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POLITICS OF BELONGING

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 WITH the recent spurt of afro-phobic attacks in South Africa and the annoying nationalist rants of Donald Trump, it was hard not to think about where I come from and my own politics of belonging. I remember in my Grade VI Social Studies, one of the questions in our class exercise was; “What does sense of belonging mean?”

I mean as pre-teen children we obviously didn’t engage with this question other than just to get the exercise done. But this was the first time the idea of belonging was triggered in me. The idea of belonging is a pervasive one, especially as a black person.
Belonging can happen on many stratifications, the first being within yourself. Those politics of belonging to yourself are a lifelong negotiation that some grapple with or ignore. Another level of belonging is within your family. I cannot stress enough the importance our family relations play in either creating,  building or breaking our ideas of self and the perceptive lens on the world. Sometimes we forget that families are the first people we form relationships with and those subsequently set precedence on how we interact with non-family human beings. Families also create the big sense of belonging; nothing is more validating than feeling like you belong with your kin. But at times family can be alienating thus making one feel as if they must navigate the world, looking for that feeling of belonging.


I recently read an article by an Indian journalist, speaking of the trauma of going home for Christmas and how violent the experience is because her family always reminds her of what they believe is wrong about her: “Why are you unmarried?”
“You’ve gained weight.” “You’re not as light as you were when we last saw you.” These are some of the things she encountered. These examples are some of many that I feel highlight how important it is for families to be conscious of the fractures they can create to our sense of belonging.


Friends and lovers are also another group that have an influence on our belonging. At times, we think they must be responsible for providing us with that sense of belonging. But like most things in this life, the work starts with self. Granted, friends and lovers are kept in our lives because they should, at some level, make you feel like you belong, because if they don’t give you that feeling, then what are we doing? Our social tribes, per se, do become like second families, that becomes vital in reinforcing belonging.


We also belong to a national identity, you may be an individual but you’re an individual who is a citizen of a State. But the State can be problematic when it creates an environment that makes its citizens feel like they can’t function within its borders. This may be done via tons of oppressive policies and dysfunctional, indecisive governments.  By the way, the answer for my Grade VI question was; “Sense of belonging is when you feel you belong somewhere,” that is something we all want.

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