Last week a friend of mine went overseas for work and asked me to check up on her 10-year-old daughter while she was away.
I went over to the house to help the little girl with her homework and was amazed at her acute sense of racial consciousness, something I wouldn’t have expected from the young black girl.
For her Afrikaans homework she was asked to draw a teacher reading. She automatically started drawing a white woman with long hair but stopped mid-sketch to erase the woman’s locks and facial features. “Why are you erasing it”? I asked. “Because I want to make her black,” she replied, while giving the new teacher an Afro. “There are too many white people in our other books at school.” I was happily stunned.
She further illustrated her point by writing BLACKS ROCK on the teacher’s T-shirt. We both laughed at this but I said she must be able to defend her stance should her real teacher have an issue with it. Her response: “I shouldn’t have to because I’m not doing anything wrong.”
If somebody born in 2000 is able to make that kind of distinction regarding the imagery she consumes, either her parents are doing something right or she’s made a telling observation — that there is not enough positive imagery of black people in popular culture.
This is something only a black child or a black person would see, because we are on the receiving end of the racial polarisation perpetuated by media and popular culture.
There’s nothing wrong with the popularity of white child stars like Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers, Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber. Neither do I have a problem with fairy-tale icons like Cinderella, Snow White, Goldilocks and Jack and Jill. My problem is that the scales of a child’s understanding of knowledge, goodness, beauty and talent may be tipped towards the untrue and misleading — that it all comes from whiteness.
On a larger scale Halle Berry is on the cover of the September issue of US Vogue. Some are applauding Vogue for its decision to place a “woman of colour” on its most important annual issue in 21 years, whereas others share my sentiments of not wanting to applaud incorporated racism. Why is a magazine as established as Vogue still having firsts when it comes to black covergirls?
The same could be asked about South African glossies like Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire and the not-so-glossy DStv Dish Magazine, which mostly features white celebrities on the cover of the premium edition and only black celebrities on the cheaper one for Compact subscribers. What stereotypes are these publications playing into and why does that inaccurate and unfair polarisation go unquestioned?
Should we be surprised then when a child actively imposes her race on others when she is not provoked?
If we want to have a “happily ever after”, we need to start by applauding children who have the gumption to question the way things are.