Who gets to say what about whom?

Anybody who’s seen Chris Rock do stand-up comedy on national TV knows the man doesn’t pull any punches. “Sometimes the people with the most ‘stuff’ get to say the least ‘stuff’, and the people with the least ‘stuff’ get to say the most ‘stuff’”, he told my white college mates and me one night as…

Am I racist? Some thoughts on what we call ourselves and the “other”

When it comes to inter-racial IQ, I’d like to think I’ve got my boxes ticked: my skin may be white as can be, but I’m married to a black South African, learning to speak isiZulu (clicks and all), spending time with the in-laws in black townships, and cultivating a taste for the likes of Gill…

To come from such a place…

Last weekend, I witnessed a young man from the most unlikely of backgrounds being awarded a Rhodes Scholarship – a harbinger of radical change in his story. It moved me, almost to tears, and reminded me of the power that that single moment (building on many prior moments of ever-increasingly revealed significance) had had in…