Racism at Rhodes and in general

Race has always been a sensitive issue in my life. From an early age my father made it clear that he does not particularly like white people. Despite this he never let me be affected by his apparent dislike for them. Like most children who have grown up in the post-apartheid era, I often feel as though the issue has dragged on for too long. The general consensus amongst most young people in this country is that of “get over it! It’s in the past.” The truth of the matter is that it is easier to say that if you are on the rosier side of the colour spectrum, i.e. the white side of life.
The majority of the black students at this institution (i.e. South Africans) are from previously disadvantaged or disadvantaged backgrounds and know the results of apartheid’s unfair system first hand. Even in social situations, the economic imbalance becomes very apparent, in relation to going out and enjoying one’s self. The tendency is for most students not being full able to fully enjoy what the varsity has to offer because they have been brought up without the knowledge of these, or that even from their schooling backgrounds prior to coming to Rhodes they have never been exposed to most facilities. All this having been said, even the administration in this place sometimes makes decisions on those grounds, such as through the implementation of the extended studies course.
A guy in res once asked me “kutheni lento ungasoze ubone mlungu kwafoundation?” which translates to: why will you never find a white person in foundation? This kind of question often raises the issue of misinformation. It also saddens me, because you will find that some students are placed there just because of English, and the assumption will be that because of a second language, or even third language background in English, they shall struggle with their studies is often the biggest critique I have with the programme sometimes. I mean, a friend of mine went to the Dean of Commerce last year to get his degree converted to the mainstream. All I’m saying is that they must leave it up to the individual after meeting and assessing them to go to extended or mainstream.
Other than that, the Rhodes experience for me has been quite interesting and for the most part incident free in relation to race issues. The one incident I will mention is what happened to me one weekend last when we were in Albany to play a rugby match and I was one of two black players on the day. At half-time, a young white boy, about four or five years old walked into the change room and looked at us. The opposition team were from a Port Elizabeth township. They were in the change room opposite ours. We start joking around with the youngster since he is here. He looked at me and pointed to the other change and uttered “you must go there”, I just looked at him and laughed. He said it again with a little bit more conviction, “you must!” he repeated. I took it lightly because he did not know any better. The guys also just checked to see if I wasn’t offended, and I told them I wasn’t. The truth about it is, something like that sticks to you for the rest of your life, then the question comes to my mind: How are we going to move forward if we keep moving two steps back? The reality is that it will not happen any time soon, despite it being 14 years later. This just reminds me of a line from Kanye West’s song Never Let Me Down, here he talks about how racism is still rife in America, but how it has been masked into the system there. The same can be said about this place. Most black students feel that there are still undertones wherever you go on campus, including the dining halls. As petty as this sounds, the times of when people eat there is a factor. Some view white people in some dining halls as them avoiding the noise and discord brought by the louder blacks. This is sad, but hopefully in future it will eventually disappear.