The Hewitts moved into the shack for the month of August as an experiment in radical empathy. Could a white middle-class South African family make it on $10 a day in the kind of living conditions that millions of black South Africans endure every day? “It is one thing to know from an academic perspective what divides us,” said Mr. Hewitt, who also blogged about the experience. “But what is it like to actually live it?”
In most countries, a family slumming it for a month would hardly be news, but in South Africa, where deep racial divides strike at the core of the nation’s identity, the Hewitts’ experiment made headlines and spurred heated debate.While some people praised the Hewitts, others where not so welcoming of their experiment.
But their experiment also poked at some of South Africa’s sorest spots. Were they white slum tourists who had come to gawk at black poverty? Was this simply a publicity stunt, aimed at getting a book or movie deal — or worse still, a reality television show?
And even if their motives were noble, did they inadvertently confirm what many here suspect: black poverty gets little notice until a white person experiences and highlights it?
Some critics took to Twitter with outright nasty, even violent responses."You know what? Hope the paraffin stove falls over and you people burn in that shack. Bye!” tweeted someone going by the handle @Keratilwe.The Hewitts, in their own words...
So we're causing some major upsets.... We are trying to understand and have empathy. Don't want to make a mockery of life in the townshipsNew York Times
— Ena & Julian (@mamelodi4amonth) July 31, 2013
Video of the Hewitts explaining themselves after "read more"
Mamelodi for a month
27 comments:
Mind boggling.
White guilt in a country where white farmers and their families are routinely being slaughtered by blacks seeking to take their land.
Perhaps white people are too damned stupid to survive.
I've been poor. It's not that great, or interesting.
"Deep racial divides." I love that horseshit. Apparently the deep racial divides drive blacks to KILL whites. In the most gruesome ways imaginable. But not for whites to kill blacks. Why? Oh yeah, I've got it, it's the expression of LEGITIMATE BLACK RAGE based on past white discrimination. And that makes it honky dory. Montana Urban Schmendrik will be along shortly to tell us just that. Count on it. And why don't whites kill blacks? Maybe because they're not savage beasts. Actually no maybe about it.
Sounds like a PBS production.
It's not poverty if you have a ticket out. The god awful part of poverty is the feeling that there's no way out.
Maybe, you know, because I've lived without indoor plumbing, a telephone in the house, and various other "being withouts" from time to time but...
...honest, I am soooo not impressed.
Also, I've often thought that the need to WALLOW is evidence of a lack of empathy, not proof of empathy. I don't understand people who have to wallow, be it by doing something like this, or by watching Lifetime television. If you can't understand just because someone explained it to you, wallowing isn't going to help.
"It's not poverty if you have a ticket out. The god awful part of poverty is the feeling that there's no way out."
This.
This is what Mandela gave them and they took it. Isn't revenge marxism grand?
White guilt in a country where white farmers and their families are routinely being slaughtered by blacks seeking to take their land
There are white Africans who feel guilty today for the same reason there were Germans who felt guilty in the 1960s. The majority of the living adult white population are personally responsible for supporting immense acts of evil by the government.
Black South Africans experienced oppression of a sort American blacks haven't experienced since the slavery era, and it only ended twenty years ago. Here we have "my grandparents voted to keep your grandparents out of their school". In South Africa we have "YOU personally voted to forbid ME from being able to own property, learn a trade, or travel someplace where I could".
Judging from the photos this couple's too young to have had any responsibility. But their parents almost certainly did, so I can see the kids feeling a bit guilty. Just like I'd feel guilty if my dad committed a crime, even though it isn't my responsibility.
Do white people have a future in South Africa?
Answer seems to be if you're an affluent white, yes, otherwise not:
"Working-class white people, most of them Afrikaans-speakers, are going through an intense crisis. But you will not read about it in the newspapers or see it reported on television because their plight seems to be something arising out of South Africa's bad old past - a past which everyone, black and white, would like to forget."
A surprisingly honest piece for the BBC.
@ Revenant again
Black slavery and Jim Crow never occurred in Western Europe. Black violent crime rates are just about the same there as in the U.S.
We should insist that our elites who are in political office and actually all of those snot nosed elitists who want to tell us how to live should spend 6 months in a normal lifestyle of a middle class family of four.
Try to pay the mortgage/rent, car payments, buy food (give them 500 a month), gasoline for commuting, parking fees, pay the insurances (all of them health, property, car) set aside money for the taxes (property, state, federal,local), buy clothing, prescriptions, pay the Dish bill, the phone bill and on and on and on.
Give the mother-effers $2500 a month to do it and see how much they like living like the rest of us.
Of course....not gonna happen since we live in the Hunger Games now....evidently.
Shouting Thomas... I don't think that any of that has anything to do with the question of white South Africans feeling guilty for apartheid 20 years later. I missed where someone was excusing current violence on the basis of anything and I don't see how someone feeling guilty for what their parents actually did has any relationship to excusing what someone else actually did.
If those young people should feel guilty is a different question as well.
@Synova,
It doesn't directly have anything to do with that.
Indirectly, it does.
South Africa seems headed toward the same fate as Rhodesia. Rhodesia, under pressure from the U.S., capitulated to black rule. The result was the mass murder of the white population, and the disintegration of what was once a prosperous, well-governed country into a third world mess.
I think there's a lesson for us here in the U.S. It's a bitter lesson, and one I wish I hadn't learned.
Black violent crime rates have increased in the U.S. since the civil rights era. The end of Jim Crow signaled the beginning of a great wave of violent crime against whites.
I'm unaware of any crime victimization statistics prior to the early 90s that identify the race of both perp and victim. You're welcome to provide a link to them.
What I do know if that if this "violent crime wave against whites" ever existed, it ended decades ago. And thus I'm hard-pressed to figure out why I should give a shit about it.
The notion that black violence against whites can be explained by racism is rank bullshit.
You should spend a little less effort on thinking of new reasons to hate non-white people and a little more effort on reading comprehension.
I said nothing about the causes of black violence against whites. I commented on why a white South African might feel guilty about how he or his parents had treated black people. I don't know what silly-ass moral system spawns a thought like "you shouldn't feel bad about apartheid because white farmers are being killed", but it isn't one that makes sense to me.
You should spend a little less effort on thinking of new reasons to hate non-white people and a little more effort on reading comprehension.
The usual moron response.
I guarantee you that I have more involvement in the black community than you do.
Thanks for offering to invent a thought for me that I never uttered.
What provokes a moron like you to this type of asshole behavior?
Rhodesia... you know, it's not as though black people can't understand economics (we've got some very impressive black economists in the US) and it's not as though black people can't understand farming.
OTOH, communism thrives on resentment and hatred of the "haves" and pretends that wealth can be moved about without consequences on account of the people who *have* it, didn't "build that." Worse, no matter how bad it gets and no matter how the poverty grows, it's STILL someone else's fault and the redistribution just needs to happen *more* until all the evil rich people have been punished enough.
Maybe, you know, this would actually be a case where the privileged white a**hats in the US who go on about economic justice would benefit from living the life for a while because it's all so easy to dis capitalism as the great evil when you live in the lap of capitalism's making. Meanwhile real people around the world suffer extreme *preventable* poverty.
No... I really don't see Rhodisia as a case of black violence being at the root of the economic disaster there. Venezuela was headed down the same road. Any number of third world countries and people buy into the lie and the results are predictable.
OK, so how do you explain away the complete annihilation of Detroit in the aftermath of black rule?
Er... Democrats?
That, and treating black men like irresponsible presumptive criminals by (among other things) making sure anyone law-abiding is disarmed.
South Africa seems headed toward the same fate as Rhodesia. Rhodesia, under pressure from the U.S., capitulated to black rule. The result was the mass murder of the white population, and the disintegration of what was once a prosperous, well-governed country into a third world mess.
As can be seen here, Zimbabwe's economy improved slightly for the first twenty years after the end of whites-only rule.
Its decline is tied to Mugabe's policies, not the color of the people voting. Especially since the elections have been rigged for 30+ years anyway. :)
Er... Democrats?
Don't be silly, Synova.
When white Democratic districts go bad, that's because Democratic policies are bad. When black Democratic districts go bad, that's because of the natural inferiority of black people.
Try to keep up. :)
Its decline is tied to Mugabe's policies, not the color of the people voting. Especially since the elections have been rigged for 30+ years anyway. :)
And, yet, you've managed not to notice that this might be the result of the social reality of black culture in sub-Saharan Africa.
You don't think Stalinism arose out of the reality of Russian culture? I'm pretty confident that it did. Read Russian history and literature and you'll see that the desire for a Big Man despot and for a society grounded in some sort of universally enforced religious culture is the foundation of Russian culture.
Stalinism wasn't an accident. It grew out of the Russian character. Ditto for Zimbabwe. Mugabe-ism is not an accident.
Detroit didn't go bad.
It's reverting to forest. Black gangs are attacking firefighters who are trying to put out fires.
Stupid fucking conversation with an idiot.
I've got better things to do. Got recording to do, and I'm headed to Chicago, where I'll play with a black band.
The situation in CA, while very bad, is nothing compared to Detroit, which is still reeling from the decision of its black population to burn down their own homes and businesses 50 years ago.
Same thing in Newark. Newark has never recovered from the decision of blacks to destroy their own homes and businesses.
And CA's demise has a lot to do with the incredible expense of supporting a huge population of illegal Mexican immigrants.
And, yet, you've managed not to notice that this might be the result of the social reality of black culture in sub-Saharan Africa.
Because I don't have your racial hang-ups, and thus am free to notice that policies of property seizure and redistribution are disastrous no matter the color of the people involved.
For example, the inherent Super Geniousness of Asians didn't stop Mao from collapsing the Chinese economy, or Pol Pot from doing the same to Cambodia, or the lily-white Lenin and Stalin from doing the same to Russia.
And CA's demise has a lot to do with the incredible expense of supporting a huge population of illegal Mexican immigrants
As opposed to Texas, which doesn't have illegal Mexican immigrants.
I have commented this before but maybe not here, I don't know for sure. Back in the 50s, my mother told me not to use the 'N' word. I said to her, “Why not? They call each other that all the time?” She said, “We are better than them. We don't talk like that.”
The fact that some people are better than other people is what's under attack now. Equality is BS.
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