Lately I’ve contemplative about such things as poverty, minorities, and power. Being in South Africa has somewhat helped me to see what it feels like to be a minority, but not really. People can tell that I am not from here, but that doesn’t mean that I understand what it’s like to be a minority. Because I am white, I have power.
I was talking to a vendor in one of the markets in Cape Town last week who is a refuge from Zimbabwe. He was telling me how unhappy he is to be in South Africa. He fled two years ago because of the strife in Zimbabwe and his family just recently joined him within the year. He was forced to leave his occupation in Zim and get a commoners job here. He says that people often treat him as if he is uneducated. And because he is from Zim, he speaks Shona, not Afrikaans or Xhosa, so if he was to be stopped by the police and cannot speak their language, he is automatically a target and is disliked by the locals. But, because I am white, it is extremely rare that I will get pulled over, because of the unspoken intrinsic power that I hold.
This quote from Rob Bell and Don Golden’s new book Jesus Wants to Save the Christians has really got me thinking:
“If you have the power, it can be hard to understand the voice of those who have no power. If you have choice, options, and luxuries, it can be hard to fathom the anger of those who don’t. If you have always had enough food, it can be hard to understand the shouts of those whose stomachs are grumbling from hunger.”
The bottom line: WE CAN’T POSSIBLY UNDERSTAND. I hate this! I am in their country, I’m trying to learn from them, I am living among them, but no matter how HARD I try…I won’t be able to fully comprehen
d. Something that I learned in college and I bring with me everywhere I go, is that the best thing to offer people is our humanity-the fact that we have struggles too, that we, too, are human, that we can understand. But can we?? I don’t feel like I can. I don’t have the life experience that some have. Even amongst my peers I don’t feel like I can understand some of their struggles. And I can’t possibly understand what poverty is really like.
I desire to have a righteous anger for injustice and for the broken, but I just don’t relate.
Along the same lines, the book brought something else up. How can upper class American youth group kids who drink Starbucks, are making $10/hour, who have their own car, and buy a new outfit whenever they so desire, and whose church just raised a ton of money to build a bigger building, and whose government just spend a trillion on the war…relate to the little black kids whose parents are working hard to make $2 a day?
I don’t have any answers. Only questions. And I’m definitely struggling through them since I’m in the thick of it all. I don’t really want the power that I have. I don’t want to be ruled by the god of materialism. All I want is to relate.
