A World of Cheese, For your Pleasure

To sum up, when Sandra was 10, she was kicked out of her wonderful (white) school, and had no education for the following two years (although I can't verify that, she may have been home-schooled). Not only that, but parents and school officials spent three years trying to make this happen. When she was 16 and had a child with a black man, she was asked never to return home. She hasn't seen her parents since then. This was 1973. She found out from her cousin that her father had died in 1988. She is still trying to find her white biological family. And of course there are the normal accounts of blatant racism rampant in such a divisive society.

I can see why the family finally got rid of her. The realities of apartheid would never have touched them if it weren't for her. They were subject to being kicked out of schools, embarassed in public, refused service. Such things are reserved for non-whites; the impure. The lesser. But not them. Instead of fighting to end the regime, I guess it was easier to abandon their daughter to the system (or to the animals, I would say) than to fight for her, to fight for their family. If I had some divine power, these people would rot, but in all likelihood, they prospered.

I Googled Sandra Laing, and the articles I found seemed rather unflattering and racist. Here's an example:

Nature had played a trick (emphasis mine). Abraham and Sannie Laing were white, their parents, grandparents and great grandparents were white, yet their daughter was dark.

Another:

A person who marries a partner with negligible to no non-white ancestry cannot produce a throwback. But if both have enough non-white ancestry on both sides, for meiosis to take place, a throw back is possible! This is the case with Sandra Laing's parents. Negligible non-white ancestry DOES NOT result in throw backs!

While I realize that I am stretching a little in the first link (it's the "trick" part that gets me, (like nasty, cruel trick) and yes I might be more sensitive than usual in this matter), clearly I am not in the second article, written by a racist on a racist website, even though technically speaking the term "throwback" does not mean "unexpectedly black". (On a slightly closer examination of the website, I wonder if it's not actually a satirical site poking fun at purist bigotry.)

Obviously this is an example of the larger issue of race, being biracial, white fears, black fears, the Man and so on. These issues are not within the scope of this entry, though. I see the issue as comparable to an arms race. The literature out there is often loaded like weapons in the Cold War. It potentially incites negative action, and this being on all sides of the issue (I wouldn't be so naîve as to suggest that there are only two sides). I would encourage you to discuss some of your own racial/racist/multiracial stories either here or in your own blogs. There are four of you in particular that I would ask, but I'll do that away from this entry in case you don't want to.

In closing, I would like to revisit an entry I made a year ago, introducing my niece. Throwbacks, indeed.

UPDATE: It seems that six years ago, Sandra found her mother in a tearful reunion. As of then, her right-wing brothers still avoid contact with her.