Tom's bittersweet thoughts on leaving Cape Town

I have been thinking about privilege a lot lately- what it means to be privileged and how far that takes a person in life. Through many sociology classes, I have learned about white privilege, Christian privilege, class privilege, and other categories we are born into that severely affect our well-being and opportunities. Yet, this semester in South Africa has really brought them to life. 

I mentioned in an earlier blog about our experience in the minibus taxi ride to climb Lion’s Head Mountain. Our driver, despite being a Cape Town resident all his life, had no idea which mountain it was and we, the tourists, had to give him directions. It is clear that a lot of the beauty Cape Town has to offer is only available to the wealthy citizens; even something as little as climbing a mountain is impossible for so many because of the tiny cost of public transportation, needing sneakers to hike, exerting too much energy and needing more food after, and other things we normally do not think about. Thinking back to this past weekend, nearly everything I did revolved around the fact that I was born privileged. On Friday, I took a train to Simon’s Town and went on a boat ride to Seal Island, on Saturday I took a minibus to the Old Biscuit Mill and bought myself breakfast and continued on more minibuses into the city for some gift shopping, and on Sunday I took a minibus to a place to hike and then went food shopping for dinner. As amazing as this weekend was, it was only made possible because I have spare money I can spend. If I look into this idea further, I only have spare money because I worked two jobs last summer; I was hired for these jobs because I was qualified. I was qualified because of my education and other extra-curricular activities I am involved in. It never ends!

It saddens me to realize that although I had learned about privilege before, it never really hit me until I came to Cape Town. I started noticing things that I normally would have walked by; for example, an airport shoe-shining station where the men sitting in the chairs were white businessmen and the shiners were black, or eating at a restaurant filled with white people but with non-white workers. Privilege is everywhere in the United States also, and we need to start noticing it. Last night, we watched a documentary in Marita’s class about a privileged white family who traced their ancestors back to being leaders in the slave trade. Even after traveling to Ghana and having several discussions on race, slavery, and much needed reparations, one man still did not recognize how his white privilege along with his family’s wealth greatly helped him succeed in life including being a second generation Harvard alumni. With our time running out in South Africa, I need to recognize these privileges back at home where they are more evident than ever, and only hope that I take every experience I have in Cape Town and apply it to our society.