18.2.09

None More Black

The idea that white South Africans would, thirty years ago, apply olive oil in order to develop a swarthy look is not without irony.

No indeed. It is a veritable furnace bubbling with white-hot irony.

Over coffee this morning a friend of mine, he himself a white South African to this very day, confirmed that he, and many of his peers, did just this and have the skin problems today to prove it.

I said to him, "I suppose you just wanted to look black, eh?".
"NO WE DIDN'T", he boomed. 

But he didn't boom it in a racial way. He boomed it in a jovial way. He's no more racist than you or I. 

Wednesday morning. In the kitchen. If you can't joke about racism what can you joke about, eh?

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