Be certain of what you rant and rave about

A very long time ago, this guy I knew was viciously beaten up at a party, thankfully this rough neck that we had just met came to his aid and started smacking left, .right and centre. I was so grateful for his courage and willingness to help an absolute stranger. A few months into being my friend’s boyfriend, he started to smack her around and naturally I was outraged, ready to tear him apart.

I have written so many blogs on slipping student behaviour in lecture halls and basically in every academic area. This week I was overcome by giggles in two politics lectures, which was fuelled by not being able to laugh because I was in a lecture. An d was reprimanded by lecturer and told to “Shush!” by a fellow student.

On Wednesday I wrote a blog on racism and condemning two guys for their racist outlook on life but just the other day I had a “that’s typical” i.e. “that’s black” behaviour.

I also criticised girls in my post, “Silly Girls” on their predictability when it comes to boys and how their intelligence goes out the window as soon as a guy shoots them a drunken look. Yet I do the same thing religiously.

I hope you can see where I am going with this...

Every time something terrible, distasteful or disagreeable happens I am the first to get on the blogpost-band wagon and criticize the hell out of these incidents but as soon as I am faced with the similar situation I end up condoning
1) Violence
2) Disrespectful behaviour
3) Racism
4) Acting like a bimbo

It is never a bad thing to aspire to overcome bad traits and just because you are not Mother Teresa does not mean that you have no right to write. We just need to be aware of how easily it is to let what you so strongly believe in slide out the back door when we find ourselves in similar situations.

Racism is not something that happens in the subconcious

On Saturday night after unsuccessfully trying to work we arrived at the Rat (I have to state that it was my first time just to emphasise how low I was prepared to go to cheer myself up). Anyway we met a guy friend of one of my friends and his “crew”, of which two worked in the circus and the rest just behaved as if they did as well. About 10 minutes into a conversation about their careers, one of the idiots replied, “I tell that k***** to move those boxes over there”, this was followed by a few more racist remarks in reference to some black students who were in suites at the party. The three of us protested but you could see that it went in the one ear and out the other. Naturally the evening ended shortly after that but on our way out we heard two white guys saying the same racist remarks. We had had enough so told them to shut it and all they could say was that, “evidently you girls do not live in the real world and you think Grahamstown is the only place on earth”. They then said something about the naivety of first years and that we needed to get mugged and then will be just as racist.

I do not think that naivety or being a first year has anything to do with being a racist or not. It is so easy to go around and blame everything on black people but even though I am incredibly naïve according to that bight racist spark, I am mature enough to know that racism is a personal choice and that there are better ways to deal with muggings and such events. I will admit that I had a similar attitude when I arrived at Rhodes, and at first I would say that I was racist without realising and that I could not control my thoughts. But I have come to realise that racism is an active choice not something that happens on a subconscious level. I believe that we have control over those thoughts. Racist thoughts become words that are shouted into the ears of an individual who does not need to hear them and these words then create a terrible world for both the person that utters them and for the person who listens. We all need to take control of our thoughts and make a stand against those who think that you are naïve in doing this.