Danielle Lowery
May 20, 2014
Kaffir Boy Reflection
HIS 354
Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane is a true story of a young boy growing up in South Africa during apartheid. Born into a poverty stricken family throughout Marks childhood he experiences police brutality, suffers hunger, and learns to hate and be afraid of whites. Mark grew up in the segregated old neighborhood of Alexandria, which was a slum right outside of the city. From an early age Mark experience violent raids of Alexandria by the Peri-Urban in which his mother and father must leave him alone to protect himself and his siblings while they go and hide. His parents always have to hide from the police because there passbooks are not in order and they have no money to bribe the police so then they would be put in jail. Papa, Marks father is often taken to jail for not having his passbook in order and constantly being laid of from work leaving his family alone and hungry. Mark’s family is constantly moving due to eviction and trying to escape the police, while there family is growing is size as Momma is constantly pregnant. Although his Papa forbids it Mamma secretly has all the children baptized and converted to Christianity in hopes to help he find work and bring the family money. As Papa begins to be arrested more frequently Mark comes to the realization that his passbook will never be in order and this is the life of a black man in South Africa. Mark and his family again relocate but this time it is to his Granny’s house who is also living in Alexandria. Mama and Mark go daily to get his birth certificate and paper work figured out so that Mark can start to attend school even though he is not fond of the idea of going to school.
Mark is hesitant to go to sch...
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...rica allowing him to leave South Africa. With the help of Stan Smith who has his coach from the University of Southern California write letters to other college around the country on Marks behalf, Mark earns a tennis scholarship to Limestone college and leaves for South Carolina in 1978.
Discussion Questions:
1. Throughout the books Marks father does not want him to go to school and instead wishes him to become a man like him. Why do you think Papa wants Mark to live like him and be a man like him even though they struggle to survive?
2. How does Marks description of his childhood and the different realtionships decribed show you about family dynamics and culture in South Africa during apartheid?
3. In this book sports is on the forefront of social change and social struggle. What examples are there of this? Can you see other examples of this in history?
There can be no question that sport and athletes seem to be considered less than worthy subjects for writers of serious fiction, an odd fact considering how deeply ingrained in North American culture sport is, and how obviously and passionately North Americans care about it as participants and spectators. In this society of diverse peoples of greatly varying interests, tastes, and beliefs, no experience is as universal as playing or watching sports, and so it is simply perplexing how little adult fiction is written on the subject, not to mention how lightly regarded that little which is written seems to be. It should all be quite to the contrary; that our fascination and familiarity with sport makes it a most advantageous subject for the skilled writer of fiction is amply demonstrated by Mark Harris.
In an Article about sports and society, Bridget Lockyer discusses the 1950’s onwards, as being a pivotal moment for black Americans. As they were increasingly active in speaking out about the injustice of American society; the segregation of black and white; the discrimination black Americans faced in employment and housing; the disenfranchisement of black people on electoral registers and the widespread violence and prejudice they were forced to endure, (Lockyer, 2009). Before marchers, bus riding freedom riders, boycotters and other protesters began their crusade for freedom, the Jim Crow laws prevented blacks and whites from integrati...
Shropshire, Kenneth L. 1996. In black and white: race and sports in America. New York: New York University Press.
Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi and Mark Mathabane’s Kaffir Boy are both coming-of-age narratives that were written through the eyes and experiences of young people who grew up in a world of apartheid. Although, it should be noted that they both have parallels in their stories as well as distinctions one should take into account the times and places in which each occurred. While Coming of Age in Mississippi occurred during a Jim Crow era in the American South, between 1944 and 1968, Kaffir Boy’s autobiographical narrative occurred in the regime of South Africa’s apartheid struggle from 1960 to 1978 in the town of Alexandra. During the late 20th century both narratives offer a framework of racism, a value and yearn for education and the struggle and will to survive. This essay will compile how both narratives experienced their areas race-relations given the time and place that they are in.
The presence of activity and sport is found within cultures and societies all over the world, and throughout history. Activity in the form of sport can often be the purest form of expression for a society or individual. The sporting world is often thought to be a microcosm of the actual world with the problems and issues of society still being ever present in the sporting community. Since sport can be used as an expression of self, it is no wonder that sport is often a reflection of the society that it occupies. One such society that was deeply impacted by the role of sport is that of Native American boarding school students in the 1800’s and 1900’s. These students lived tough lives but just like how it had helped other cultural societies, sport was able to provide these students with basic needs of autonomy and pride.
The Civil Rights Era impacted the realm of sports in a great and powerful way. Throughout the mid 1900s, many minority athletes emerged through all odds and began to integrate themselves in the white dominated athletic business. These athletes endured constant hardships in order to achieve their goals and dreams; facing much racism, segregation, and violence. Minorities across the country began to look up to these sportsmen and realized that anybody could attain greatness despite the social troubles of the time. Stories depicting the struggles of minority athletes soon arose and grew popular among different cultures. These true accounts passed from generation to generation, each admiring the courage and bravery of athletes and how important they became in obtaining an equal society. Producers and directors soon found a way to revolutionize the film industry by retelling the racial discrimination that minority athletes faced. Remember the Titans, The Perfect Game, 42, and The Express are all examples of how minority athletes overcame racial adversities in order to obtain the championship. These Hollywood movies contain many inaccuracies that draw away from the true impact minority athletes had during the Civil Right Era. Although these films do depict the racial components of the time, they do not depict the accurate occurrences of the stories they try to recreate.
Although the film is slow, it takes on surprising power from the dignity of its performances and the moral strength of its ideas. The book is the same way except you are being fed more of the characters emotion through words than through pictures. Not every moment of the film is as potent as the book (which is noted for passages of passion and impassioned eloquence), but as I said before overcomes its own limitations to become a glorious tribute to the workings of a faith that does not blind but opens up the human spirit (Douglas 25). Alan Paton's novel of apartheid in 1940s South Africa receives a sanitized and overly sentimental treatment in this film, a little trivializing to the book's relentless power.
Research guided by conflict theory generally falls into the following categories: 1) studies of how athletes become alienated from their own bodies; 2) studies of how sports can be used to coerce and control people; 3) studies of sports and the development of commercialism in society; 4) studies of sports and various forms of nationalism and militarism; and 5) studies of sports and racism and sexism. (Coakley, 1998) In the book, Meggyesy provided examples of each of these categories which occurred during his footba...
One of the major stands that were made during a black athlete’s tenure during his or her sport were their statements on racism. Racism in America was an ongoing situation in the 1900’s that seemed to have no resolve before black athletes took a stand. One prime example can be Jackie Robinson who became the first African-American athlete to play baseball in the modern era. Jackie grew up in one of the most racist towns in Pasadena, California and came from a poor family as his parents were sharecroppers and...
Miller, Patrick B. Wiggins, David K. Sport and the color line: Black athletes and Race relations in Twentieth-century America. 2004. The Journal of Southern History 70 (4) (Nov 2004): 990.
Jarvie, G. (2012). Sport, Social Division and Social Inequality. Sport Science Review. 20 (1-2), 95–109.
For instance, ?The American Dream of unlimited possibilities was shattered for black athletes. By 1900 most of them had successfully been excluded from American sport and were forced to establish their own separate sporting organizations. The most famous of these were the black baseball leagues, a loose aggregate of teams that did not achieve much organizational structure until Rube Foster founded the National Negro Baseball League in 1920. Late nineteenth-century black athletes were often disturbed by their inability to be classified by an...
The young man’s predicaments all revolve around his need to satisfy those that will judge him and he becomes trapped between the apartheid rule and humanity’s desire for equality and respect towards others. This is purely a personal issue that can be resolved solely by him, but should take into the consideration of those involved. We see glimpses of this coming through the young man, but being raised in an era of apartheid it overpowers his common understanding of respect.
In one historical moment from Pamela Grundy's book Learning to Win: Sports, Education, and Social Change in Twentieth-Century North Carolina, she writes about men's college athletics between 1880 and 1901. Grundy states that "metaphors of competition gained new prominence, particularly among the members of the state's expanding middle class, which was coming to dominate public affairs" (Grundy, 12). Male college students living in North Carolina began to excel in organized athletics during this time period. "The contests on the field seemed to mirror the competitive conditions prevailing in the society at large, and the discipline, self-assertion and reasoned strategy that sports were credited with teaching meshed neatly with the qualifies required for business and political success" (Grungy, 13). People who supported athletics wholeheartedly believed it taught good values such as discipline and good character, while there were some who opposed this saying that sports were a distraction for students and thus a hindrance to their educational goals. White college men perceived athletics as a way to show their superiority and justify their presence in business as well as politics. They believed athletic sports were essential in their "vision o...
Sports may have impacted our culture much more then we thought it would, and keeps impacting. Sports have affected some of the most important aspects of life, such as jobs and money. It has also affected things as little as who we look up to and how we dress. Culture means “the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.” The definition of sports is “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.” So when we put two and two together we get a a nation or world that has changed due to sports. Back in the mid and late 1900’s sports were used to see whose way of life was better. As time went on and keeps going on, we