Recently in Natalie Clifford Category

Re-entry in the USA after a profound experience brings a strange mixture of feelings.  I'm still in a daze not only from lack of sleep over the near 30-hour travel but also from the whirlwind of what we found -- and what found us -- in Cape Town over the past 3 weeks.  Rather, I should say the people we met were easily the best part for me, in conjunction with the ridiculous splendor of the South African landscape.  It's difficult to do justice to the course in words; for now what I can attempt to articulate is a sense of joy and longing (and fatigue, as stated).  I'm all studied out, and can't believe my final semester of university begins tomorrow.  Really not ready, although I couldn't ask for a better experience to propel me and motivate me going forward.

What I found to be most valuable about the course was the importance and centrality given to lived experience.  Not only does paying attention and simply listening to others' stories move us toward potential social justice, it brings us closer as human beings.  As I am exiting my undergraduate career it was crucial that I remember that although I have read a small amount -- don't get me wrong I consider myself a nerd in many respects and do adore reading -- book knowledge often can come along with all kinds of elitism and exclusion, alienating people from the idea that they might know something because they have lived.  Having the opportunity to listen to stories -- whether in watching footage from South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission or visiting homes in the township of Delft -- was extraordinarily powerful.  It has made me seriously consider whether or not (or where) I want to go into the academy, which typically (depending upon the department or specialty) devalues knowledge coming from experience rather than books.  I've been leaning more and more recently toward education work in my future, but that could of course take many forms.  Things may change over time; however I'm convinced that the right kind of genuine education -- sharing the humble curiousity which children so easily employ -- in any case is vital to sustaining respect for others.  As Thomas Szasz wrote,

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily.

and bell hooks:

the engaged voice must never be fixed and absolute but always changing, always evolving in dialogue with a world beyond itself.

Thanks to Nate's instruction and openness, in addition to the many people encountered on this trip, I've found the above practices to be ever so necessary in everything we did on this wonderful course.  I have come to more concretely appreciate the fact that learning when done right must include everyone's voice, or else we continue moving away from any meaningful relationships and bury ourselves in ego and ignorance.

Nelson Mandela was held at Robben Island for 18 of the 27 years he was treated as a political prisoner.  Receiving a tour of the prison itself on Sunday from a former political prisoner who endured both physical and psychological torture at the maximum security prison was a humbling experience.  Additionally, our bus guide was a man named Yassin Mohamed, once general secretary of the African National Congress -- the resistance party which Mandela was leading when he was imprisoned in 1962.  Both of these men provided insightful commentary on the history of the island throughout centuries of colonialism.  More recently -- at a reunion held in 1996 (?) after all prisoners were freed in 1991 -- apparently the former political prisoners suggested the idea of turning Robben Island into a museum.

Throughout the tour I had a gnawing feeling in my stomach; I was deeply troubled.  Although I don't have any knowledge of the prison system in South Africa, all I have heard people say is that they are grossly overcrowded.  With the unemployment rate at 43%, I wouldn't be surprised if the South African situation bore some similarities to the USA's increasing criminalization of the poor over the past 30 years.  In the United States, the prison is not a historical artifact.  Rather, it is a modern reality, a tool of power through which the state exploits and systematically is working to disenfranchise poor folks and people of color (from what I've read, particularly Blacks and Latinos).  White supremacy is alive and thriving -- and in the case of prisons in the US, white supremacy's effects are growing and shifting.  For instance, immigration detention centers and Guantanamo Bay detention center -- located on a military base in Cuba where detainees essentially have no rights -- are mirrors witnessing the United States' abuse of people living through conditions of exploitation.  As Colorlines writes,

"America's immigration detention centers are in the business of warehousing men and women who have suffered trauma--the sorts of people whom reasonable governments should aim to protect, and indeed whom the U.S. has laws to protect.  Instead, they are locked up, thrown into these legal purgatories and traded as pawns in a political and financial game.  The Obama administration has deported more people in each of its first three years than any previous year--almost 1.2 million in the last three years--and it needs more space to lock those people up. The detention business is now booming.  Unlike people held on criminal charges, immigrant detainees are not afforded the Sixth Amendment right to legal counsel. Since deportation is not formally considered a punishment, but an administrative consequence for violating a civil law--crossing the border--they have no right to an attorney. Only 16 percent of detainees have legal representation... in the legal system they retain few of the rights that we expect of the criminal justice system." *

Seeing Robben Island provided a chilling reminder of not only the dangers of political repression but also the real need for outspoken organizing regarding prisoners' and detainees' rights.  Furthermore, the ways in which resources for education are disproportionately divested away from low-income communities and communities of color are crucially intertwined with the rates of incarceration affecting those communities.  Robben Island therefore re-affirmed my drive for organizing in my own city rather than seeking to bring my own uninformed ideas of change to entire other countries.  However, the growth of global and international studies within our own University at the expense of departments like Chicano, Asian-American, American Indian, and African-American and African studies is not accidental and reflects larger problems within the types of knowledge valued.  We have a responsibility to ask -- who is our University educating?  Why?  How?  Toward what goals is the imagined 'community' of the University supposed to be striving?

We read Ivan Illich's incisive and truth-filled piece to Hell with Good Intentions as a perfect grounding for soon exiting South Africa and re-entering the USA.  Even the best of intentions can bear severe damaging consequences, unless we listen to peoples' stories and inquire humbly.

* See Colorlines' story on immigration jails.

Visiting the Crypt of Saint George's Cathedral and watching footage from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has forced me to confront my own need to reconcile myself with questions I've left untouched for a couple of years since graduating from my high school.  I attended a private Christian school in the suburbs of the Twin Cities for 6 years, from age 12 to 17 -- a very formative period in a young person's life.  Thinking about it recently, I realized that at the time of enrolling in college (fall 2008) I had spent fully 1/3 of my life in that institution.  Before I continue, I must state that I am quite grateful to my parents for the opportunity to attend the school.  Furthermore, it's necessary to recall that my ability to attend the school was deeply related to my family's economic privilege and the disproportionate association of wealth with whiteness as well (another discussion in itself).

Growing up raised Roman Catholic and attending the school hugely affected my own thoughts on religion and spirituality.  Although I was confirmed Catholic at the age of 15, I struggled to grasp what I felt most of the other students at my school possessed -- faith.  Constantly attempting to make logical sense of what I was learning and supposed to take at face value in Scripture and Catholic doctrine classes, I grew incredibly frustrated with trying to find my place in Catholic faith.  Eventually, graduating from the school and attending 2 different colleges helped me to see that I didn't need to 'fit' a particular box, nor was faith something measurable.  However, I have found that in the past year and 1/2 since transferring to University of Minnesota, I have not made time for the deep philosophical ponderings which used to occupy much of my mind.

Being heavily involved in the LGBTQ community initially drove me further from my cultural Catholicism (though auras of guilt as a byproduct of my Catholic upbringing is something I've found never quite leaves -- apparently a trend amongst some Catholics, haha).  Nonetheless, I've come to have serious problems with the ways in which mainstream gay and lesbian activists often shame religious folks as universally unaccepting and full of hatred, escaping balanced analysis and allowing dehumanized dismissal of a huge population who is seeking to provide love and support.  Not only that, but many peoples' religious beliefs play a central role in driving their civic and community organizing.

Within the context of South Africa, therefore, I've found myself very drawn to former Archbishop Desmond Tutu's words on forgiveness and the spiritual drive toward true social justice.  At its root what Tutu writes is that we as humans yearn to live respectfully with each other.  "To work for reconciliation is to want to realise God's dream for humanity -- when we will know that we are indeed members of one family, bound together in a delicate network of interdependence.  If we are going to move on and build a new kind of world community there must be a way in which we can deal effectively with a sordid past."



In no way does Tutu trivialize the terrible horrors perpetrated by the apartheid regime.  Rather, he condemns them wholeheartedly.  I have had some difficulty with Tutu's words given my own understanding of the irrevocable damage which white supremacy, capitalism, and other interconnected systems of oppression wreak upon people.  Forgiveness is not at all an easy task, and it seems an imbalanced and unfair burden to place upon folks experiencing marginalization most immediately.  I am still working through this, but it is safe to say that here in South Africa I have thus begun to see more concretely how spiritual beliefs can provide a powerful lens for engaging in compassionate and challenging dialogue with others.  Given my own constant learning process for ways to enact genuine relationships with others -- especially in the context of working toward something to better societal conditions and life in general -- South Africa has been helpful in my own quest for meaningful, respectful spiritual expression.

Yesterday here in Cape Town, we visited the District Six Museum, Saint George's Cathedral Crypt (where former Archbishop Desmond Tutu was priest), and the Iziko Slave Lodge, which is the oldest physical monument representing slavery in South Africa.  I wish I had more time at each of these places because there was an immense amount of information presented.  We were privileged that the guides at the District Six Museum and the Crypt shared firsthand experience concerning the historical happenings we were learning about.  Joe was a former resident of District Six, while the woman at the Crypt participated in the 1989 Peace March of 30,000 South Africans demanding an end to apartheid, imagining the possibility of another world -- "to proclaim that another world was possible; a world in which the dignity of every person was respected and her promise of freedom and democracy would be available to all."*

Within fifteen minutes of both the guides' informative talks -- at District Six and the Crypt -- each stated that the major problem behind the terrible mistreatment and exploitation of people of color and poor folks was greed and selfishness.  They went on to name these vices as both spawning and stemming from a capitalist economic system, one which is rooted in profit through exploitation, as well as privileging the individual versus communal good.  Although I study capitalism within the confines of the academy -- doing my best to co-integrate what I'm striving to learn through community organizing with those studies -- it was compelling to me to hear folks talk about it so openly.  As a mass in the United States, we're simply very close-minded to conversations on the possibility of socialism.  Much of this is essentially linked to our government's representation of socialism as the enemy of freedom, typically understood through free-market capitalism (which we've already established is exploitative).  The US government will hardly let US residents travel to Cuba, a place whose socialist government played an absolutely key role in the eventual overthrow of the South African apartheid regime.

How does capitalism then play out on the ground in the context of South Africa and the US?  The extent to which people have gone -- and continue to go -- to displace others from their homes in order to achieve wealth for themselves is appalling and disturbing.  Moreover, a careful eye to history reveals the frightening, great harm we can inflict upon each other in search of profit.  One instance reflective of this damage is the basis for the District Six Museum:  the Afrikaans (White Dutch) government's forced removal of communities of color from their residences through the Group Areas Act of 1950.  Before pointing all fingers at the South African government, however, it is necessary to reflect upon our own nation's past and present abuse of people of color, poor people, and immigrants (among many groups systematically marginalized).  Amongst other reasons, the economic prowess of the US is a result of our country's use of slavery as a violent system of unpaid labor, destruction of slave families, and genocide of the indigenous peoples inhabiting North America.  We can therefore see that South Africa's designation of the diversity-rich District Six of Cape Town as White only parallels the construction of highway Interstate 94 in Saint Paul during the 1960s.  The construction split through the historic Rondo neighborhood, home to a thriving Black community.**  Similarly, since a tornado hit North Minneapolis in May 2011, newly developed homes are replacing destroyed homes at highly unaffordable prices for previous owners or tenants.  It doesn't take much to realize that the economic disparities and challenges facing communities is obviously not some inherent pathological issue but in fact an intentional state-enforced deprivation, resulting from centuries of institutionalized white supremacy rooted in the vicious veins of capitalism.

For these reasons, evident throughout our trip have been the ways in which white supremacy and capitalism work together to weaken and break down families, which are necessary to the growth, health, and transmission of cultures and traditions.  The pass laws of apartheid South Africa served to extract very underpaid labor from African and colored*** people exiled to the Cape Flats, or townships at the outskirts of cities.  Having grown up in District Six, displaced in the 1960s, our guide Joe described to us that the apartheid regime's movement of people far outside the city brought longer days and more time away from family for these folks.  Travel to and from the city, in addition to the need to find shopping in Cape Town -- due to the lack of shops accessible in the townships -- elongated the days and deprived working parents of sleep.  How long does it take before people begin to break and snap at each other? Joe asked.  The devil finds work for idle hands, he continued, sharing stories of increased gang formation and violence.

We'll begin service-learning in the township of Delft tomorrow officially, after orientation this morning.  I am wholeheartedly looking forward to working with children -- I brought my jump ropes.  The folks at Afrika Tikkun gave us a welcome and introduction toward recognizing what we and the folks in the township can learn from each other, emphasizing shared human solidarity.  Not only that, but in the past week and a half, we've done a lot of reflecting and reading on 'coming in right' -- beyond naming privilege; rather further emphasizing the need to heal ourselves before being able to fully and effectively support others.  Finally, as I addressed earlier in the post, we're relating what we're seeing here to larger worldwide patterns in the webs of oppression.

* Saint George's Cathedral Crypt, a place of memory and witness:  http://www.archivalplatform.org/news/entry/st_georges_cathedral/.
** Visit the Minnesota Historical Society's website for more information:  http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/112rondo.html.
*** A term used commonly in South Africa to refer to people who are not Indian, African, or White.  See the history of South Africa's racial designations under apartheid.

I just returned home from an event run by two of my friends who are youth workers, collaborating with young people of color to give voice to educational inequities.* I was inspired by the high school students and community members who shared their stories, naming the disturbing -- yet unfortunately unsurprising -- ways that wealth affects the quality of schools in the United States. What has become effectively a policy of depriving resources to communities of color and low-income communities is a key, root cause of disproportionately high rates of imprisonment of these same groups. Lack of access to quality education and thus employment opportunities profoundly impacts young people's lives -- preventing some from being leaders simply because they are not white and/or don't have money.

Hearing these stories, surrounded by many dear friends, I was reminded why I'm looking forward to experiencing a few brief weeks in South Africa. Certainly I'm grateful to have the privilege to travel halfway around the world, see beautiful mountains, and meet some activists and children who I hear are wonderful. Nonetheless, I must also never forget myself as a college-educated White American with the economic opportunity to pursue this experience -- reminiscent of colonial travel to 'exotic' places far from home -- with responsibilities to address the many injustices ingrained in our society, within Minneapolis / Saint Paul and the University of Minnesota itself. I realize that I'm constantly thinking about how my experience in South Africa can provide insights into organizing with others to fight for changes in the United States, a country founded upon the creation of white supremacy. I'm reminded that endeavors to change centuries old systems aren't a one-time act but rather works in progress, moving in multiple directions and entailing frequent mistakes, instead of a singular march toward some particular arrival point. I don't expect an answer of sorts but I do look forward to being away from the Twin Cities, processing and reflecting on the ways I'm implicated in this experience while it's also affecting my political consciousness uniquely.

I signed up to go to South Africa because I'd heard from some good friends of mine that they underwent significant changes personally. I plan to put my whole self into this trip and soak up every ounce of learning I can, in order to reflect more on what I can do at home here in the United States. Ultimately, we must strive to uproot the legacies of apartheid maintained within our own borders.

*Their organization is called the Youth Education Justice Initiative (YEJI) -- please find them on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YEJImn or Twitter @YEJImn.