I am COLORED!

As I arrived to South Africa and began to chat with my friend Melonie she began to give me the history of South Africa and how people identified. She stated “I am colored” I gasped…..I looked at her like she was crazy. She said “I know you don’t call people ‘Colored’ in the states but here you can call people who look liked me colored. Now I will admit, I was confused about Melonie I won’t lie because I could not tell her race off the back. She obviously isn’t pure white nor is she pure black. In America we referred to her as “mixed”….She can even pass for Hispanic. She is beautiful indeed and extremely loving….But what I learned  from her was that even after the regime of apartheid the country in South Africa STILL was segregated and divided.

So currently South Africa has three groups of people: black, colored, and white.  The town is divided into these three different groups and their locations reflect their racial status in South Africa. Apartheid ended about 20years ago. During apartheid the policies put in place required that black, colored, and white people live separately and functioned separately. Similar to segregation in America, the epidemic of apartheid has tarnished the country of South Africa and has given permission for people of color to live below poverty.

Our world is so caught up in labels and making sure that one group of people do not succeed. In the end we are all PEOPLE …HUMANITY! I remember the first time I experienced racism….I was taken back because where I grew up in the South Bronx we were all the same….as I entered the campus of Yale University as a junior in high school attending a summer program I noticed I was different….and some of my peers and teachers did not allow me to forget it. One thing that kept me going was that “I deserved to be here if not more than the average student” I worked just as hard…matter fact twice as hard…I was reminded over and over that I had 3 strikes against me….my race, my gender, and my class…..but guess what?! I used that as my platform.

Let me tell you….the way to dismantle racism is by understanding it completely…and than doing everything in your power to change it.