The Racism Rundown (incomplete)

Every time I spend all day writing a blog, I go to publish it and then it magically deletes it all and makes me sign in again. I realize that this is partially my fault, and partially the fault of the all-knowing internet, but I will retype this blog.

I just wanted to have something to publish today.

I spend a lot of time writing about how much fun I'm having.
I am having fun, actually.
But this place is not all party, I promise.

I've been actively avoiding trying to encapsulate this place entirely, avoiding telling you the things that irk me or the things that are starting to grate at me.

But it's time.

I've opened my eyes to the true nature of life in and around Cape Town and found that all that glitters is not gold. The sandhill in Vrygrond, the largest single standing free space in the township, covered in glass that glints under the South African sun, is testament to the waste of beautiful natural resources and careless disregard for the environment. The trash that litters the roads, blowing in the wind, corroborates that testimony.
There are so many silent reminders here about lack of education, lack of resources, lack of exposure.
Because so much of it is exposure.

I'm starting to get sick of the racism that floods around the people, weaving their daily lives into a sort of battle pitting them against what they construe to be "other." Other is any color but their own.
To be with blacks is shameful, to be with the colored, the same.
I have said that I walk the lines between the three, and from all sides, I hear the same. "They don't want us here," the chorus echoes, black voices blending with white. And the colored people are pitted with the blacks by the whites, but are steadfast in their disapproval of black culture.

It starts at home. Priscilla hates black people. Her paranoia is contagious. At every sound, she runs to the front window, checking nervously for signs of intruders. The gates are padlocked, the alarms set. Anyone who walks down the street, anyone black, does not belong. She speaks ill of them, calling them "illiterate," a designation I find to be mildly amusing based on the fact that her hatred betrays her own lack of education. She spits the word, feeling its venom tingling against her tongue, I can tell.

Her fear keeps her from traveling anywhere. She refuses to go into town, she refuses to go anywhere but her church, her work, the shops.

Everyone accuses everyone else of everything - but isn't that the same as it always is?
I worry that change won't come during my lifetime. I worry that if it does come, it will come in the form of a civil war.

Everywhere here there is a sense of stagnancy, of change that hasn't come, of fear, of lowered expectations, but of hope.
But there are no actions.