Not as outrageously a dissident of Christianity as the DA Youth, Alfred Kinsey recommended that the world could not be divided into sheep and goats because the living world is a continuum that is ranging from exclusively goat to exclusively sheep, with sheets and goaps in between. Of course he was speaking of hetero- and homosexuality. He divised the infamous heterosexuality-homosexuality rating scale, or Kinsey scale, which suggests that while there exist extreme heterosexuals and extreme homosexuals, most people fall somewhere in between.
Apply the same scale to extreme interracial and intra-racial relations, and you’ll arrive at the DA Youth’s marketing research. On a scale of 0-13, 0 being extreme opposition to interracial relations and 13 being extreme opposition to same-race relations, you will fall somewhere between:
0. You’re so opposed to interracial relationships that instead of clay pigeons at rifle practice, you fire at slabs of Top Deck.
1. You’re so opposed to interracial relations that when asked “Race” on a Lost ID Application Form, you, instead of circling your race, cross out all the others.
2. You think Interracial Relationship is a documentary series by National Geographic on space exploration.
3. When asked, “Would you ever?” you say, “At least she won the Oscar.”
4. You wonder how else you’d play Strip Go Fish when it rains on holiday.
5. You value all races equally and approach relationships in much the same way a molecular biologist approaches RNA splicing: mocha skin, Bollywood black hair, long division like Shen Kuo and knows how to swim.
6. You introduce your other-race significant other to your family by saying, “At least I’m not into kiddy porn.”
7. You don’t have a preference so much as you’re enraptured that another human being is showing interest in you.
8. You’ve been plagued with feelings of inadequacy because your parents are not David Bowie and Iman.
9. In your best MJ impersonation, you shriek: “Now I believe in Miracles/ And a miracle Has happened tonight” at anyone who so much as takes a second glance.
10. This is not a matter of personal preference. Democracy’s survival is intrinsically bound to your sex life.
11. You’ve affectionately dubbed your bedroom The Zebra Room.
12. You take interracial relationships as seriously as conversion to Judaism and killed a cow with naught but your bare hands and zeal to make a warrior shield as your rite of passage.
13. You’re so opposed to same-race relationships that your grandmother submitted you to the International Court of Justice because your vehement disinclination to produce a thoroughbred grandchild is tantamount to genocide.
It’s not about interracial relationships. It’s about a political party that is prescribing to people what good and proper relationships should be. This campaign effectively places the DA in ANC-Lite mode, building a rainbow nation but just not as hard-handed. Instead, I support any political party that is focused on a constitution that would treat everyone equally in the legal sense.
“A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both”. ~ Milton Friedman.
In MY society, political parties will be so busy protecting the inalienable rights of individuals that they won’t have time to try to sell their politics with sex.
Another wonderfully amusing article. Thanks. Seriously telling questionnaire too… for instance, No. 6 & 13 would show the sort of attitudes you may have been brought up with and can be difficult to shed. Shame though to make a flippant comment about your ‘significantother’ because would it not be diminishing? Courage mon ami!
Think I’m probably 7 (not only because it is my ‘lucky number’) but it is indeed enrapturing to have someone take an interest in you, particularly if he/she is interesting as well. Otherwise…. hmmm be flattered and move on.
Wake up! Race is not the issue! Socialization is what makes or breaks a relationship!
Race is a climatological factor only…i.e. the nearer to the Equator the darker the skin!This is why Australia has the highest rate of skin cancer…Its population of NORTHERN European Ancestry is lilly white and can not cope with the sun light!
I love the fact that we have a diversity of races. Why spoil everything for our descendants by mixing everything up into one undifferentiated mass of humanity? The world will be a lot poorer without such perfect specimens of their respective races as a Naomi Campbell or a Candice Swanepoel.
Loved the blog and had a really good chuckle. I’m in China but like to keep up with the news in SA and I’ve been watching the furor about the DASO poster with bemusement.
Reckon I’m a 5 on your scale, though I would have put that approach to the issue smack in the middle of the scale. Interestingly, it’s seems expected for a foreign man to have a Chinese girlfriend here. I’ve only been here a few months and I’m already getting questions like “Don’t you think Chinese girls are beautiful? Why don’t you have a Chinese girlfriend?”
It is necessary to define race without reference to colour. Are Scotsmen and Englishmen the same race then or is a marriage between a Scot and and English person then interracial? A Basque Spaniard and a Swede? What exactly is the reference to. Of course the implication is once again black and white. Who is black and who is white? It would be very interesting to ascertain how many of the planet dwellers are of “mixed origin”. In my own case my ancestors were of French and German origin and what their ancestors got up to before that heaven only knows.It is commonly said that all men are born equal so if that is so widely accepted and it seems that way then why are silly questions like this one repeatedly asked? It is once again simply the ignorant opinion of the few that truth, superiority, wisdom and intelligence are their sole possession and no others are remotely deserving of the same stature as they are. How ridiculous is that? Acceptance is always conditional, so that recognition of character is discarded if the colour is wrong. That is even more ridiculous. Many things will contribute to the undoing of mankind but misguided intolerance certainly is near the top of the list and that is where some serious soul searching needs attention. Personally I am unable to see colour, only character and fuly accept that although I do not support the belief that all are born equal, all are deserving of life,freedom of thought, freedom of speech and love.
For me, it’s not about colour, it’s about attitude and traditions. One couple of the next generation share British attitudes, perceptions, educations and religious backgrounds despite ‘colour’ differences. Their marriage is probably one of the strongest I’ve encountered.
With my own son, colour is not an issue, but were he required to near-bankrupt himself by paying lobola, I would probably baulk. I feel it is more important to give youngsters the benefit of whatever they have to provide for themselves and, as a single parent, I would be thoroughly pipped to think my son was feathering a two-parent nest at the expense of his own.
If prospective in-laws were to classify our family on their caste system, I would probably also baulk, no matter where they decided we fell (and we would definitely fall due to the single-parent history on our side).
I believe there are generational difficulties rife at this time in our country’s history: many parents have not joined their children in the new age and this can set up interference which would be likely to make any marriage difficult.
My own parents, born early in the previous century, were not influenced by religion. The character of the person was all important. I believe the same applies to our younger generations; only now, race has become the focal point. Many parents need to let go a little…
Jason’s post is a little comic relief that puts our issues firmly in the spotlight. How many of us have really considered…
them properly?
The point of the ad is that everyone should be OK with seeing people in a mixed race relationship.
At the moment when people see a mixed race couple, be it in Orania or downtown Soweto, it turns heads and results in whispered discussions. What the ad says is that South Africa will only be OK if you can perceive a mixed race couple in the same way as any same race couple. That means that you have accepted that the mixed race couple is as natural as any other.
This does not mean we should all go and dump our partners and pair off with one of a different race !
On a serious note, my neighbours are a mixed race couple and the trials and tribulations they have gone through just to gain acceptance from his and her families have been like walking through a minefield. Ironically they have had enormous difficulties being accepted by her rural Xhosa family, much more than the other way round.
I come from an interracial family. My father is German and my mom is Tswana. Even in 2012, people still stare at us! Which is very very sad.
I think having grown up in an interracial home was the best experience ever (Not that i have had any other kind of experiences). I have had opportunities that many South Africans havent had.
My dad made it a point that we learnt bout my mother’s culture as well as his. So my brothers and I took part in many historical trips in South Africa and in Germany.
Someone once asked me “How does it feel like to have a white father?” Answer: “Well, the same way it feels like to have a black father, your father is your father!”
I am virtually “colour blind” when it comes to making friends and i truly wish south Africans were like that. I know it would be naive to believe that SA will be “colour blind” one day but at least we should get to a point where we dont have people getting outraged at such posters or at seeing a mixed couple walking down the street holding hands.
Best piece I’ve read today, including the “sheets and goaps in between.”
@Sara Keller: Someone once asked me “How does it feel like to have a white father?” Answer: “Well, the same way it feels like to have a black father, your father is your father!”
I love how you put that. Brilliant! You sound like a wonderful person.
@Garg Unzola: “It’s about a political party that is prescribing to people what good and proper relationships should be.”
I must be misunderstanding the point you are trying to make, because your point seems to be exactly the point the DA Youth is making. They’re not saying you should, neither are they saying you shouldn’t, they are implying that whatever you do, should not be frowned upon (which still, sadly, seems to be the case amongst many SAffers).
PS. Milton Friedman, a real thinker’s thinker. You’ve quoted one of my two favourites quotes by him (regrettably I’ve only yet been able to read one of his books, “Capitalism and Freedom,” although I have watched all the “Freedom to Choose” broadcasts).
Enjoyed your column. I think DASO’s poster should be considered in context. Is this poster suggesting something positive or negative.
If one compares it to what Malema said a week or so back that he wants to see white women working for Black families and asked yourself the same questions as above where would you fall? Is the poster promoting division or unity?
The poster was intended to provoke debate and not to suggest that DA wants to promote people to intermarry, merely that some time in the future the sight of an interracial couple should be unremarkable. It has been extremely successful in provoking debate and we have learned that just as white people find intermarriage unpalatable so too do many Africans. In a sense this is precisely the point of the poster: to make us realise that people from all ethnic groups can actually agree on something like purity of bloodline, or at least have something in common. That is the objective of the poster, to make us realise that we are all simply human beings who are unique but can form a united country where no minority group or majority group is superior to another.
Would the poster have been as controversial and drawn attention had the couple not been nude or the male Zulu and the female white? Somehow I think not.
I’m probably a No 5. I don’t see colour as a determinant in a relationship. DASO is saying that contrary to propaganda that it’s a white party, its policies are against discrimination based on race,…
Observation; most people tend to gravitate to their own kind.
However love is blind and if couples of different backgrounds find each other their choice and their dignity should be respected.
Racial prejudice creates barriers and is mean.
For about the last 40 years that if their was a genuine relationship between a couple of different races i saw nothing wrong with it. I hated the cases where white men took advantage of women because they were poor.
Having said that, i have learnt that mixed race marriages have their own problems. I once read that in Britain (which has been far more liberal than SA for years) that only 30% of mixed marriages survive compared to 70% of same race.
A problem Saffers will have is the difference in cultures. How would a white man feel if his wife put the bed up on bricks or had a cow brought home to be stabbed to death to appease the ancestors?
How would a white woman feel if her husband insisted she be cut (circumcised) ?
How would a black wiffe feel if her hubby spent Satuday afternoons watching rugby on TV, shouting obscenaties and drinking all the beer in the house?
My elder son is involved with an Indian girl who he met at church. I supose that’s not the same as black and white but at one time it would have been taboo.
Grant,
You are surely tongue in cheek. Beds on bricks, female circumcision, sacrifices what next/ watch out for the tokolosh !
Most men enjoy getting pissed and watching sport. Sport, Booze, common denominator .
Indian girls are charming and gracious.
Live and let live
I like group cultures like religions because their rules are written down, you know what’s acceptable and what isn’t. I think the problem with race/language groups is that their rules are not written anywhere, the individual kind of picks them up as they grow. Still the expectations that an individual should think/act according to the norms of that race/language group remain.
But most of the time, we don’t choose these cultures, we are born into them(Yes, even religion. a person born into a christian family will most likely be a christian). Some people, like me, believe in individual culture, I mean I subscribe to group culture because of language and race but that’s it. My thoughts and actions are not influenced by my race/language group, they are completely independent. Extremists in these groups, for some reason, believe they have some ownership in the individual’s life and won’t accept this(this is supported by statements like “our women”, “our men” etc.). So the individual ends up feeling like they are being deprived of their right to just be, whatever that is.
I am at 5, but it shouldn’t matter how I feel about interracial relationships; I only have to tolerate the people that have decided to be in one. I think the DASO poster was exactly about that. I appeal to all s. africans, can we all just get to a point where we can let people be.