If you’re part of any sort of marginalized group, there’s a decent chance you’ve been in the situation of trying to convince someone that whatever “-ism” you face is real. And whether it’s explaining to your boss that you actually *can* use a computer, even as a Baby Boomer, or reminding your friends for the umpteenth time that the cute little basement pub they love isn’t wheelchair accessible, those conversations can get pretty tedious.
But what happens when you have to convince someone that you are actually not being discriminated against? That their perception of you is wrong in a different direction? That’s the situation that certain white South Africans find themselves in right now. President Trump has spent months championing a discredited narrative claiming that Afrikaners are victims of widespread, targeted ethnic violence and discrimination. And now, a group of prominent Afrikaners is demanding to be written out of that story.
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
If you need a reminder, here’s a little background: In February of this year, Donald Trump signed a presidential action describing sanctions against South Africa, and stating that “the United States shall promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination.” By May, the first group of Afrikaners claiming refugee status had arrived in the U.S.
Later that month, the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, met with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. During that meeting, President Trump surprised President Ramaphosa by playing a video that made false and misleading claims about white South African farmers being subjected to land seizures and mass killings. (For a true play-by-play, you can listen to our previous coverage here.) Since that meeting, Trump has repeated the claim over and over again that Afrikaners are victims of “white genocide,” and need special protections.
For some, enough was enough. In response to the refugee announcement, a group of Afrikaner journalists, professors, clergypeople, and others penned a letter saying that they are not “pawns in America's culture war.” The claim that Afrikaners face racial persecution, the group writes, is “not only misleading but also dangerous. It distorts the realities that South Africans face and uses our history as a weapon.” Now, more than 1,500 others have now signed in support of the letter.
But as we’ve seen time and again in this country (and around the world), the way certain groups are perceived often has as much to do with the stories we tell as with the realities on the ground. And in the eternal lyrics of the musical Hamilton: “You have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story.” So, Afrikaners may indeed not be the victims of racial persecution. But when the person telling your story has the biggest bully pulpit in the world, does your version even matter?
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ON THE POD
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Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College has classes on everything from Native American studies to gardening to equine sciences to the Hidatsa language. Like other tribal colleges and universities (aka TCUs), it's a space where students can get their degrees while steeped in Indigenous traditions and learning techniques. But since the start of this presidential administration, funding for these colleges has been precarious, and tribal college administrators have been left scrambling to make sure they can continue with business as usual. So this week on the show, we're diving deep into what makes tribal colleges unique — and what these spaces mean to the students, faculty and staff who work there.
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All right fam, I'm curious: What are the false narratives about *you* that you've tried to correct? What's something that people believe about you, or a group that you belong to — and what do you do to try and tell your own story? Drop me a line at CodeSwitch@npr.org and tell me the deets!
If I get enough good responses, I might even share my own narrative about what it's really like to be an Aries with a Pisces moon. Another deeply mischaracterized identity (with, of course, lower stakes.)
Yours in setting the record straight,
Leah Donnella, senior editor
Written by Leah Donnella and editedby Dalia Mortada
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