March 18 -- Let me see your ID... wait, nevermind

Those who are inclined to refer to themselves as “activists” – and by “activists,” I mean the people who actually get off their asses and do shit instead of the passive aggressive type who sit on Twitter and berate people until their subject of ire loses interest and does something more important – knew what this post was about at the first lining.

The whole “let me see your ID” was one of the reasons that people had such an issue with Apartheid in South Africa… People, most often black, were questioned and asked for their identification for little to no reason, then treated worse than I treat Bruiser when I come home to find a warm pseudo-chocolate treat on my floor when I come in from work.

[Phlip note – I whoop his ass and put him in a smallish cage]

All this in the name of segregation, which was allowed to exist in South Africa under legal pretenses until 1992…
Officially, the policy was called “Apartheid,” and was far more daunting than anything one might imagine compared to the American civil rights movement, in that it was BLATANTLY legal to be racist as fuck, as opposed to having to pretend not to be.

Anyway… In 1992, white people in South Africa were still the ones who were allowed to vote, and they came out in ENORMOUS numbers to put it down, perhaps in response to the overwhelming national response to the atrocities of the system in and of itself.

Look, we have all heard the Steve Biko/Nelson Mandela side of this, so I can not allow myself to go too deep into the details of things that we have been beaten in the head with on the topic...
Just know that today’s date is the date of the vote that ended it, or at least legally. Remember that Civil Rights in America took almost a hundred years to take any real tangible effect following the legal precedent of the whole thing.
Electing Nelson Mandela president didn’t undo Apartheid any more than electing Obama did to undo slavery, and ingrained racism and hatred still exists in the name of disparities between the races as it relates to crime rates and such. And we all know that this fact is not ONLY because of race, as much as it opportunity. Coincidence is that race and opportunity often run parallel lines.

Anyway, that is another blog for another time…

Today 17 years ago, Apartheid was made illegal…

Today, 17 years later, let’s pray to what we believe in that the proper moves are made at a better pace then they have in my own country to making REAL restitution of the atrocities.