Coloured, written as “colored” in America, is a word that has been applied to people who are not white. It has meant different things at different times and places. It is still current in South Africa and neighbouring countries, but in Britain and America it is somewhere between dated and offensive. That is why when Lindsay Lohan lately informed us that Barack Obama will be the first coloured president of America, she put her foot in her mouth.
In the 1700s the word meant anyone who was not white. It was close to what the terms non-white and people of colour mean now, but back then it took in Italians and Jews – anyone who was noticeably darker-skinned than an Englishman.
In Britain that is the meaning it had until the 1950s, though at some point Italians and Jews crossed over to white (when and how?) and the word came to mean anyone darker than a European. This is how Winston Churchill used the word when he said too many coloured people were coming to Britain. like from the Caribbean and South Asia. After the 1960s the word began to seem dated and fell out of respectable use.
In America before 1830 “coloured” was mainly applied to mixed-race Africans, people who were part black and part white. They were sometimes called “brown”. By the 1830s, “coloured” took the place of “African” as the main word most black people used when talking about themselves. “African” fell from grace in the early 1800s because whites were talking about sending Africans back to Africa! “Coloured” was the main word David Walker used in the 1820s, Frederick Douglass in the 1840s, and Solomon Northup in the 1850s. It is the C in NAACP.
Under Jim Crow (1877-1967), its use spread to “Colored Only” signs and working-class whites.
By the early 1900s, among both blacks and whites,”coloured” was the main working-class word for black people. “Negro”, meanwhile, was the main middle-class word, the kind you would see in the newspaper, a book or a government report.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the word “black” swept away both “Negro” and “coloured”. By the late 1980s, “African American” became the new middle-class word.
In 2008, you can still hear the word “coloured” in old Hollywood films and from very old people – much older than Miss Lohan.
In South Africa the word is still current but came to mean something else: those who were neither white nor black but mixed. There is no One Drop Rule in South Africa. Under apartheid there were four races: White, Black, Coloured and Indian, all with capital letters. Coloureds were above Blacks but below Whites. Most are part black and part white, but many are mixed with other things too, like Javanese. In fact, they are the most racially mixed people in the world. Some want to replace it with the word “brown”.
Major revision in 2015.
See also:
- words for black people:
- users of the word “coloured”
- One Drop Rule
- Back to Africa
Abagond, where did you get your information from? I’ll gently say that I don’t think some of it is factual. I don’t have time to dig around for links, but reading Frederick Douglass, who wrote in the 1800s, and surfing the net for images of posters of slave sales would be helpful.
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I read it here and there in different places. What part do you think is wrong?
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Very insightful. Answers the question I posed in another post’s comment page.
One correction would have to be about South Africa’s “coloured” population. To be legally labelled a “coloured” in SA, you just have to have any non-Khoisan ancestry. I’d be considered a “coloured”, no matter how I looked, just because I have some traceable non-African blood. It’s a very weird, seperatist system they have going.
Also, the “coloureds” are at the absolute bottom of SA society. Even though, most would be considered black in the Western world and don’t look much different from Western blacks, they are regarded as their own race. South Africa is ran politically by the Khoisians (“pure bloods”) and finacially by the white minority, this leaves the “coloureds” out in the cold. Of course, the whites (mainly of Dutch ancstry) don’t accept them. Neither do the Khosians, because they don’t speak the same language and are discarded from the culture and not to mention the shameful legacy of colorism and elistism that that sector of the population has historically practiced towards the “pure” black majoriy.
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mynameismyname, please cite your sources. We do not make such sharp distinctions between those with Khoisan ancestry and those who are not descended from Khoisan; anyone who is mixed is coloured. And we also do not use quotation marks when we use the word coloured. Doing so comes across as being racist. I also think you are confusing Khoisan with Xhosa and Zulu.
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I said that in the previous post: anyone who has a trace of non-African blood is considered coloured.
My sources come from an actual South African acquaintance and most potently, from a 1997 visit to Johannesburg. (Second African country I visited).
Farai Chideya’s book,The Color of Our Future, is another good source on the racial classification practices that occur in South Africa.
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The use of coloured in SA has been confusing to me lately. I’ve been reading SA books in which various characters are listed as coloured or black. It took me a while to figure out that these were separate groups and that the one-drop rule doesn’t apply there. It’s confusing but interesting to see how racial/ethnic groups are defined in different countries.
In 1600 Dutch SA, people from India, Java, and the Ivory Coast were considered black by the Dutch if they were dark-skinned but the natives were simply Khoisan. However, being baptized as Christians could immediately change their status as they were then citizens protected by Dutch law and could not be held as slaves, could marry, inherit property, etc. Isn’t that interesting?
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Here is an interesting book excerpt on this subject:
http://books.google.com/books?id=od49AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=dutch+east+india+company+khoisan+marriage&source=bl&ots=7CQWNe3nwu&sig=S0qE4EwxsuV-hKZziUgyYhVnrOo&hl=en&ei=7aKlSq2LINme8QbTjvHNDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false
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Oh, wonderful! I am thinking of doing a post on the Cape Coloureds.
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It’s a fascinating topic. “Islands” was a good intro to the topic. You can get it at most libraries.
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I’m a black South African and have lived and gone to school with a lot of coloured people.
I see in the post you state that some coloureds do not like the word. I have never encountered a coloured person who took offence to being called that.
You have to understand that SA has a totally different history to the USA, even though we do share some similarities.
Apartheid divided people up so early on. Through the years the coloured community, the biggest being in the Western Cape, grew into it’s own race with it’s own traditions and identity.
We just don’t have the One Drop rule over here. If you’re mixed, then your coloured. It’s not an insult.
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Thanks for pointing that out. I thought I had brought up the lack of a One Drop Rule in South Africa. From what I have read some do want to change the word to “brown”.
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I am coloured, born and bred in Cape Town, and proud of it. Every coloured person in South African, and particularly Cape Town, has a mixture of ancestors, starting when Jan van Riebeeck came to the Cape. We are a total mixture of black, khoi, Dutch,English, Malaysian, West African, North African, you name it. My particular ancestors are English and Madagascan on my mothers side, and German and Khoisan and English on my fathers side. My paternal grandfather was part English and part coloured, and was registered as European, even though he was raised as coloured. Some coloured people have more white in their blood, and some have more black. We have all been created in Gods image, and we should be so proud of our South African history, as this is what makes us the Rainbow Nation.
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Abagond,thanx for a interesting website.
I’m a Brown South African from Cape Town and the world “coloured” in the S.A context means non person(according to my research we did not choose the term to define ourselves but were given it by white colonialists) there are quite a few of us so called “coloureds” who find this term degrading.
Just a piece of advice please do more research when dealing with colour in South Africa.
Also we are NOT a white and black people combined creating “coloured”
We are the indigineous people of South Africa.
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Khoigirl:
1. I know not everyone is happy with the word. That is why I noted in the post:
“Some want the word changed to ‘brown’.”
2. From what I understand they are mixed – neither black nor white nor simply indigenous. In fact they are the most mixed people on the face of the earth:
“The so-called “Cape-colored” population of South Africa has highest levels of mixed ancestry on the globe, a blend of African, European, East Asian and South Indian, Tishkoff said.”
Source:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30502963/
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In the 1800s US, “colored” was the polite term for someone of mixed race. Apparently, “mulatto” was considered offensive even back then despite appearing on US Census forms. As the One Drop Rule became more pervasive, though, “colored” came to be applied to anyone of African descent. I suppose the phasing out of the ambiguous “colored” term and the rise of the assertive “black” necessitated the development of new terminologies for mixed race people (e.g. biracial, multiracial).
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What about half-white half-asians in SA? Let’s say, half-white half-Chinese?
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I am coloured and from South Africa. Coloureds are a Creole peole, with a Creole culture and speak a creole langauge called Afrikaans. Creolizations is a social process and does not just refer to ‘race mixture’. Creolization first started as a process of cultural fusion and creativity by people on the margins of slave society living in a colony. From 1652 slaves were brought to Africa(Yes – slaves were brought to the Cape Colony) from various places in South East Asia, South India, Madagscar, East Africa and West Africa. The indigene Khoi and San people were dispossed of their land forced to work as indetured labourers. Coloured identity has been shaped by colonialism, slavery, segregation and apartheid. Personally, i detest the term Coloured. It is too flimsy and is simply understood to mean people of ‘mixed-race’. I am South African Creole – this term describes my true and whole identity.
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@ Abagond . This also ties in with your inclusion of Coloured people as Black in the Map of Black People post.
It is said that Coloured people are most confused than a box of Smarties.
Even as I am referred to as Coloured, I have never identified with that nomenclature and all my life subjected to it Even at almost fifty, I am still trying to integrate my identity. From familial anecdotal history, so far as I can interpret my ancestry – my paternal greatgrandmother is from West Africa (St. Helena)- West African slave? and Portuguese rapist. Brought by ship in the 1890’s to Durban where she worked as an indentured servant in South Africa. (Perhaps that’s part of the reason I have a strong affinity with African Americans.)
My paternal grandparents spoke Zulu and English. My maternal grandmother looked like Toni Morrison. My maternal Khoi great grandmother and Dutch rapist great grandfather. My maternal ancestors spoke Nama which my mother was forbad to speak, replacing it with colonial Afrikaans. My father forbade my mother to speak Afrikaans, so she only spoke English. My paternal great-grandparents were Zulu -great grandmother and English? great-grandfather.
My half-brother is first generation Italian and all the rest, who looks like a cross-between Idris Elba and Samuel L. Jackson. My mother identified as Khoi. My sister who used to look like Nefertiti in her younger days, identifies as Coloured. My brother in law looks like Barack Obama, and identifies as Black. My father, brother and I identify as Black. Each one looks different from the other. In my younger days I would say (in my grandiosity) I looked like a poor man’s Angela Bassett and Halle Berry. My daughter looks like a young Charlize Theron, who is still sorting out her own identity.
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I used to live in Johannesburg, where English is preferred. To confuse things- of my daughter’s two friends- both beautiful girls, the one looking like a young Naomi Campbell with her father from Angola and the other very light-skinned and straight blonde hair as to be confused for a white child ,both identify as Coloured. It still is a shock to me to that Afrikaans is so widly spoken in the Cape. It hurts my ears. Like the youth of 1976, I also am strongly against Afrikaans.
I strongly identify as Black in spite of ‘looking Coloured’and cannot speak in the tongue of my ancestors. Like Malcolm X. I do not honour my rapist white ancestors. In my shape-shifting identity, I am still trying to integrate my identity and ethnicity. For now, I am a multi-ethnic Black African. There are many, including myself, who reject the use of Coloured outright. We find it offensive and demeaning for many reasons. And “brown people’- Aaaargh!
In the US, I would be Black. In South Africa, Vanessa Williams, Samuel L. Jackson, Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Beyoncé, Tiger Woods, Pharrel Williams and Zoe Zaldana would all be classified as Coloured. Idris Elba would too, perhaps even Whoopi Goldberg or Wesley Snipes.
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Typo -widely.
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aargh- more confused than a box of Smarties
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@ Taotesan
Wow. Just wow, Wow, WOW…
Even as I have enjoyed reading your words, I don’t think I’ve ever been as *off* about a poster as I’ve been about you!
People have, at times, gotten my gender wrong, but as far as I know that’s about it…
Anyway, THANK YOU so much for putting so much of yourself out here, with kindness! You’ve inspired me to try to NOT make assumptions – and more.
Please accept my sincere apologies for making assumptions..
Kudos!!
A fan.
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Taotesan,
I understand where you are coming from, I’m mixed multi-racially also and found it amusing, when I first started traveling how my identity changed based on the country I was in.
As I became more “enlighten”, it took me a minute to become more comfortable with how I viewed my identity and how others viewed my identity.
I’ve learned to do the “When it Rome” because for me, it’s just easier.
Like SA, Jamaica also recognizes mixed-people as just that, and call them “brown” depending on the mix,
Jamaican government statistics does lump mixed people with their non-black ethnic groups:
“African 76.3%, Afro-European 15.1%, East Indian and Afro-East Indian 3%, white 3.2%, Chinese and Afro-Chinese 1.2%, other 1.2%”
http://mobile.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20140720/focus/focus3.php
but in the US, (as Abagond illustrated with his map), the one-drop rule turned everyone into “black” if they had African-ancestry (no matter how minute)— it turned Native Americans into black, so that they could not recognize certain tribes.
I’m not a fan of this rule because it was created by white American racists, whose ONLY intentions was to keep the “white race” pure in the USA.
I don’t think it should apply to non-US countries because it’s false and does not address issues that non-white European majority countries face.
such as in Jamaica, many black people have a problem with brown/mixed women always winning our beauty pageants. ie Kerrie Baylis
They feel that real black “African” beauty is not represented.
I sort of agree because it’s not fair that only a certain type of look, should win the majority of the time and represent the country on the International scale.
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I meant to say, some Native American tribes were turned black because of their mixed ancestry–
this was spearheaded by the father of the one-drop rule, Walter Plecker
How a long-dead white supremacist still threatens the future of Virginia’s Indian tribes
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/how-a-long-dead-white-supremacist-still-threatens-the-future-of-virginias-indian-tribes/2015/06/30/81be95f8-0fa4-11e5-adec-e82f8395c032_story.html
“Walter Plecker — a physician, eugenicist and avowed white supremacist — ran Virginia’s Bureau of Vital Statistics with single-minded resolve over 34 years in the first half of the 20th century.
For Virginia’s Indians, the policies championed by Plecker threatened their very existence, nearly wiping out the tribes who greeted the country’s first English settlers and who claim Pocahontas as an ancestor.
This month, the legacy of those laws could again help sabotage an effort by the Pamunkey people to become the state’s first federally recognized tribe.
Obsessed with the idea of white superiority, Plecker championed legislation that would codify the idea that people with one drop of “Negro” blood could not be classified as white.
His efforts led the Virginia legislature to pass the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, a law that criminalized interracial marriage and also required that every birth in the state be recorded by race with the only options being “White” and “Colored.”
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@ taotesan
Very interesting! Thanks.
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@ taosetan
I did not know what Smarties were, so I looked it up (Thank you, Internet). They do not sell them in the US, but they have something very much like them called M&M’s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%26M%27s
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@ Linda
Walter Plecker is in need of a post.
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@ Fan… Not at all! Absolutely no need to, but appreciated nonetheless.
@Abagond: Thank you.
@ Linda
“found it amusing, when I first started traveling how my identity changed based on the country I was in.”
Me, too. I was a chameleon in SE Asia, changed colour and went back in time as an African queen in Egypt, remade into a Brazilian in Jordan, reincarnated into a Dalit in India, flew thousands of miles to be Black in America, only to find out I was a Mexican nanny to my daughter and now, settled back home as a box of Smarties.
On a serious note, your thoughtful educational post provokes serious thinking and questions and stirs me to probe my history. Thank you. It would also require some reading from good sources to provide a better synthesis. The complexity of the entanglements, and enlargements and ‘Enlighten’ require a great deal of unpacking, which I have barely scratched the surface.
Though I am still trying to wrap my mind around the one-drop rule in the US, I really only thought that was applicable to the Africans in the Diaspora, not to the erasure of the Indigenous people. It is utterly heartbreaking that the Pamunkey people’s history and identity is still shaped by white supremacist laws.
” I’m not a fan of this rule because it was created by white American racists, whose ONLY intentions was to keep the “white race” pure in the USA”.
Linda, I am not a fan of the South African classification, either, which was also inspired by eugenicist, Nazi ideology combined with settler supremacist ideology (simply put, the white man on top with all the land, Indians and Coloureds in the middle (and as a bulwark) and Blacks right at the bottom for complete subjugation and dehumanization and a parking lot for land).
In a sense, there was the one drop rule, in that any person with any other heritage other than European and British can never be white, i.e. lets say one looks likes Meryl Streep, as an example, if one parent is the ‘Other’, she must tick the Coloured or Indian box. In that lovely apartheid, if one wanted to challenge the state’s identification of you, you would be subjected to the ‘pencil test’ like Sandra Laing. The two extra boxes created by the apartheid planners were not for any generous reasons. Today the New Government, however odious the classification, retains it for redress and restitution.
Like in the US, SA and other region, there is a multiplicity of ethnicities crammed into their narrow concept of racial hygiene.
Sorry for the long post again.
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Smarties have been a staple halloween treat in the US for some time! I guess they’re different in the UK…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smarties_(wafer_candy)
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I think the use of such terms may have something to do with the number of Blacks in any given location.
When I lived in a mid-sized California town (6% Black) – everyone seemed to go by the One Drop Rule. There wasn’t enough Black representation to justify any other categories.
Since I’ve been Down South (in a town that is more than half Black), there are many terms used; Black, brown, Creole, bright, Redbone,…
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“taotesan @ I was a chameleon in SE Asia, changed colour and went back in time as an African queen in Egypt, remade into a Brazilian in Jordan, reincarnated into a Dalit in India”
Linda says,
Too cute… you’re funny 🙂
you weren’t wrong, the one-drop rule did only apply to anyone of African descendant in the diaspora
The Native American tribes like the Pamunkey, were affected because they had members mixed with African– that’s why they got caught up in Pleckers schemes.
He wanted to kill 2 birds with one stone… Pocahontas family forced him to allow Native Americans mixed with white European, to claim themselves as “white” or as Native Americans — this mix was acceptable.
From what I’ve read, some Native Indian tribes distanced themselves from their Afro-mixed tribe members because they did not want to lose their Federal status.
Plecker was an obsessed racist nutsack and he even influenced the Nazi’s in Germany. He might have also influenced the white South Africans in their apartheid policies
Plecker influence on Germany:
http://www.examiner.com/article/remembering-walter-plecker-part-3-1
“In 1932, Plecker gave a keynote speech at the Third International Conference on Eugenics in New York. Among those in attendance was Ernst Rudin of Germany who, 11 months later, would help write Hitler’s eugenics law.”
“In 1935, Plecker wrote to Walter Gross, the director of Germany’s Bureau of Human Betterment and Eugenics. He outlined Virginia’s racial purity laws and asked to be put on a mailing list for bulletins from Gross’ department. Plecker complimented the Third Reich for sterilizing 600 children in Algeria who were born to German women and black men. “I hope this work is complete and not one has been missed,” he wrote. “I sometimes regret that we have not the authority to put some measures in practice in Virginia.”
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fyi, the Pamunkey’s finally received their Federal recognition as a protected Native American tribe this year but are being challenged in court by some group in California who claim they are not Native American Indians and the Congressional Black Caucus
Mainly because most the modern members are heavily mixed with white and because all the African mixed-Native Indians had to leave the tribe because they did not want to be penalized by Plecker’s one-drop rule.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/federal-recognition-put-on-hold-for-virginias-pamunkey-indian-tribe/2015/10/08/479dd9e0-6dcf-11e5-b31c-d80d62b53e28_story.html
“In a four-page letter, Schmit argued that the tribe did not meet many of the qualifications for federal status and that the very identity of the modern Pamunkey tribe is questionable. The letter said that current tribe members have not descended from Indian ancestors and that there was doubt as to whether the tribe operated as a functioning political entity, one of the requirements for recognition.
“I think I’ve submitted significant historical information that deserves reconsideration,” Schmitt said in an interview Thursday. “The ancestors they’ve identified do not appear to be members of the original tribe.”
http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/01/obama-admin-to-recognize-indian-tribe-that-bans-interracial-marriage-with-african-americans/
“Black lawmakers are furious that the Obama administration is in the process of acknowledging a Native American tribe that still has laws prohibiting its members from marrying African Americans.
While the record does not contain examples of people being explicitly expelled from the group due to their marriage to a Black person, this prohibition appears to have run so deep within the group that those who did may have just left without argument,” BIA notes. “Alternatively, if these arguments did take place, they were not recorded in the minutes or other records.”
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Linda, I drafted a post on the pamunkey already and should send to Abagond within the next week or so. I mentioned plecker. Maybe we can generate a full discussion there.
I also briefly made reference to them here:
(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2015/08/08/american-indians-legal-recognition/)
The situation with the pamunkey is relevant to all Chesapeake bay region indians.
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@ Linda, I got into the thick of things and this is my first opportunity to reply.
Thank you for the most informative post regarding the Pamunke people.
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The racial scientific laboratory in the fatherland incubated one of the most virulent strains of racial ‘hygiene’ infecting the minds of the parasitic land and mineral kleptomaniacs, multiplying ongoing nightmares for the hosts culture and mind.
As I understand things, I know that there is no such thing as the ‘Black race’. Blackness, whiteness, Colouredness, creolization, hybridity do exist, but in a historical, cultural and political identity. In talking about ‘race mixture’, ‘inter-racial’ sex and ‘mixed descent’ is to use language and habits of thought inherited from the very ‘race science’ that has been employed to justify systematic oppression, brutality of Black people and also the marginalization of ‘bastard people’ (in the South African context). I am aware of the ignoble origins of ‘race classification’. It is the colonial construct to imbue whiteness with superiority whilst derogating the other with inferiority.
For me growing up in apartheid, being called ‘Coloured’ meant I was in the middle. It meant that I was not only not ‘white’, I was less than white. I was told that (apartheid propaganda to foment hatred amongst the masses of ‘non-whites’ and create a bulwark protecting whites from Black peril) that I was better than Black Africans even though my ancestors are Black African.
Thankfully, being invisible and a nonentity created the space where I have never stopped questioning and challenging their false propaganda. In my childhood, I suffered from crippling inferiority complex. It is not a terminal condition and all it took is deep interrogation to utterly understand that there is absolutely nothing wrong with me at all. Nothing. I still struggle though, to find the right language to articulate my identity and worldview. Simply put, for me, a lighter or darker hued skin is not a marker of superiority or inferiority. My darker skinned African brothers and sisters were/are treated way worse. As an example, when Nelson Mandela, was imprisoned on Robben Island, he was given the least rations compared to that of Ahmed Kathrada, who was classified as Indian.
As I would understand it, creolization, Colouredness or hybridity is not about ‘race mixture’. Trying to define one’s identity in terms of ‘race mixture’ leads one into buying into the language of ‘racial purity’ ‘race science’ and eugenics. There were cultural borrowing and formations birthed during the colonial period and apartheid. In Verwoerdian apartheid, ‘colouredness’ was placed ambiguously in a category midway without citizenship between whites with full privilege and citizenship and Black people locked on the outside with ‘pure’ tribalized cultural traditions without full citizenship and subject to dehumanization.
Many laws were enforced and entrenched that essentially made a ‘non-white’ to feel criminal in one’s own skin.
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@ Nomad
I will try my best to answer your question, but I am by no means the last word on it. And if you may have more specific questions ,I will try my best to answer it, in short.
Apology that this post might be a tad long. I can break it into two parts.
During apartheid, there were only white political parties. The dominant Nationalist Party which was the major force in crime against humanity, repression and human rights abuses that ensured complete white heaven in that thing called apartheid. The Liberal Party was its ‘opposition’, with Helen Suzman its only parliamentary representative! ( Only really disagreed with the excesses of apartheid. Was never for its dismantlement.)
The ruling party during the 80’s under P.W.Botha and de Klerk wanted to give limited representation to Coloureds and Indians for divisive reasons, in a tri-cameral parliament. excluding Black people.
During apartheid, every suasion fought against white apartheid and many formed solidarity coalitions – Coloureds, Indians, and Blacks, i.e. The United Democratic Front.
The predominant then banned ANC ( African National Congress) and PAC ( Pan Africanist Congress) also had many Coloured members, especially in Gauteng . (Johannesburg is in Gauteng).
All the classified ‘races’ were totally and legally separated, with many petty and grand apartheid laws technically and legally enforced with dire consequences if in breach of, making it near impossible to mix freely. The Nationalist party since 1948 used heavy Nazi propaganda, its legacy far- reaching. I think the minds totally bent by this the most ( against themselves ) are Coloured people. Of course, there is much more to it than I can adequately explain.
I moved to the Cape from Gauteng 16 years ago (too tired to move again now after living a nomadic life for years), when I first had my brush with Coloured people in the Cape – I do not know what the right words for this perplexing attitude are: I was proudly wearing a Nelson Mandela t-shirt. I was sworn at, spat on and nearly assaulted. All because of Nelson Mandela, whom I found out they despised because he was Black.
Ever since that time, I have not been able to come up with an adequate analysis. Perhaps the enslaverment of the indigenous and imported slaves -Malays, genocide of the Khoisan, the specific nature of the colonial project, and then the very evil social engineering of stratifying people during apartheid according to their ‘race’ with white on the very top , black at the very bottom and Coloureds (and a small number of Chinese) in the lower middle with Indians wedged as a strategic bulwark. There are many South Africans, myself included, who totally rejected the apartheid classification as we identify and classify ourselves as Black in accordance with our forebears and as in Steve Biko’s Black consciousness.
Please understand that apartheid was like the Hiroshima of racism, as Trevor Noah aptly put it. This confounding phenomenon in Cape Coloured people might be one fall out of that. The very acute inferiorization of self-hatred is very tragic- with loss of language, loss of culture, loss of land, total erasure as a result of centuries of white interference and domination. This might partly explain why many voted in the Cape for the New Nationalist Party after apartheid had ended. There is a comingling (mentally and psychologically still enslaved) conditioned state of pleasing the master, resentment, impotence, AWE, and FEAR, with devastating self-hatred and a relieved sense of importance through the droplets of European blood and that at least they are not pure African. It is still deeply shocking and sad how Xhosa people are spoken to by some Coloured people.
The differences amongst Africans were fanned, exacerbated and refined under apartheid causing deep divisions, cleavages and fractures amongst different groups.
There is a spiritual implosion amongst some Coloured people coupled with terrible inherited socio-economic deprivation causing devastating self-harm and breakdown in the community. Of course, there are also different classes, with the middle class, concerned with respectability. And many who do not fall in my description and are very politically aware and conscious, and concerned with justice beyond colour definition.
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So, the Democratic Party in order to win the elections in the Cape, whips up ‘swart gevaar’- Black menace or peril, although whites and Coloureds outnumber mostly Xhosa people here, amongst the white voters. And exploit the Coloured vote to serve white people’s interests. I can tell you that not much has changed economically) for Coloured people since apartheid, neither for Blacks, but that is another story.
One of my daughter’s former friend’s father, a highly lauded geneticist, is very high up in the DA. I simply could not maintain the friendship because of his allegiance to this political party. I would be hesitant to willy-nilly call him brainwashed, though, but the way I see it, there is an unexamined need to be patted on the head by the master. It is also very difficult for the mind to be unscathed by the viciousness of European hatred.
As to why Black people are members of The Democratic Alliance. There might be more clever and strategic reasons. Complete disenchantment with ANC, which has failed to deliver on its promises. And other reasons unknown to me.
[briefly and brutally:
In South Africa, one drop of white blood: your ancestors were raped by European enslavers-Coloured. They also can have the most complex ethnic mix in the world. Malay, Khoisan, Griqwa, Bantu, Chinese, European, slave ancestors from St. Helena, Madagascar, South East Asia.
White: unambiguously European looking.
Black- your ancestors were not raped by Europeans.
Indian: came as indentured workers from India.]
If there you might have any questions other than the specific one in The Bill Clinton thread, I will try to answer the best I can.
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@taotesan
I read the extensive comments you have posted on this thread. I have to echo Fan with the words, “Wow, just wow!” You deal with such complexity. It boggles the mind.
It has also made you an interesting and thoughtful person. Thanks for adding to the conversation here at Abagond’s salon. When are you going to write a book about your life?
In the Bill Clinton/BLM thread
you wrote:
In the comment:
you answered your own question when you described the behavior of the Coloured people in the Cape:
” I was proudly wearing a Nelson Mandela t-shirt. I was sworn at, spat on and nearly assaulted. All because of Nelson Mandela, whom I found out they despised because he was Black.”
All of those decades of White Supremacist/Settler Supremacist conditioning has produced a group of people who despise Blackness. Especially since they were part of a comfortable middle caste between Black and White. Sometimes the people in the middle become more hard core reactionary than the people at the top because they are aware of the shaky middle ground they stand on all of the time.
In this country, Latino’s, Asians, Arabs and Native Americans are in that middle caste. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve experienced more ugly behavior from people in those groups than White folk. Insecurity can lead to fear…and ugliness.
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Thanks. It was meeting a SAfrican coloured that got me to exploring the three tier system of racial classification and discovering that something similar existed here in the US before the imposition of the one drop rule. We have remnants of it. Voila our coloured president.
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@nomad: Belated “you are welcome”.
Coloured president. Lol ! My brother-in-law looks likes for Barack Obama.
@ Afrofem
“When are you going to write a book about your life?” Always feels like a huge compliment. But my story is pretty mundane amongst the thousands of stories that still need to be told.
However, and not asking you to release your name, I am pretty sure by your excellent essays and analyses on Abagond’s Blog, that you would be make a brilliant author.
“In this country, Latino’s, Asians, Arabs and Native Americans are in that middle caste. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve experienced more ugly behavior from people in those groups than White folk. Insecurity can lead to fear…and ugliness.”
It can be such an awful stab in the heart and I am very sorry to hear that you experience such awful behaviour. I am flummoxed that First Nations people would be negative towards African Americans. Do you think this could be, in part, attributed to Euro American admixture?
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@taotesan
“…my story is pretty mundane amongst the thousands of stories that still need to be told.”
I beg to differ. Everyone has at least one book in them. Your “mundane” story set against the backdrop of the legal collapse of apartheid would be quite dramatic. There are also the realities of the post-apartheid era to write about.
You could also write about your one of your ancestors. So few people know anything about the San (Khoisan) people, their struggles and their fascinating culture.
With some instruction and research, I’ll bet you could write could write a very moving book of fiction or non-fiction. Go for it!
❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍
Many people in the US tend to see each other through the eyes of White Supremacist stereotypes. First Nations people are no different. My encounters have varied from negative:
❍ a purported Ojibwe woman telling a seminar audience that the state of Michigan was “crawling with Black people” (I was one of only two Black people in the audience)
to neutral/positive:
❍ enlightening discussions with Lakota, Salish and Nez Perce individuals about their history and local conditions.
I try to take each person as they come —— I learn from the best and disregard the rest.
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