Tuesday, August 14, 2012

The Slate-nepi of Laseriland

The kids going back to school reminded me of something when I was in school that caused a stir.  In high-school, in the 1980's, I wrote an essay about a hypothetical group of people called the Slate-nepi that lived in a country called Laseriland.  The Slate-nepi were not allowed to freely move and work in the land they had lived in for countless generations and many had to give up their homes and farms.  They had to stay in restricted "homeland" territories and pass though security gate checks to work as cheap labor at jobs in Laseriland that were outside their residential lands.  The jobs they could work at were restricted.  This legal status, of citizens and Slate-nepi, was inherited from generation to generation.  The Slate-nepi were impoverished and there were numerous restrictions on education, and even basic building materials, placed on them by the ruling Laseriland government.  Media reports were highly biased where the Slate-nepi were often referred to as militant terrorists and Laseriland citizens as student demonstrators or as security defense.  Etc..., etc....

When this was read in my class, people thought it was a fairly transparent attempt to refer to apartheid in South Africa, until I told them that Laseri and Slatenepi were anagrams (link). 

See also the situation in the UAE, where over 70% of the residents are laborers who are not citizens and have no way of attaining citizenship (link). 

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