One of the legacies of the past for my life concerns the issue of social class. The contradictions of my colonial upbringing meant, on the one hand, that as I grew up I had a good early education, with a high enough social status to insulate me from having to question the meaning and value of social status. On the other hand, I did not grow up to feel powerful. Our family had little material wealth to spare, except for the basics. Christian asceticism mitigated to assure that the material possessions we did have were not such things that we could luxuriate in. (This is a point that Western liberals like to strongly contend against, since they equate social status with the possession of material wealth, and refuse to entertain the possibility of a situation without that. For me to argue this point assures them that I am simply being evil and deceptive with the facts. They know what they know, and then there is no getting through to them that there is something that they do not know.)
So I grew up without much of a material buffer from the hardships of life. Perhaps lack of a buffer -- no social security and the like -- was the reason why my father was so often enraged, as he felt his power slipping away from him all too often?
The very thin margin of superior social status that protected me from the direct effects of violence was removed upon emigration. We had to sell everything we had to pay for our exit plane tickets, so that we started life anew.
Many waves of social violence descended on us. Sometimes it was xenophobic violence. There was my father's own increasing misogynistic hostility, as he began to blame everybody but himself for our collective "fall from grace" -- for this was surely how he must have experienced our loss of social status though the lens of his Christian ideology.
The most extreme kind of hostility I have experienced has been of the moralising sort. This is from those who label whites from Africa as being evil. This need to label comes from them, and from their own concerns with social status. So, there is nothing you can do to put this right. They just have a need to see you in a way that elevates themselves in their own eyes. You can change your behaviour, and they will still see the same "evil" motivations in it, and say the same things about you that they were saying when you were doing something entirely different. They just have a need to see you this way, which is very, very strong.
As for the question of any privilege I've had in Western culture, you will see that I haven't had much, although I'm grateful for my opportunity to study. I certainly have not been freely given "choice" to be whomever or whatever I want to be. And, I am aware that I have, at the age of 42, attained a certain amount of freedom to be who I am only at the expense of sacrificing almost everything I was before. I've reached this point only as a result of fighting, to the point of nearly being worn out at times. Emotional exhaustion comes about as a result of nobody listening to your point of view or taking you seriously. Therefore, please tell me about "democracy" as well as a politically bestowed "freedom of expression", as I'd really, really like to hear how these work, and at which point I received these rights.
I know. People will say that this post is packed with "emotion", and that I need to be brought back in line. I need to face reason.
I'm also certain that most Westerners see themselves as "reasonable" enough to apply the stick in the appropriate manner.
Since this is practically inevitable, I only have one mild request: Please, critics, do it for "democracy".
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