Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Cape pupils share pain of racial abuse
IN THE wake of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, current and former pupils from Cape Town have anonymously published their experiences of racism at school, on social media. Here are examples:
“At primary school the staff were instructed in a staff meeting that black pupils should be reprimanded when speaking their home language as it was considered to be rude.”
“I was constantly bullied for the colour of my skin and pupils there made up a game and everyone who touched me would ‘turn black’.”
“There have been many times when pupils would use the k-word on fellow learners of colour and nothing was done about it. Another case was when boys of colour’s hair was compared to that of a white pupil on stage at assembly and the boy of colour would be humiliated and smacked at the back of his head.”
“The first time I ever really experienced racism was back when I was in Grade 8 (2018) on a rowing tour to Gauteng. During this threeday regatta they would say that I work for Isis and that I beat women and some of the boys would refer to me as ‘Indian’, ‘Gupta’ or ‘Charo’ instead of my own name.”
“I remember coming to that school in Grade 8 and as a coloured student my accent was constantly made fun of. White pupils would ask me to say certain phrases in my accent and then laugh at me. I remember in certain classes I would be one of two students of colour and I was asked how I got higher marks than my white counterparts.”
“My grade head told me that my hair was un-neat and unprofessional. She gave me a choice to either straighten or relax my hair or else I wouldn’t be allowed to perform in the revue/concert. Mind you, teachers had made fun of my hair several times prior to this situation calling my hair beehives, nappy, bushy, etc. I had faced countless racist encounters which I had reported but were never dealt with.”
“Anyone remember that time when a person of colour was expelled for smoking weed, but countless white students were just given warnings or suspended for a short period of time?”
“In Grade 8, a white male teacher told his class that the reason people weren’t allowed to bring knives to school was because of coloured pupils, and that they couldn’t be trusted not to start fights. When I was in matric, a white history teacher told Grade 9s that apartheid is just a conspiracy and that it never happened.”
“I can’t even begin to summarise all my storiesin my class for many years. The Slumdog Millionaire comments. The exclusion. The curry jokes. It’s like these kids didn’t know other races existed. And don’t get me started on the classism. This private school was the breeding ground of white supremacist ignorant future business owners and CEOs. Worst part is, I’m willing to bet none of them even knew what they were doing was wrong.”
“They would often make fun of my ethnic background and the fact that some of my family were killed in the holocaust. I never wanted to let them get to me and ingrained a selfhate of my own identity disowning that part of my culture. I remember on one occasion I was called a k**e and told that my ancestors should have died so that I would never have been born.”