We are a fickle bunch.

 

It amazes me how quickly a group of people can forget what it feels like to be the recipient of hatred. I’m baffled by how once the victim of violence because of an unreasonable reduction in identity can flip and do exactly the same thing.

 

How quickly those who were once the targets of anti-Semitism become the perpetrators of hate crimes against another people.

 

How quickly those who were the recipients of ethnic violence become those willing to torch homosexuals and violate their freedoms.

 

How quickly those who were and continue to be the sufferers of institutional racism turn to xenophobia, Afrophobia and appalling violence.

 

How quickly we forget how being reduced to something (whether it be race, gender, nationality, or religion) alienated us, made us vulnerable and was unfounded.

 

I’m saddened and dumbfounded that we do not make the links, that we do not recognise the hypocrisy, and that we fail to take our anger to the leaders who have failed to curb the frustration.

 

We are a fickle bunch.

Author

  • Born and raised in South Africa Claudia has been fortunate enough to have traveled extensively as well as have lived in South Korea, Sweden and now Canada. Claudia is currently obtaining her PhD in Human Geography from Queens University in Canada. She has an MSc in the social studies of gender from Lund University, Sweden, and an MA in tourism and management from the University of Johannesburg. In both she explored the relationship between identity, gender, and work. She is increasingly interested in how animals are implicated within our work structures. Claudia is outspoken and believes in the power of a good debate in changing and shifting the ways in which we experience the world.

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Claudia Hirtenfelder

Born and raised in South Africa Claudia has been fortunate enough to have traveled extensively as well as have lived in South Korea, Sweden and now Canada. Claudia is currently obtaining her PhD in...

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