"God’s Waiting Room: Racial Reckoning at Life’s End," by UNH associate professor of anthropology Casey Golomski, is an intimate book about the characters in an old age home in South Africa he calls Grace. To write it, Golomski spent seven years travelling between South Africa and the U.S. Both countries are grappling with implementing universal healthcare, which, for older adults, is notoriously under-resourced.
He wanted to hear providers’ perspectives on these care plans, and if there were similar racial overtones in both places amid stereotypes that older (white) adults are more racist in general. Given South Africa’s turbulent history of apartheid, the book poses a pertinent question 30 years into the country’s democracy: Do old racists change – or do their views continue to haunt society? Golomski shares his insights with The Conversation.
“Even if the mostly white residents could represent a generation of apartheid oppression, their unique personal journeys and interpersonal relationships as individuals show how care creates close connections between its givers and receivers,” he says.
Read the full interview here.
