if you dig deep into a culture, or you explore some larger countries, people split fairly clearly along cultural lines. There are clearly exceptions as well, but this seems to be the easiest way to classify people - who and what culture they identify with.
But race, and thus racism, is a product of visible characteristics, because classical racism is personal and violent. At least the American idea of racism is. Really, all of this is giving "race" a bad name. Racism can be a very valuable tool in such countries as Moz, allowing you to communicate better with another culture or speak the correct dialect. Different customs exist in different areas of this country, so knowing these things and prejudging people based upon their race is a necessary process.
What we have in the US is not racism. It's an identity crisis. America is too big and is a mixture of too many people to be slapped with a label as to what the culture defines. So people take every cue they can to separate us by culture - by race. Wear baggy pants? An earring in your right ear only? A fraternity pin?
Have dark skin?
It's just another way to try and figure out how another person acts, and expects others to act.
So with this in mind, I present my current situation.
I am stared at wherever I go here. It is what my culture and nation would identify as rude. But it is because I have light skin, I wear glasses, my clothes are not normal, my hair is different, I walk and talk differently - I am part of a culture Mozambicans don't know very much about, and what they think they know is all through the media which gives Americans a very romantic identity. So why not stare? Yes, it is racism. But, once again, this isn't a bad thing.
I will definitely write more on this later.
Eric called again today - it's great to hear from him. He said that North Korea is threatening NATO allies if the US applies sanctions to N. Korea. With nukes. It's scary, but surreal because I'm so far removed from it.
Peace
John
