I have family that have recently moved to Brantford, Ontario. In her first week of school, my little cousin Rene asks the teacher to clarify something, appealing to her recent move for reasonable treatment. To this the ‘teacher’ replies, “Well good, I will make your life then as miserable as possible.”

My mom continues her letter to me:

Needless to say, Johannes refused to go back the next day.  He told me and Dad that he would not be friends with a single kid in his class as they are all looking like they are not interested in school at all.  He found the girls to be dressed up as if they were going to a party and looked rather 16 than 14!  He was so disgusted!  Rene cried the entire time and had stomach cramps and could not sleep the last 2 nights.  Johannes is talking in his sleep and his parents lay awake at night…

It is all rather depressing to read this, but it doesn’t matter does it? For that part of me that does claim some sense of an identity, this sort of incident weighs upon both my sense of guilt and self-loathing. “This is what you and your family get and rightfully deserve for being Afrikaners. This is white, christian privilege avenged.”
On the other hand, for that part of me that believes that claims to a national identity and spirit are contrived, this is nothing other than a badly delivered story about immigrants struggling to acclimatize to a country that farcically claims to be multicultural. Still, all this is still the immigrants’ fault. Yes it is. If they’ve got a complaint, they should speak up.
No?