Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 16:47:45 +0200 From: Willie Viljoen <will@unfoldings.net> To: "Paul Robinson" <paul@iconoplex.co.uk>, "Darren Henderson" <darren@nighttide.net>, "FreeBSD Chat" <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: jive (was RE: was this really necessary?) Message-ID: <200302251647.45951.will@unfoldings.net> In-Reply-To: <IPEDKJGCDFHOPEFKLIDHMENCCCAA.paul@iconoplex.co.uk> References: <IPEDKJGCDFHOPEFKLIDHMENCCCAA.paul@iconoplex.co.uk>
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On Tuesday 25 February 2003 15:15, someone, possibly Paul Robinson, typed: > In other words, jive owes it's existence to a desire of white > middle-class pricks to make fun of black working-class kids. I've been quietly following the ongoing debate about jive. I have found some of these posts rather amusing, including one a few days ago where the author thought we would all find offensive if it hit close to home... Living in South Africa, I am closer to this than most readers may think, and I feel this is the appropriate time to jump in. As most of you know by now, South Africa made the transition to a Western-style democracy in 1994 after a stretched-out armed struggle against the Apartheid regime was ended with the regime conseding to the populous. The party responsible for the most efforts made in the struggle was the African National Congress. The ANC is today, the party in power in SA. What bothers me is that, even though the ANC are now in power, ANC politicians still blaim the white middle classes for absolutely everything. This includes the crime rate, inequities in society, anything they want to. If the white middle classes just can't be blaimed, colonists are the next soft target. In public depates, ANC politicians, when asked questions pertaining to government policy, corruption, legislation they themselves do not fully understand, etc, will almost always evade the journalist or opposition politician's question with a pre-fabricated responce, that will always contain: "... the problem... in the struggle... ". It seems that the ANC member I am talking about here are suffering from what I can only call political shell shock. Regardless of the fact that the struggle is long over, the so called "white elite" is still the enimy. It saddens me to think that while the civil rights struggle in the United States ended a long time ago, citizens there still suffer from the same shell shock. I am not going to be popular for saying this, but had this been a majority group being made fun of, they wouldn't mind, and neither would anybody else, but simply because somebody may have inadvertantly poked some fun at this group, just because they have been wronged greatly in the past, they are immediately back on the defensive. The original post that started this battle was really poking fun at some legal licensing documents, why should it immediately become a political issue? Go ahead, make some fun of us white middle class pricks, as I see the perfectly innocent white middle class of today, which had nothing to do with the problems of many years ago, are now bing called. We don't mind, we enjoy having fun poked at us, it reminds us that humor exists in the world. Here in South Africa in fact, we get made fun of more than any other group around, and it's only a very small group of individuals who have a problem with this, the same small group who would rather SA go back to where it were 15 years ago, a periah state. Oh and yes, this does not bode well for my CV does it. I encourage everybody to do Google searches on my name, and you can all read how many people I have offended and what sorts of things I have said to them. That sort of intimidation is just below the level, and I don't care if a prospective employer reads this either. If somebody wants to hire me, better they know that I won't take the politically acceptable stance, or follow orders like a wind-up drone. It is time that minority groups forgive and forget. How do you plan on moving forward if after every single bit of fun being poked at you, or something being said about you, you have to make a big issue out of it? I'd much rather prefer making progress, and being made fun of at the same time, than wasting my time complaining about being made fun of, and making no progress. I'm not saying the European community weren't oppressive in the past, ofcourse we were, but that's no reason to continue the fray at every opportunity today, is it? We have apologised profusely and sincerely for what was done wrong in the past, infact, those who have apologized have mostly done no wrong themselves, but were just apologizing for the sins of their fathers. The way I understand the world, the way to respond to an apology is to accept it, forgive the person or party if they mean it, and move on. Nobody meant anybody any harm with the jive post, the author of the post I am writing in reply to goes as far as to call the filter "racial abuse". If anything, the poster was abuse of some laywers, who don't seem to mind much, as none of them have posted anything in this regard. Simply because a steriotypical dialect was used, the message is not automatically abuse. Here in South Africa, the dialect most steriotyped is the way Afrikaans people (descendants of the Dutch) speak English (or are unable to). This is made fun of by Africans and other European communities alike, and in return they themselves are made fun of, nobody seems to mind though. The last time I worried about being made fun of was in high school. If you have not progressed beyond that level, then I feel truly sorry for you. Will -- Willie Viljoen Freelance IT Consultant 214 Paul Kruger Avenue, Universitas Bloemfontein 9321 South Africa +27 51 522 15 60 +27 51 522 44 36 (after hours) +27 82 404 03 27 (mobile) will@unfoldings.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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