In his regular online column on Friday, SA Today, Leon noted that the South African Institute of Race Relations had reported that about a fifth of white South Africans had left the country in the last 10 years and noted that “given a globalising world in which skilled individuals as well as capital investment are more mobile than ever before, and are maximizing their careers by moving elsewhere, government needs to take a hard look at its race-fuelled myopia, and create the conditions that encourage productive South Africans to stay and contribute to growth — which in the longer term is the only real answer to joblessness and poverty”.

The DA leader argued that “rather than discouraging these citizens from staying, moreover, the state should be actively and energetically soliciting the world’s very best practitioners in tackling the enormous problems that currently beset us in so many areas”.

All must be included and valued. He said: “In short: government needs to reassess its message so that all feel included and valued. Foot-dragging at best and vindictiveness at worst undermines all of our futures – most especially those South Africans for too long disadvantaged by our apartheid legacy and whose interests the ruling party professedly wants to advance.

Read the full article here…

>> Donwald Pressly <<

Zoe Wicomb, South Africa-born but living in Glasgow for the last 11 years, is a writer of rare brilliance. On the cover of her latest book, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison and double Booker winner JM Coetzee compete to eulogise her work. She’s formidably intelligent: ‘A mind like a steel trap’, says the head of the Scottish Arts Council’s literature department, ‘one of the brightest people you could meet.’ She is, according to the pupils she has taught creative writing to at Strathclyde University, where Wicomb holds a professorship, a peerless and inspiring teacher.

Yet the chances are that you won’t have ever heard of her, because this is the first British newspaper interview she has ever given. For the 30 years she’s lived in Britain, that’s the way she liked it, and to be honest, it probably still is.

Zoe’s third book Living In The Light, is one of the most convincing novels I’ve read all year. If she’s going for the title of Scotland’s greatest unknown novelist, it’s hers on a plate.

Zoe Wicomb was born in Namaqueland, a hot, arid region on the southern fringes of the Namib desert, in 1948. The good life of white South Africa was a long way from this sparsely populated scrubland, and the nearest whites lived 20 miles away, in the town which also had the nearest shop. (Not that, as coloureds, the Wicombs were allowed to enter it, only being served from a hatch round the side). Her Afrikaans-speaking parents wanted the best for their children, something more than working in the nearby gypsum mine or as a domestic servant, which were the only local jobs going. Speaking English – as no-one did for 200 miles around – wasn’t an automatic free pass to a better life, but it was a better bet than anything else.

Secondary school meant Cape Town, where she moved to live with her aunt. A school for coloureds, followed by a university for coloureds, where she learnt about such great non-coloureds as Chaucer, Johnson, Shakespeare and Hardy. And where, for the first time, Zoe caught sight of her first “play-whites”. ‘There was a family living across the road from us, and one day they just disappeared. Our neighbours said, ‘They’ve left. They’ve turned white’. This happened all the time’

‘It’s an odd phenomenon, the play-whites,’ says Zoe. ‘We don’t even know how many of them there are. There’s no discourse, nothing in the library, because officially they don’t exist. Yet the truth of the matter, because of their history, is that many Afrikaners are mixed race. Even Verwoerd [the founder of apartheid] had a wife who looked African.’

Because skin colour is so variable even within the same family, legal definitions of whiteness were absurdly tortuous. ‘A white person,’ the government decided in 1950, ‘is someone who in appearance obviously is or is generally accepted as a white person, but does not include a person who, although in appearance obviously a white person, is generally accepted as a coloured person.’ Mrs Verwoerd presumably counted as white not because she looked it but because enough people could agree that she actually was.

‘The weird thing,’ says Zoe, ‘was that there was this legislation for racial purity at the same time as the whites were tacitly boosting their own numbers by allowing some people to cross over.’

Read full article here…

Eurasian People

Throughout the former colonial world, in many instances what are referred to as ‘hybrid communities’ have evolved. In Africa, Oceania, Asia and the Americas, different groups were born of mixed relations between the colonists and indigenous peoples. In Asia, such groups, commonly known as Eurasians, developed in differing ways. These peoples were regarded varyingly from society to society. Often seen as a privileged class in comparison with the other native peoples, with the current trend in ethnic and post colonial studies, ethnographers, historiographers and sociologists frequently class Eurasians as living in some kind of ‘hiatus’ with allegiances to no one and to nowhere. However, it can be said that these peoples were more loyal to their countries of birth and origin than has been believed. In Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (the former French Indochina), Eurasians evolved from mixed relations between the natives and French rulers. In the Philippines, Mestizos and Amerasians were born of Spanish and Filipino, and American and Filipino miscegenation. Throughout the Indian Subcontinent, Anglo-Indians emerged from mixed relations between the British and other Europeans with Indians, whilst in Sri-Lanka, Eurasians and Burghers emerged as the descendents of Singhalese and Portuguese, Dutch and British unions. In Indonesia, Dutch-Indonesians emerged, descended from colonial Dutch and Javanese miscegenation. In Burma, the Eurasian community evolved through mixed relations between the British and other settlers of European origin with the local Burmese populace, and this community came to be known in two ways: as either the Anglo-Burmans or the Anglo-Burmese.

Today’s Burma, the Union of Myanmar, is a nation situated in Southeast Asia between India and Bangladesh on the west, and Thailand, China and Laos to the north and east. Myanmar stretches more than 2,050 kilometers from north to south, and some 935 kilometers from east to west. With a population estimated at approaching some 58 million and an area of 676,577 square kilometers¹, Myanmar is the largest nation of mainland Southeast Asia and joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1997 amidst worldwide condemnation of its military dictatorship, human rights violations and governmental policies. Formerly known as the Union of Burma, the country was renamed in 1989 shortly after the military, known as the ‘Tatmadaw’, took over control of the country. The said intention for the name change was that the term ‘Myanmar’ better reflected the indigenous name for the country, dubbing ‘Burma’ as the colonial name for the nation. Notwithstanding, it is agreed that both terms are indeed correct appellations for the country, ‘Burma’ being the informal, spoken term, and ‘Myanmar’ equating to the literary form of the name for the country. However, minority groups such as the National League for Democracy (NLD) and the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB)² all oppose the name change as an indirect and subtle means of domination by the largely Burman-controlled military government. The country is officially divided into fourteen administrative units, seven States (Pyeneh) and seven Divisions (Taieen). The States are named for the dominant racial group inhabiting each territory, thus being Shan, Karen-Kawthulé, Kayah, Chin, Mon, Arakan (Rakhine) and Kachin. The Divisions are primarily located within central Burma and populated by the Burman majority and are Rangoon (Yangon), Mandalay, Tenasserim (Tanintharyi), Magwe (Magway), Sagaing, Pegu (Bago) and Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady). In practice, the States were traditionally autonomous, whilst the Divisions were governed centrally. The current Divisions and States more or less correspond to the British methods of governance of the country whilst they ruled, the Divisions making up what was once known as ‘Ministerial Burma’ and the States corresponding to the ‘Frontier Areas’.

Read original article here…

>> Dean Burnett <<

Marcia Yunmi Lise

I was born to a Japanese mother and an American-Italian mother. Like many other ‘racially’ or if you prefer ‘ethnically’ mixed individuals, I often think about my identity and how I sit in society. I was born and raised in Japan. I therefore consider myself to be predominantly Japanese. That is, culturally. The issue with my experience in Japan was that I was often regarded as ‘non-Japanese’. This had a great impact on my identity. Exploring the experiences of the half Japanese in relation to Japanese society somehow became a sort of a passion or a habit. I came to London in 2001 to study Sociology at university. My undergraduate thesis was on the marginalisation of Hafus, the Japanese word to refer to half Japanese people. I also recently completed a qualitative research project (submitted for MA), which was also about the half Japanese but this time focusing on how they are considered to be the ‘other’ in Japanese society.

In summer 2005, I agreed to be photographed by Natalie Maya Willer, a London based artist who was also a Hafu. She has a slightly different background with a Japanese mother and a German father. She was brought up in Germany and tells me how she had the same problem of not being recognised to have Japanese connection due to her very German look. Earlier this year we decided to put a project together combining her photography (visual arts) and my research work represented by the spoken words of the participants. The result was a one week exhibition at the Bodhi Gallery in east London last month. It was well received with over 450 visitors, half of whom I estimate to be Hafus.

The exhibition was accompanied by three events: a seminar with guest speakers from SOAS and LSE, a Hafu social night, and a Hafu family art workshop. I’m certain that the exhibition together with these events created an important contribution to the cultural dialogue about identity, culture, ‘race’ and nationhood.

Read original article here…

>> Marcia Yumi Lise <<

A documentary by Tana Baru Productions, and Directed by Rhomeez Petersen

What the hell is heaven?

Payment is due when service is rendered.

Profits are a by product of having services rendered.

‘Work is love made visible’ – Khalil Gibran

Everything is light.

The inherent nature of divinity is love and light.

Spirit requires matter to express itself, and matter needs spirit to give it motion and meaning.

Your wealth and fulfilment in life are expressions of your heart, mind and soul.

The most fulfilled people are people who are inspired.

In fact, the word Gold comes from the Hebrew Aour, which means light.

Few are going to join with you and financially invest in you until you invest in yourself.

What you believe and what you say to yourself manifest in your life.

When people believe the incomplete teaching that money isn’t spiritual, it’s no wonder they don’t have any significant degree of monetary wealth.

You receive in exact proportion to the value you give.

Life is designed to make sure you express your unique talents and find fulfilment.

When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

What you do influences what you have, but what you say has a big influence on what you’ll allow yourself to do.

Ask a different question and you’ll receive a very different answer to the same apparent situation.

You’re not on this earth just to get by or survive. You’re here to realize your grandest dreams.

When you’re willing to share your talents, inspirations, and gifts with the world, the desired gifts you receive in return will be even more abundant.

The more you’re willing to receive, the more you’ll be willing to give.

‘If man knew he himself was God and Heaven and Hell, no illusion would have a hold on him, nothing could limit his consciousness’ Daniel Odier, Tantric Master

What you believe and say to yourself manifests into reality. You create your own destiny with your thoughts every day.

Master your financial thoughts and you’ll master your financial destiny.

Questions?

• What do you consider spiritual? (One word answers only)
• Write down every single way that having great financial wealth will help you attain even more of the qualities mentioned above.
• Go through each of them in turn and write down how a non mastery or a lack of wealth limits your ability to express those same inspired qualities.

I embrace spirit and matter equally!

>> Dr. John F. DeMartini <<

How do you categorise someone who is not 100% white nor 100% black, without offending that person?

This is the debate that I walked into the other day, when a woman pointed at me and told her son: ‘That is a half caste.’

Why she did that I will never know, but it left me feeling hurt that the phrase is still being used.

Why so hurt? The answer is in the meaning of the words. If you research the definition of half caste, it says ‘a person of mixed racial descent.’

Fair enough, but read the synonyms and it tells you: amalgam, bastard, combination, composite, compound, cross, crossbreed, half-blood, half-breed, mongrel … to name just a few.

Caste was first used in India in the sixteenth century to describe the Hindu system of hierarchy. The term half-caste indicates how pure you are racially and echoes the days of colonial slavery when words such as mulatto, quadroon and octoroon were commonplace in sales ledgers and even in post-emancipation days in the old United States census.

John Agard, from Guyana makes some brilliant points in his poem ‘Half caste‘:

Read full article here…

>> Donah Sibanda <<

A documentary by Tana Baru Productions, and Directed by Rhomeez Petersen

But ironically, ever since she can remember, Hartley had heard her Chinese counterparts saying the same thing about her. As a child, she was surrounded by cooing relatives and friends who would admire her more Caucasian features. “They would comment on how fair my skin was,” she remembers, “or say they wished the bridges of their noses were as high as mine.”

The legacy of colonial shame carried by previous generations of Eurasians has long since disappeared from the public imagination. Today, the adjectives associated with Eurasians are more likely to be “exotic,” “stunning,” and above all, “beautiful.”

Beauty has emerged as one of the most pervasive stereotypes about Eurasians. As early as 1921, British writer W. Somerset Maugham described Ethel, the half-caste protagonist of The Pool, as being “adorably pretty” and resembling “something not of this earth” but more like “the spirit of the pool.” This fascination with Eurasian beauty and exoticism continues today. Even in the forums of EurasianNation you can read numerous breathless accounts from males worshiping “hapa booty.”

“I grew up in Japan being told by virtually everyone (adult and children alike) that I was either beautiful or cute because I was ‘ha-fu,’” says Abbie Yamamoto, 23, now a graduate student at Berkeley University.

Eurasian beauty is often attributed to the European influence, particularly among Asians. “It’s because of the Caucasian features that they admire me so,” explains Yamamoto. “They look at me and tell me the clichés over and over again about how big my eyes are and how ‘high’ my nose is.”

Many Asians have even taken drastic measures to try to recreate these Caucasian features on their own faces. Blepharoplasty, the eyelid incision that creates the canthal fold, has become a veritable rite of passage for young females. Plastic surgeons say it is the most common procedure elected by Asian women in North America and Asia, followed by rhinoplasties (nose jobs) and breast augmentation. In the Philippines, a new plastic surgery technique has been invented to mimic the “high” Caucasian nose. According to Salon.com, surgeons insert a flexible plastic tube, called “the Cleopatra,” up women’s noses. The procedure can jack noses upwards anywhere from 3 to 13 millimeters.

Ironically, the Eurasian face, despite its obvious Caucasian ancestry, has become the face that sells Asia. TV commercials use Eurasian models to peddle everything from designer jewelry to sanitary pads. TIMEasia.com reports that in Indonesia, a magazine with a Eurasian on the cover will sell two or three times more copies than one featuring a purely local model. And on Channel V, the Asia-wide music television channel, almost every single VJ is Eurasian.

Read full article here…

>> Carmen Van Kerckove <<

A documentary by Tana Baru Productions, and Directed by Rhomeez Petersen