Krista Tippett interviews Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa:
I think… that we have very gravely underestimated the damage that apartheid inflicted on all of us. You know, the damage to our psyches, the damage that has made — I mean, it shocked me. I went to Nigeria when I was working for the World Council of Churches, and I was due to fly to Jos. And so I go to Lagos airport and I get onto the plane and the two pilots in the cockpit are both black. And whee, I just grew inches. You know, it was fantastic because we had been told that blacks can’t do this.
…And we have a smooth takeoff and then we hit the mother and father of turbulence. I mean, it was quite awful, scary. Do you know, I can’t believe it but the first thought that came to my mind was, “Hey, there’s no white men in that cockpit. Are those blacks going to be able to make it?”
And of course, they obviously made it — here I am. But the thing is, I had not known that I was damaged to the extent of thinking that somehow actually what those white people who had kept drumming into us in South Africa about our being inferior, about our being incapable, it had lodged some way in me.
It’s a wonderful interview. Listen here. Podcast here. Transcript here. Definitely listen rather than read. You can’t enjoy it if you can’t hear his laughter.
2 Responses
That’s a great quote. I appreciate the candor of Tutu; he could have kept his thoughts to himself and no one would have known. Certainly he thought of how damaging that sentiment could be if taken out of context or expressed in the wrong way.
I think it has great value though and he expressed it well.
If I met turbulence in a Nigerian airplane, I would worry no matter the color of the pilots. The three months I spent in Nigeria in 2006, they suffered three major airplane crashes (two civilian and one military passenger planes).
But it’s interesting about the mentality in the former apartheid country.