Julie Maritz grew up in Pretoria in a bilingual, middle-class home. She completed her BSc degree in Human Life Sciences at Stellenbosch University, where she is currently doing her BPhil in Journalism. She hopes to work overseas for a few years before returning to Africa. She is passionate about life and wants to make enough money to impact her country economically.

Apart-hide

Julie Maritz

I keep asking myself if we have gone through a transformation that was only superficial, that didn’t really change or challenge us at the level of our deepest emotions and perceptions. That would be so sad.

Our hides have set us apart: black, brown, white and crème. But beneath our hides are the same hearts that pump blood throughout our bodies. They are the same lungs that bring oxygen into, and carbon dioxide out of our bodies. They are the same veins that carry blood to the heart and the same arteries that carry blood away from the heart. But for our hides, we are all the same.

Yes, we are the same. And no, we aren’t. We are the same in physiological make-up, but we are different in culture, different in race, different in ethnicity, different in creed. The world is rich in diversity. But the overemphasis on diversity has led to a loss of unity, a loss of appreciation in the common things we share.

What makes people fear others? I believe people fear the unknown, that’s why they fear people who are different, who they don’t understand. By fearing what they don’t know, people try to control or predict the unknown by stereotyping. People fear the unknown because it threatens to bring change, and that means removing them from the security and control of the world that they know and can control. The root of Apartheid always was and still is fear.

So where does this fear come from? Children are not born hating, but learn what they live. If one grows up in a home ruled by fear rather than love, where those that are different are perceived as threats; you will most likely find yourself modelling behaviour that stems from fear. Like prejudice. It’s both sad and wonderful the power that our upbringings have over the course that our lives will take.

I was blessed enough to grow up in a liberal home where equality was a value instilled at a young age, although my parents did nothing to fight Apartheid. I went to a school where a black and Indian elite flourished and it gave me the opportunity to befriend black and Indian races. But I wasn’t really different from them, because we had grown up in the same rich, Westernised, educated homes. Culturally there was no difference, and so I never had to face prejudice, only accept a difference in skin colour. It was easy.

Many of us have never really been tested when it comes to prejudice. We grew up in all-white homes, went to white schools and were taught Darwinian principles of the “basis for the favourable selection of one race over another”. White South Africans, my family included, were people who grew up lacking character. We lacked the backbone and courage to oppose Apartheid and it flourished under us because we let it exist unblinkingly. I often wonder which other societies would have produced or accepted the same system that we did.

We still live in these surroundings where black and coloured people are marginalized and we have little contact with the poor. And because of it we’ve been fooled into thinking that tolerance towards others is the same as loving others. I can walk past a black man or woman begging at the shopping centre without feeling a trace of hatred towards him. But if s/he ever were to encroach on my personal space, prejudice would most likely come to the surface. Each of us has to overcome a tendency to be prejudiced in our own hearts and I don’t think we can claim to be without prejudice if we cannot treat a black, white or coloured person without looking past the filth of his or her appearance to see the beauty inside that person.

I keep asking myself if we have gone through a transformation that was only superficial, that didn’t really change or challenge us at the level of our deepest emotions and perceptions. That would be so sad. Is there anywhere in the world an example of equality, where it is not just written into constitutions but where it is actually written on the tablet of people’s hearts? But prejudice is overcome in the heart. That’s why the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was successful for some but others detested it. It was a personal thing. No one can overcome the prejudice in your heart for you. And that’s why Apartheid still survives today. Change has to come at the level of the heart.

I remember when I faced prejudice within myself. I had no reason, no excuse to harbour it and despite learning equality, prejudice was there. I remember in school reading a South African short story, where a black man was buried next to a white man in the fields. The white man had had a dog. After the white man had been buried, his dog was very lonely, whimpering for him. In search of his master, the dog went looking for his grave. A few white guys who had known the white man watched the dog digging up one of the graves and said, “Look, the dog knows that it’s his master’s grave.” But the graves had gotten mixed up. The dog had not been able to tell the difference.

In death, all that remains are our bones. We are all the same when we die. It was through teaching that I experienced the great liberation of loving, not just tolerating, other races.

A large part of overcoming prejudice had to do with me seriously weighing up Darwin’s theory of evolution. It had bugged me all along that so many people accepted this theory without question, a theory which had been used as justification for Hitler’s genocide of 6 million Jews. At its most basic level, I found his book racialist as it tried to explain that certain races were inferior to others because of evolution. And in light of the fact that Darwin refuted his entire theory on his deathbed (which scientists don’t like to mention or admit) and called it a farce, I decided I couldn’t base my life on these principles.

We are creatures of design, and not of chance. Acknowledging this, I now know that I am here as a creature of design, here to love my neighbour, whether black or brown or white. And because of this, I enjoy peace with myself and with fellow humans.

LOVE is the universal phenomenon that transcends barriers of creed, race, colour, age and every other barrier that exists. It is still the one thing that escapes our comprehension and fails again and again to be placed in the box that science has defined and deciphered as truth.

In the natural, I have always seen just black and white. Yet now, I see grey, with white mending into black and black flowing into white. Though I see black and white people, who are a stark contrast to my physical eye, the colour is only skin-deep. I have realised that beneath the layers of skin, there is more, beneath the layer of life’s black and white appearance there is more. And life, like people, can only be appreciated once you move past the outer appearance to seek the core, the essence of life, the heart of a person.

boontoe

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