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That's interesting. When I was in Africa I had an interesting discussion with a white guy. He asked me what my ancestry was and I told him "hell if I know. Someplace in Africa, obviously." When I asked him his, he said South Africa. I was like "no, your AN-CEST-ORS" He was like "I'm South African." I was like "No, Ludwig your ancestors HAVE to be Flemish/Dutch...see, my ancestors are African, not yours." Afrikaans is not a traditional African language despite what you've been told, Xhosa, Zulu, Swahili, etc. are. He first swore that Afrikaans was the original language of South Africa and that his ancestry wsa South African. After I repeated what I'd said he was like "I never thought of it that way." I was like "because you have the luxury of not having to. I think about it frequently because I feel disconnected from my ancestry." needless to say, I was pissed.
Bamboozled, I think you handled it well. You were caught off guard and it's a sticky situation having to "play the game, while standing up for what you believe." I think white folks have the luxury of not experiencing the same types of oppression and identity crises that we go through...actually most people here in the U.S. do. Most other people have language and religious traditions that are indigenous to their culture. We have English and Christianity and no link to anything else.
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