Sometimes, I imagine I’m shopping,I come across an outfit that looks amazing and I immediately
start looking for my size. Ten minutes in I’m staring at the back of the rack
and surveying the whole shop looking for a sales assistant to complain to. I
mean, even if the store has only been open for a short period of time and even
if they're still only catering to their ‘exclusive’ clients because they haven’t
learnt that money is at the end of the day, still money, I still want to vent
my outrage at them for not catering for my size you know. It is after all my
right to do so, freedom of speech and equality and all that jazz. And truth be
told I really want that outfit because I think it’ll make me look great at work
and maybe get me that promotion I've been eyeing for a while.
Hell,
if I have to squeeze into that smaller size, I’ll do it! Because this store has
no right to say I can’t wear this outfit! No, the makers of this dress have no
right to say this outfit is too small, sure they may have created the dress, but
I’m buying it, right?
This
is the train of thought that traveled inside my head, despite the fact that I dislike the aforementioned activity, as I read a recent
article where a certain school was said to reject a boy from attending due to
his skin colour. Now while I don’t find this particular story any more appetizing
than any other race story I found this an interesting piece as I tried to
understand this from the parent’s point of view.
From
what I understood they wanted, quite desperately, for their son to attend a
prestigious school, of which the accused institute was proclaimed to be. But
after failing to gain entry they turned to the South African Human Rights
Commission to investigate said school as they feel the refusal was unjust.
The
article then goes to imply that the parents ‘await’ feedback from the SAHRC
while their son sits with no school to go to and all I can do is sit back and
assume that they still wish to send their child to the school that refused him
entry. The same school they accuse of being race-preferential towards their
pupils?
Are
they high? No seriously, are they?
I
can’t speak for the school on whether or not any of these accusations are true,
but regardless of that fact, an accusation was made and now I want to send my
child into a place and expect him to be treated fairly and without any
consequence of those actions. I’d have to be high to believe that were the
case.
Still,
these parents give me pause to think of other parents out there that send their
kids to school after they have slandered another race for one or another
reason, be it at home or in their general lives. It’s like we forget that children
are like sponges and absorb it all. Whether it is the twisted principles that
are clung so violently by the dying few that infiltrate our schools and spread
the disease that is racism or perhaps when it is the ones we look up to in our
very own homes who don’t even see their hateful words as the damaging criticism
that it is. Children drink it up in gulps of what they think is worthy wisdom
and spit it back as they have been so repetitively taught.
But
in this particular case, who is really wrong? The school who refused to bring
in a child that would unbalance their way of things and possibly suffer from
the distorted culture that has been cultivated or the parents who have screamed
foul to their twisted attempt at protection demanding entry into what they deem
their right of way?
A
curious conundrum indeed…
