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Welcome to Our Blog

WELCOME TO OUR BLOG

As anyone who has participated in UConn's Education Abroad in Cape Town will tell you, there are no words to adequately explain the depth of the experiences, no narratives to sufficiently describe the hospitality of the people, and no pictures to begin to capture the exquisite scenery. Therefore this blog is only intended to provide an unfolding story of the those co-educators who are traveling together as companions on this amazing journey.

As Resident Director of this program since 2008 it is once again my privilege and honor to accompany another group of remarkable students to this place I have come to know and love.

In peace, with hope,
Marita McComiskey, PhD

(marita4peace@gmail.com)

Sunday, April 3, 2016

Drew enjoying music while contemplating privilege

This past Thursday night many of us attended an Of Monsters and Men concert at Kirstenbosch Gardens. Most of us knew about this band and were fans prior to coming to Cape Town and were really excited to see that they would be at one of our favorite venues. We got there a bit early and had a good amount of time to relax and look around. South Africa is majority black and minority white. The concert was vast majority white and minority black, as is the suburb we live in, Rondebosch. The concert proved how socio-economic wellbeing is still largely determined by race in South Africa but we had already seen that throughout our experience here.


What struck me about the white South Africans at the concert was how they tried to compensate for this; how their image clearly reflected some level of inner conflict over this. Even the discussions that I would casually eavesdrop on proved this. Everyone was dressed very much like a hipster. Hipster subculture values social justice, fair trade, environmental sustainability, and other causes along those lines. Many people who claim to be part of this culture do a lot of talking and not very much acting. Frequently striving for this image seems to be in a response to recognizing their privilege but not knowing what to do about that privilege or how they can act to dismantle unfair and inequitable social structures that may unfairly benefit them (which is funny because as a result hipster culture has come to embody privilege). This was very clearly the case for many of the white South Africans at the concert. They recognized there was something wrong with how their race helped them immensely in life but they were not ready to say goodbye to these advantages.

I am not condemning them. In the United States it is very similar, whether someone is trying to be a hipster or not. White people don’t like to admit that their whiteness is an advantage in the U.S.. Men don’t like to admit that their sex is an advantage in the U.S.. Heterosexual people don’t like to admit that their sexuality is an advantage in the U.S.. I belong to all of these categories and have definitely fallen victim to this denial in my life as well. It is just interesting in South Africa, where the inequalities are significantly more apparent then in most cases in the U.S., that the denial still exists and that you still see people fully embracing their privilege even after they recognize that their privilege was the result of the hardship of the majority in South Africa.


At one point during the show we were at the front, right next to the stage, and an announcer came out. He was a white man and had the word “pride” tattooed into his forearm. I do not pretend to know what the meaning behind his tattoo was and there may be a very good meaning. My co-educators who also saw this and I, thinking of him as a projection of the privileged group of white males in South Africa, thought that it was an interesting choice of words and that everyone should think about what they are truly proud of and if those things we place our pride in are in any way a result of our privilege.

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