Showing posts with label Skin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Skin. Show all posts

Monday, January 25, 2010

Skin

Saw Skin. The new movie about the life of Sandra Laing, the South African girl/lady who had a, so called, mixed-race appearance, although having 2 white Afrikaner parents. A true story. An amazing tale of genetics.

But ofcourse in mad apartheid philosophy such a genetic twist was unthinkable and thus unmanageable. In the very dark and narrowmindedness of white supremacy thinking (and before DNA testing existed) this was a confusing event. And obviously also within a (forcefully) racially divided society such a genetic twist brings about intollerance, confusion, hatred, division, guilt and doubts.

It's a sad story (but Sandra is still alive today) but also a stiff middle finger to absurd racial 'purity' theories. There is that moment in the movie when a genetics professor from WITS tells a court that very likely many Afrikaners have somewhere in their genetic line some black compenent, he is laughed at by the whites as a circus freak. If they would only know.... Welcome to reality.

To quote a New York musician: "Remember one thing. We all bleed red".