Roadblocks and Newscafes

So I arrive in Johannesburg’s Tambo International Airport after a solid 24 hours of traveling all the way around the world. Needless to say I feel quite defeated and beaten, but after a warm welcome form my cousin, I am prompted to try my luck out on the town with the locals nonetheless. My cousin (a white South African by birth) takes me to her friend’s house, where the group of friends is comprised of a handful of whites matched by a handful of Greeks and one relatively heavyset Black man. I think nothing of the mixed assortment of races, due to my own friend circle at home. It seems relatively normal to me, so I mix in with the flow and answer their random questions about America.
Then came my first experience. My cousin and I drove to the gas station because she wanted cigarettes, so while she went in I sat in the car waiting. Right before she comes back out, a Black man comes up to the car holding a windshield cleaning implement and motions at the car. I motion back a very clear and decisive “no” gesture but still he advances. Despite my desperate hopping and flapping from inside the car, he proceeds to clean and wipe the windshield anyways. My cousin comes back and hands him a few cents. She then asks me if I told him not to clean the windshield, and I replied of course I tried to stop him. She says “Agh no man, they’re blery kaffirs they don’t know any different”. I was shocked. Had she really just said this? Was I imagining this? I thought that this would never have happened in America, not such an outward racist comment.
Upon our return to her friend’s house, the food had finished being cooked and so we sat down to eat. At one point, one of the girls looked at the heavyset Black man and said to him “Sean you’re such a Black man! Look at you eating with your fingers it’s disgusting”. Everyone laughed, and Sean seemed to shrug it off like it was nothing. I was again, quite shocked. This was something that also would never have happened in America.
The final event which shocked me was on our return from the Newscafe, a respectable upper class bar in Johannesburg. We had all been drinking, except for one girl, who only had her learners permit and who had left it home that night on accident. Needless to say she drove home. On our way out of the establishment we saw a police roadblock the way we were trying to go, so we turned the other way only to find another roadblock 200 feet down the road. We approached and told the police our story and the policeman seemed intent on stopping and harassing us. Eventually we ended up bribing him and going free. After we pulled away the driver said “It is such a good thing they were blery kaffirs at that stop or we never would have gotten out”. Again. Shock.
But why now was I so shocked? I came to realize that in America racism is entirely covert. One would never ever openly address racism to one’s peers or to someone’s face. Racism in America operates on a lowly and hidden scale. No one would address this to someone. No one would ever comment on someone’s eating habits and attribute it to their race as opposed to their personality. This is why I was shocked, being from America and having taken many sociology classes relating to racism in America, I found myself outraged that racism could be taken in such a light as I had seen thrice throughout my very first few hours in South Africa. I was actually a little mad that I had come to a country specifically to study reconciliation, and here was a younger, up and coming generation propelling forward so many of the wheels of racism that so many people had fought so hard to overcome.
I think, then, that while South Africa has overcome its very first roadblock to defeat racism and work towards a real diversity, they must now find a way to combat the more difficult form of racism which remains: that of individual and interpersonal racism. I would be curious to approach my cousin and her friends now, after having synthesized this, and ask them what they thought about the reconciliation process thus far in the country, as this is something I was too afraid to ask after my initial shocks with racism. I would be very interested to see what the younger generation of South Africans thinks of the bridge and link between the institutionalized racism of the past and the interpersonal racism of today, as this is the monster more difficult to rid from the country.
I am now exceedingly curious to find out more about the younger generation's attitude on racism. I am overly anxious to be in Cape Town in a university setting where we will be able to talk and interact more with university students so that I may gain a greater understanding of race relations in the younger generations. This is crucial, as this up and coming generation is going to set the stage and pave the road for serious democratic consolidation and reconciliation within this fledgling nation.