white and my mother is black and
race is a social construct, so...”
That wasn’t going to work. Not
here.
All of this was happening in my
head in an instant, on the fly. I was
doing crazy calculations, looking at
people, scanning the room,
assessing the variables. If I go here,
then this. If I go there, then that.
My whole life was flashing before
me—the playground at school, the
spaza shops in Soweto, the streets
of Eden Park—every time and every
place I ever had to be a chameleon,
navigate between groups, explain
who I was. It was like the high