Peter Abrahams
Peter Abrahams
Peter Henry Abrahams Deras, commonly known as Peter Abrahams, is a South African novelist, journalist and political commentator...
NationalitySouth African
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth3 March 1919
accepted access anywhere born conferred empire entitled finding social south speaking special trade union white
Being born white in South Africa or anywhere in the empire and Commonwealth automatically conferred this special status. You had no problem finding a place to live, a job, trade union membership, access to social services. Being white, speaking English, you were accepted as English, entitled to all the rights of citizenship.
african among awareness best earning educated mechanical positive social south teaching
Positive social awareness among the South African educated half-caste is zero. Teaching is a mechanical job. The best way of earning a living.
life perhaps race south
Perhaps life had a meaning that transcended race and colour. If it had, I could not find it in South Africa.
african cape coloured contact early member south word
My mother was a member of the Cape Coloured community. 'Coloured' is the South African word for the half-caste community that was a by-product of the early contact between black and white.
blacks central instilled majority south whites
In East, South and Central Africa, the minority manipulated the majority into believing the minority was the majority, that there were more whites in the world than blacks; instilled in the blacks a sense of inferiority, inadequacy, worthlessness.
caribbean country found freedom plus similar sought south
In the Caribbean islands, especially in Jamaica, have I found a country similar to South Africa plus the racial freedom I had sought so long.
africa among attitude forever gestures life lucky meeting point reached south straight whites
For me, personally, life in South Africa had come to an end. I had been lucky in some of the whites I had met. Meeting them had made a straight 'all-blacks-are-good, all-whites-are-bad' attitude impossible. But I had reached a point where the gestures of even my friends among the whites were suspect, so I had to go or be forever lost.
ask haunt miss
We do not ask the right questions when we are young, so we miss the important answers. Now it is too late to ask, too late for the illuminating answers, and the unanswered questions haunt us for a lifetime.
among individual man number tribal western
Tribal man is not an individual in the western sense. Psychologically and emotionally, he is the present living personification of a number of forces, among the most important of which are the ancestral dead.
calendar community events unlike
We have a comprehensive calendar of events unlike any other in the city.
crafted people product relate
We've crafted a product that people are really going to relate to.
main
We like him to say we are his main competitor,
destroy hard middle passed twentieth
To have the ability to destroy all and not to do it was one of the hard tests humanity passed - but only just - in the middle of the twentieth century.
aware difference numbers
There is a qualitative difference between being a minority and being a majority. Majorities are stronger under psychological pressure because numbers count. But only if they are aware of it.