Naomi Tutu brings her first-hand experience to Lipscomb for MLK week
Janel Shoun |
Naomi Tutu, daughter of the Nobel Peace Prize winner the Most Reverend Desmond Tutu and a respected human rights activist and educator, visited Lipscomb University Tuesday, Jan. 12, to share her experience and insight into eradicating racial oppression.
As part of Lipscomb’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance, Tutu shared wisdom gained from her childhood growing up in South Africa under apartheid, her future plans to establish a women’s retreat center in South Africa and insight gained through her work conducting reconciliation workshops.
During the Gathering, a Lipscomb community chapel session, Tutu encouraged the students to “remember that you are a child of God, and act like it.” She used examples from her childhood as evidence of how selfless caring from others – even those separated by an ocean – can communicate love to those oppressed.
Tutu described how the South African government at that time constantly sent the message that she was a lesser being and how her father would often be cursed at and glared at when he went out on the street to run errands. She said she often questioned why God would allow such oppression of her people.
But instances such as an envelope full of “passports of love” sent to her family from a Sunday School class in New York helped her remember that “it’s possible to take a message of hate and turn it into a message of love.”
Tutu’s father, a major force in the abolition of apartheid in South Africa in the 1990s, used to tell her, “It doesn’t matter what (prime minister) Vorster or South Africa thinks of me. It only matters what I think of them, and I think of them as my brothers and sisters,” she said.
“It’s not easy to believe in those who don’t believe in you,” Tutu told the students. “What kept our family in the struggle was knowing God had reached out to us through people all over the world.”
Today, Tutu works to continue the legacy of her father, who was named head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She resides in Nashville and continues her global work in using the principles of truth and reconciliation to bring diverse groups of people together.
She serves as a development consultant in West Africa, as a coordinator at the African Gender Institute at the University of Cape Town, as a consultant to the Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence and the Foundation for Hospices in Sub-Saharan Africa, and teaches at the Universities of Hartford and Connecticut as well as Brevard College.
During a reception with local community members, Tutu emphasized her concern for women and the violence they face around the world. She said she was concerned with the way the conversation about violence against women was going in the United States, noting that in coverage of a recent murder, the media was still asking the question: “What was she (the victim) doing at that location?”
“Crimes against women are the only crimes we still ask that question about,” she noted.
At an additional Lunch & Learn session held for students, Tutu noted the need for women to re-energize themselves at times. “My experience is that women are not very good at taking care of themselves. They take care of everyone else first. Women are taught from a young age to put themselves on the end of the list.”
To combat that thinking, Tutu said she hopes to establish a retreat center for women in South African, where women from all over the world can come and refresh themselves.
Tutu also met with Lipscomb faculty throughout the afternoon to discuss infusing curriculum with issues of global citizenship and cultural competence.