Here we go again...
The New York Times is the latest foreign media outlet to discover, as if for the first time, that there are (shockingly!) poor whites in South Africa. The paper's Lens Blog has just posted an interview with Reuters photographer Finbarr O’Reilly (see below) and a gallery of his photos from the Coronation Park, home to many impoverished white families. O'Reilly's comments are fascinating, but he and the Times do leave the impression that poor whites are a recent phenomenon. In a comment that he made about an earlier post I wrote about this subject, O'Reilly correctly points out that he did say, in the Times interview, that poor whites are not new, "but the numbers seem to be more apparent than they were in the past.”
Agreed (as long as we stipulate that we're talking about the most recent past). Poor whites are indeed nothing new. But their's is still a compelling story.
Photo: Finbarr O'Reilly, Reuters.
As I wrote several months ago...
Every few years, the media rediscovers South Africa's most exotic species -- "poor whites."
White people, after all, aren't supposed to be poor, especially not in Africa. The white South Africans of our imagination are privileged -- each and every one of them -- and spend most of their time braaing boerewors by the pool, while their maids do the dusting and gardeners trim the hedges. When we discover that's not always true, it comes as a real surprise. It shouldn't...
You can read the rest of the story (poor whites have a heck of a history) and see photos from a much earlier period, here.
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