Lesego "Soft Hair" Spencer

It may sound silly to say, but one of the things you realize when you are living amongst people of primarily black color, is that you are white.  Obviously, I have always known that my complexion was fair, but it is not something that you really think about that often.  Even in America as I was constantly interacting with blacks, Hispanics, people of Asian descent, etc., I was never consciously aware throughout the day of my skin color.  It simply wasn’t something at the front of my mind.

Here where I am in South Africa, it is simply impossible for you to not be aware throughout the day that your skin color is light and that it is in stark contrast to almost all of the people around you.  The whole topic of race and being white in South Africa is material for another post to which I do not have the time nor will to devote tonight.  That being said, I just want to mention a funny incident that occurred at school during my teaching of a class that highlights the continual presence of my “otherness”.

I was assisting in an English class going over the elements and proper way of writing a descriptive essay.  In order to give the learners a starting point (students are called learners in South African English), we conducted a collective brainstorming session regarding the topic of a train ride.  I tried to get them to come up with things that they could describe on a train ride such as the color and speed of the train, the material the seats were made of, what cities were traveled to, etc.  I told the learners that one of the other things they could describe would be the passengers on the train.  In order to give them a visual reference point, I told them to imagine that I was one of the passengers on the train and asked them what words they would use to describe me.

I got the expected “tall”, “white”, “blue eyes” responses.  What I was not expecting was the “soft hair” observation.  I physically touched my hair and replied “yeah, I suppose so”, which the learners thought was hilarious.  When I looked around and considered it, I realized that the hair of the children in my classroom was somewhat rough in comparison with mine. The point being that I had never really considered that the texture of hair differed that much between myself and the people around me.  Even though I wasn’t aware of it, it was something my students were keenly perceptive of.

Anyways, I guess the moral of the story is that our governor and presidential candidate Rick “Good Hair” Perry can eat his heart out.  Lesego “Soft Hair” Spencer is on the scene.