I said, "No! It doesn't matter!"
It irks me when people see you and feel the need to categorize you. This happens to me more often than not and over the years I've entertained this process. If a stranger asks me what race I am, I'd claim black. If I was asked about my mother tongue then I'd profess it to be Southern Sotho. Then, the conversation would usually move on to that stranger exclaiming that he/she didn't think I was what I claimed to be.
I feel that South Africa (and the world at large, really) have a history of indexing humans as a method to make sense of the world. It bothers people to look at me and not be able to clearly place me into these neat colonial/apartheid categories. Furthermore, it's completely arbitrary to receive this response from strangers who I will most probably never see ever again. So these thoughts have been simmering in my mind for a while but I've never changed my response. Well, that was until this week.
I walked past a restaurant on Tuesday evening en route dinner with a friend when a waiter outside stopped me and without so much as a "how are you?" blurted out, "what are you?". "excuse me?" I responded already hostile to his approach. "What are you? Are you Xhosa? Sotho? Zulu? I mean you look..." I cut him off and snapped, "what does it matter?" , "No, it doesn't matter - I just wanted to know" "No! It doesn't matter!" I concluded the conversation and stormed off...To the restaurant next door. His eyes followed me in shock and disbelief - he had probably never heard such a response, I had certainly never given such a response.
As I walked off I felt liberated. Liberated from his gaze, liberated from the clutches of patriarchy that give men the idea that women are entitled to respond to them or give them attention. It was a liberation that gave me the confidence to feel like I needn't respond to similar call-outs and questions. I do not owe anyone the satisfaction of placing me in a box - a socially constructed box consisting of all the preconceived notions about young, black, Southern Sotho girls.
I'm ready for a similar encounter, and from the pattern of my life I can tell that my next encounter is around the corner. This time I'm armed with ammunition and ready to retaliate. We need to move on from this desire (or has it become a need?) to classify and categorize people. It serves no purpose in social contexts in this age.
I feel that South Africa (and the world at large, really) have a history of indexing humans as a method to make sense of the world. It bothers people to look at me and not be able to clearly place me into these neat colonial/apartheid categories. Furthermore, it's completely arbitrary to receive this response from strangers who I will most probably never see ever again. So these thoughts have been simmering in my mind for a while but I've never changed my response. Well, that was until this week.
I walked past a restaurant on Tuesday evening en route dinner with a friend when a waiter outside stopped me and without so much as a "how are you?" blurted out, "what are you?". "excuse me?" I responded already hostile to his approach. "What are you? Are you Xhosa? Sotho? Zulu? I mean you look..." I cut him off and snapped, "what does it matter?" , "No, it doesn't matter - I just wanted to know" "No! It doesn't matter!" I concluded the conversation and stormed off...To the restaurant next door. His eyes followed me in shock and disbelief - he had probably never heard such a response, I had certainly never given such a response.
As I walked off I felt liberated. Liberated from his gaze, liberated from the clutches of patriarchy that give men the idea that women are entitled to respond to them or give them attention. It was a liberation that gave me the confidence to feel like I needn't respond to similar call-outs and questions. I do not owe anyone the satisfaction of placing me in a box - a socially constructed box consisting of all the preconceived notions about young, black, Southern Sotho girls.
I'm ready for a similar encounter, and from the pattern of my life I can tell that my next encounter is around the corner. This time I'm armed with ammunition and ready to retaliate. We need to move on from this desire (or has it become a need?) to classify and categorize people. It serves no purpose in social contexts in this age.
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