WISHING YOU A CURIOUS CHRISTMAS, FROM ALL OF US AT COMMON GOOD! This Christmas, our prayer is that you’d actively develop a respectful curiosity about cultures different from your own, and how they celebrate Christmas. The Bible says that heaven will be a big celebration (Rev 19:1-3), and that it will involve people from different tribes (Rev 5:9 and Luke 13:29)- so in...
We’ve all been there - the family dinner table, a friend’s braai; when someone we know and probably like, says something racist or prejudiced that stops us dead in our tracks. What do you do? What do you say? As an NGO that works in spaces and places affected by the legacies of injustice, inequality, race and division we are...
How would you finish this sentence: “If I could show people of other ethnicities what it is like for people like me to live in Cape Town, I would show them…”? We collected a range of anonymous responses from fellow residents of our city. They have not been edited for grammar or brevity. All biographical data collected was optional. These are windows...
There was a time in our country when it was illegal for black, white, coloured and Indian people to be friends with each other. After decades of segregation, and now two decades of democracy, many South Africans struggle to know how to relate to people who look different to them. Some people are afraid of saying or doing something that...
Novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie delivered a powerful TED talk in 2009. She raised the crucial issue that we can have pictures, stories and ideas about people groups and cultures that are too narrow, too restrictive and limiting. We can live lives with these stories in our minds, shaping the way we see and interact with people from these groups and...
