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When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided By Race |
Author: Judith Stone
Published: 2008-04-08 |
List price: $14.95
Our price: $10.17
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As of: November 23rd, 2008 01:16:49 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 WHEN SHE WAS WHITE
This book is an excellent read. I didn't want it to end. I found it interesting how the media followed this family from the beginning right up to the present. A documentary exists, also, which compells you to search for it and allows you to put faces to the names you read about. Excellent. This book led me to read other books with similar contents.
 The story of many families in South Africa
Firstly I have to admit that I haven't finished reading the book, I will edit my review when done. But I was curious about what other have said about it, so I paged to this review page.
I bought this book because I vaguely remember the story of Sandra Laing from newspapers etc. as a kid growing up in South Africa. She is quite a bit older than me, I was rather young when the incident happened, and I cannot remember much about all the controversy.
I mainly bought this book because I am quite interested in the genealogy of Afrikaner families. I have spent several years now documenting my own heritage. Frankly, I am surprised that the case of Sandra Laing stands out so much, as we Afrikaners are a creole nation who speaks a pidgin language - and I say this with pride. After 356 years in Africa, I don't believe that any of us are "pure whites" whatever that means. I guess it is not a well known fact (even amongst Afrikaners) that Afrikaners have on the average 6 to 12% of non-European blood (depending on which researcher's works you read). However, the majority of that proportion is Asian blood (particularly East Indian). In my own case I have verified this through DNA testing and genealogy - only because I was curious - my self-guestimate is 1/16th. I am sure the situation in the USA is not dissimilar.
It is well known that people were formally classified as belonging to a race after 1948 (though I submit that Apartheid existed long before that). Physical appearance played some role. This was one of the stupidest acts of the then National Party. My family looked European, and we happened to have been classified as white. Though I know that we are not - completely.
So why in the case of Sandra Laing was her appearance more African than many others? I don't know enough about biology to answer that question, as much as I don't know why my son's eyes are blue when neither my eyes nor my wife's eyes are blue. However, the way this family (and others) were treated due to physical appearance was certainly one of the many tragedies of the era.
Flipping through the book, what really irritated my immensely, was the atrocious spelling of Afrikaans phrases in the book. They don't even resemble any language I am familiar with. Was the editor out to lunch? Could the author not spell-check her phrases in her word-processing program? My version of MS Word (purchased in Canada) can spell-check Afrikaans, why can't hers? Such poor attention to detail really diminishes the professional image and academic merits of the book.
Another thing that irks me quite a bit are blanket racist statements by people like the first reviewer from that Bookclub - based on well-meant, but utter, ignorance (did she get her "facts" from the book?). While I agree with her summary and 'apartheid was bad' sentiments, she made too many factual and historical errors in her "review" for me to address here.
In short. Afrikaners blood was never pure to start with - well-known fact - whatever they say or said. Afrikaners merely look less coloured than the coloureds. There were not 3 classifications (she goes on to mention 4) but many more initially. Afrikaners have much (about 20%) French blood as well, but never conquered the country. They may have conquered parts of it, but it was the British Empire that conquered the whole country (almost the whole continent!) for the "Queen" (for the mineral wealth, more to the point). While Afrikaners had a big role to play in institutionalising apartheid (unfortunately), they hardly invented it. They merely took over that role from the British in 1948. Williams talks about the American south - I believe that Afrikaner leaders actually studied laws in the American South before institutionalising apartheid in South Africa. There were several study tours by many to the American south (rather than to nazi-Germany as some believe). Etc, etc.
Many Afrikaners were (and still are) racist, some Afrikaners supported the system, just like some Americans/Germans etc supported their systems. But the Afrikaner National Party could never stay in power without the English vote. Fact. So please don't blame the entire Afrikaner nation for the acts of some - even if the majority.
Anyway, while a few historical and grammatical errors are clearly in need of being corrected, I am glad that someone wrote down the story and sad circumstances of Sandra Laing. This is a story that needed to be told again, so many years later, in context. It is worth reflecting on it and remembering it. Sadly, the country is not out of the woods. Today (2008), the future still don't look rosy, never mind that Afrikaner power left the scene 14 years ago after 46 years of running things. But I guess the problems are new and different today.
Great book
This was a great book! To see the struggle of this woman's life during aparteid in S. Africa rattled me to the core. And it brought to light some of our issues with race in this counrty. This is truly a book for the strong and I think we can all learn something from it.
Race is skin deep, irresponsibility goes to the bone
I found Judith Stone's book on Sandra Laing wonderful as a chronicle of the history of race in South Africa. The book is a reminder, though, that people don't easily fit into categories. Sandra's white parents wanted her to be classified as white. I felt that the book presented convincing evidence that Sandra, despite her appearance, was the natural daughter of two white parents. Sandra herself felt more comfortable with blacks and wanted to fit in with them.
Judith Stone clearly wants Sandra to be a victim of apartheid and a symbol of the new South Africa. Stone has a hard time making Sandra fit into this, though. Stone talks a lot about the hardships Sandra faced, and sometimes it seems she is bending over backwards to make excuses for Sandra's behavior. Although Stone doesn't say so, it seems clear from the story that Sandra is either borderline mentally retarded or somewhere close to it. Sandra claims she didn't know at the time she was expelled from school at nine that it was because of her color. Her parents homeschooled her until age 12, while working endlessly to get her the legal right to attend a good school. When they finally succeeded and Sandra returned to school, she was put back two grades, then found it difficult to pass even that. Sandra went on to fulfill every black stereotype in existence. At 15 or so, Sandra left school to move in with a black man who was already married to someone else and had three children to provide for. The thought that maybe it might be a good idea to finish school seems never to have once crossed her mind. She went on to have five children out of wedlock with three different black men, again without the slightest forethought. Three of Sandra's children were turned over to foster parents for nine years. Money Sandra received, both from working at menial jobs and from payments for her story, flowed through her hands like water. I frankly felt sympathetic with Sandra's white parents and brothers, who eventually cut off contact with Sandra and her train wreck of a life. Yes, there are plenty of white girls in the world who act just as foolishly. But making a heroine out of Sandra is difficult, no matter how much color prejudice she experienced as a child.
This book presents good evidence that race classifications are superficial. Unfortunately, removing racial classifications is not enough to create responsible citizens.
A Translated Life
I want to commend Judith Stone for the phenomenal work she has done in discussing a number of difficult subjects: Sandra Laing herself, the history of South Africa, and the nature of memory, family, and the examined life. Clearly, Sandra's lack (repression) of memory, and her inability to articulate her feelings, left Stone with an enormous challenge. She works through this brilliantly by marshaling the journalistic reports from the time and later, interviewing people who know Sandra, and sensitively explaining and exploring Apartheid's tortured history. Stone uses her knowledge of studies of PTSD, false-memory syndrome, and other relevant fields in psychology to examine Sandra's individual and South Africa's collective forgetfulness/refusal to admit reality. All in all, Stone has done a stunningly professional and sensitive job in illuminating one person's life, the cruel and terrible absurdities of Apartheid South Africa, and, more broadly still, what it means to live in a world where an ideological rigidity based on lies and hypocrisy sucks the life out of everyone--oppressor or oppressed.
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