Edwin touched on many interesting topics after announcing his personal struggle for human rights. He mentioned how including sexual orientation in South Africa's constitution was difficult due to the level of intimacy, and he also emphasized how vital it is to include all the composites that human beings aquire under the law.The core issue for Edwin was visibility and voice. He explained, "Your (The U.S) struggle is who to include within the essence of rights". We deny the capacity of ourselves which, as Edwin examined, brought rise to the question of the next frontier... But what exactly was this next frontier? Edwin described the new U.S Frontier as an expansive placement of economical rights. All of which would be equally distributed. (sounds like socialism to me)
Again, Edwin also mentioned that segregation was banished along with the Apartheid policy in 1994, but South Africa still chooses to informally segregate the population. The United States began to end segregation 1954 and didn't complete the task until nearly a decade later. South Africa abolished slavery in 1834, where as The United States threw out slavery in 1863.
I find it fascinating that South Africa abolished slavery nearly 30 years before the United States, yet South Africans didn't politically ban segregation until about 30 years after the United States. However, I find it odd that people would sill willingly segregate themselves 20 years after segregation has ended. How long will South Africa continue to informally segregate the population?
I don't think its unreasonable for me to think that in another 30 years, when South Africa has caught up to our nation's pace, that the older generation of South Africa will similarly choose to no longer segregate the different races.
So going back to Edwin's point, I too believe that our nation's struggle is a matter of which rights pertain to whom. But for South Africa, I believe their recent struggle has been over what rights to include within the essence of humans. With little evidence, the question still haunts me-why would it take South America a longer period than the United States to end segregation if they abolished slavery before the United States?
If you're interested in reading more about Justice Edwin Cameron's work then you should have attended the presentation, kidding...
Check out his award winning book!
I don't think Justice Cameron said that they still choose to self segregate, didn't he just acknowledge the fact that racial violence still occurs? I believe his point was that despite their very liberal constitution, which grants rights to many groups of people (some of whom the US does *not* grant rights to), there are still people who choose to subordinate women and discriminate against black people.
ReplyDeleteI unfortunately wasn't able to attend the lecture, but assuming all the historical dates are right, i can propose a possible reason why segregation continues to happen. It was probably a political maneuver; desegregate as soon as possible and win favor. As Africa's population is as expected (whites are an extreme minority), South Africa's existence probably couldn't continue without some political/social peace... at least on paper.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I would very much like to point out that just because the US doesn't politically practice segregation anymore, we are still INCREDIBLY segregated. Housing segregation is incredibly telling.
Check out this website and all it's cool (and depressing) maps: http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/t2/race_distribution.html
Apartheid continues in our schools across the US. Actually, are schools are more segregated NOW than they were during most of the 60s. According to Kozol, a leading researcher in the US education system, as of 2010, the schools were already devolved by 12 years back into segregation. I don't know what happened in the 90s, but with the "21st century learner" on the rise, there were many, many, MANY black and brown students left out of this new education.