BLACK LIVES MATTER...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

The world knows that South Africa had a long history of legally, statutorily imposed discrimination based on race. As White people in South Africa we were fed propaganda and strictly silenced media. In Germany in the 1970's  the students at the Heidelberg University knew more than I did about separate education, it's impact and its educational inhumanity in the lives of children. All manner of racially loaded justifications were used to prove White superiority and show that Black people were in need of lesser, unequal  levels of employment, education, income, opportunity. It was all blatant racialism.

Then in 1994 comes the first democratic election and with it the principles of social and racial equality... a non-racial South Africa. We are now 26 years down the track, into a new millennium. Yet the the colonial mind-set, world view  seems to me still to have a life. 

In 1997 the St Goodenough Children's Home was allowed, and did, move from a Whites only to a racially mixed programme population. At  one and the same time, the dormitory setting changed to a group home setting. The buildings and grounds became a school for post apartheid returning refugees. The media was very interested. It was a good story. A TV magazine programme showed me with my hand on the shoulder of a Black boy child welcoming him into a group home.

The telephone. I answered. "St Goodenough". 
"We are going to kill you".
"Pardon".
"We are going to kill you.You sold us out. When I saw you on TV with your arm around the shoulder of that Black guy, I was so angry. The old Boys say we will kill you."
"What's your name?"
"You don't have to know".
 "Thanks for the warning

In 2017, 20 years later I met with an old Boy of that time at the local supermarket. He was at the cashier. I was well behind in the queue. I was shouted at  by him, in public by a now a grown man with wife and children. " We have not forgotten. We often still talk about it...The f*** up you made of St Goodenough. You sold us White guys out to Blacks." 

We. at St Goodenough clearly didn't get it right in the mind-set/ world view of the young people in our care despite the fact that we had the combined brains of a Transformation Committee, transitional preparation for all parties including the then resident young people and the old Boys. Their White privilege racial thinking lives on. 

What I'm getting at is that aspects of colonial racial inequality still lingers on in the corners of some White people's minds. I'm am hugely concerned that the Black children and young people in our programmes may even now experience themselves stereotyped as racially inferior and that they don't really matter.

 There have been highly profiled social media incidents of teacher to Black child/young person racism. Equally, young person to young person racism. I cant'say that I have seen the same social media profiling in the child and youth care system. 

My question is "What needs to be done practically, professionally to break down any form of mind-set or world view in the lives of the young Black people in our direct professional care that they fit prejudicial stereotypes of the past and are racially lesser beings. But that there is only one race in the world and that is the human race and that they are equal members of it. That Black lives matter.
Getting it right.

Are we still talking about transformation? "Black kids get the better beds" "White kids get the better beds". I have even now heard both. You have to be White to get anywhere in this place!" "You have to be Black to get anywhere in this place".

Now to child and youth care practice. It starts with us (as always). Maybe it starts with the systemic approach driving our practice..let's start there.

In the apartheid era, Prof Norman Powell risked his job to break the sanctions and come to South Africa. He brought with him an analogy of an attitude toward race that he called  the "cookie cutter" child and youth care approach. The cookie cutter approach sets out to cut (mould) all young people into the same shape. He told the story of a Mexican young person in care complaining about this approach. "There's nothing in this place which resonates with me as a Mexican" Norman Powell completely understood.  As an expert in negotiation with hostage takers for the release of hostages, he encountered the cookie cutter approach among the police in the Hostage Squad.  Thing is that the cookie cutter shape in South African Child and Youth Care produces child and youth care workers educated and trained in a White, Eurocentric, North American practice shape. He made the point that in the cookie cutter approach Black young people find it necessary to play for White in order to get anywhere. In playing for colonial White, Black African young people and children are forced to negate their Black Africaness as if Black lives don't matter. We talk of a mix each with their own Black or White identity, indigenous thinking and culture but the cookie cutter in our practice reinforces the view that 'White is right".

 So now to ourselves.

Working in Tswana country, the North West Province in South Africa adjoining Botswana  (The Land of the Tswana), I tried for three years to get learner child and youth care workers to talk of being Tswana, being real (genuine), honest and outspoken about being Tswana....what it means when relating to parents and, adults, significant others, authority figures, children and young people. I got this response every time. "Whatever is European is our way"( cookie cutter). It took three years of trust building and relationship building for those child and youth care learners to be comfortable enough to say,"This is the way it is". Then usually, "Don't tell anyone, they may think that we are primitive".!!! 

Looking at ourselves then, Black lives matter. Are we trapped into silence or adopting the "If you want to get anywhere , then you must... " approach. 

 I have a fear that Black lives won't matter until  Child and Youth Care in South African breaks out of the White, Eurocentric, Colonial, North American cookie cutter and documents ,writes and publishes Black South African indigenous praxis. When it is allowed that indigenous practice determines indigenous child and youth care theories, and when indigenous Black African theories determine indigenous practice.

It must be done because:

Black lives matter.