South Africa's Tyla sparks culture war over racial identity

They certainly do use their full name as per @Soontobe60 screenshot (2022 copyright statement). However, it would be rather —deceitful— disingenuous to pretend that the acronym for the ‘School of Oriental and African Studies’, is a completely different name for the institution.

No. It's because you know with certainty that the next wave of 'x are women like Black women are women' is not only arriving shortly, but will now feature this useful news story as a basis for 'discussion'.

I roll my eyes constantly at the regular shift in language and how things change, the national voluntary sector seems particularly keen on changing language every few years. Meanwhile for us working class people getting on with things on the ground, it makes eff all difference. Actually, it possibly makes a negative difference as the people who are most disenfranchised in society are castigated for using yesterday's terms.

Absolutely. It was all over TikTok a few months ago. I think it was one of the most stitched clips I have seen to date.

I am South African and the coloured community have such pride their culture. This was made very clear on the stitched TT.

The take away was that Americans are very naive to what goes in the rest of the world.

Similar as to when I was in Rome this year and we passed by a black woman we acknowledged eachother with the nod and hello but then she added very loudly “hi Americans” being Black British it was annoying cause it even when travelling in being pigeonholed. Why the assumption black people on holiday in Italy should be American? I have no idea.

I found the article interesting. I had heard of the specific SA meaning of 'coloured' but hadn't thought about wider implications.

I am surprised people's first reaction was to challenge Tyla and the other woman from SA - surely if a person of colour describes themselves as 'coloured' your first thought would be that there must be a reason for it, even if you hadn't come across it before. It would be more understandable if it had been used by a white South African in front of people who were unfamiliar with the SA context of the word.

American ID politics? That load of nonsense? Nah… and I dont live in the 80s anymore either.

Check the address in this screenshot I’ve just taken.

I can't tolerate intolerance....

Is it because you find divergence from the ideas which are hegemonc in your circle, intolerable?

It's interesting what we use to describe ourselves, eg skin colour, sex, age, occupation, nationality, religion. What priority we give to each, and how that divides us into value tribes.

I try to use descriptors as observations not judgements but I can't control how other people take them. I'm getting too old to keep apologising when people take offence where none was intended it makes life very difficult.

It is. Maybe not, though, if you subscribe to what I've mentioned above.

If you are absorbed in American style identity politics I imagine there might be plenty of other words you might also police. That's the point of the thread. How American 'intersectionalist' culture tries to define what it is and isn't acceptable for people in other cultures to say, think or do.

No it isnt!

You know when you walk into a room and a conversation is going on where you think 'nope'? Especially when you're pretty sure the subjects of the conversation really wouldn't want to hear what my opinions on the subject would be, as I have no experience, knowledge or involvement in the matter?

I'm nopeing out of this one like Abe Simpson at Maison Derriere.

Thanks @theDudesmummyand @InvisibleBuffy

Yes, I'd also like you to expand on this. This is a thread about a woman who uses the African identity she grew up with and that she considers her cultural heritage. The posts have been broadly supportive of her and critical of Western attempts to shame her.
I am South African. I do not use the word coloured here in the UK because it has a very different meaning, but it is completely different in SA.

My third thought leads me to post. Does Coloured in SA mean mixed race only, and what is Cape Coloured (and is it a common phrase outside SA)?
Mixed race is probably the closest but it doesn't begin to cover it. Coloured in SA covers a group of people who'll often have mixed heritage going back centuries. South Africa has an enormously complex history with people from Malaysia, China, India and elsewhere arriving at times throughout SA's past. And that's without including white, black or Khoisan heritages.
Cape Coloured refers again to a specific grouping in Cape Town although of course people have dispersed throughout SA.
The result is a very specific cultural grouping with a detailed and complex heritage. They would, for example, be very different cultural group to someone who has one white parent and one Xhosa one for example.
I completely understand that coloured has a different meaning in the US and in the UK but to tell a South African woman that she can't use that word for herself while knowing nothing of the culture and history of South Africans with that heritage is deeply arrogant at best and racist at worst.

I instinctively disliked identity politics before I knew anything much about it. That is not to say that there is nothing at all that is valid in its academic underpinnings nor to deny that people are often responding to real, as well as perceived, injustices. But an identity politics lens seems to me to encourage assumptions about other people based on perceptions of identity rather than seeing the reality of individuals, and it also seems to encourage people to take offence whether or not offence was intended. That is not healthy.

We can be a bit the same in UK though. Although this was a number of years ago and maybe would not happen now, I remember recording (in someone's medical records) that someone was African and being angrily corrected by another (white) health professional to say Afro-Caribbean, because that was "the correct term". The person was from Somalia and had never been anywhere near the Caribbean, and when I asked him he said he was most certainly African and not Afro-Caribbean. People need to think more about the actual meanings of words.

Coloured is used in SA and Namibia mainly, where most Coloured people live. Cape Coloured is another name for the same group. They have a difficult history, being distinct in their culture but sometimes overshadowed (including terms of international reputation) by the multiple White and Black cultural groupings. Their culture (music, food etc) is (as this incident makes clear) little known/understood/appreciated outside SA. There are Malay/Philippino influences, especially in their cuisine.

A friend who is Black British was annoyed when an American (White) called her and her family 'African-Americans'.

What an ironic post @Ilovecashews , calling out the other poster for saying nothing whilst showing off. Did you do it on purpose?
I thought @BethDuttonsTwin said quite a lot. I agree that the heart of this is identity theory being shown to not work in reality. Not without authoritarianism anyway. And that troubles me too.

I love the way you can see us over the internet and know that everyone, except for you of course, is white

My first thought was what a stunningly beautiful woman she is.

My second thought was how close this term and it's positive/negative tones in definition is similar to how the word queer is perceived and used. I still refuse to use it as I was raised in the time where you got a punishment for saying it, by parents, teachers, peers, etc. You were either gay or a lesbian.

My third thought leads me to post. Does Coloured in SA mean mixed race only, and what is Cape Coloured (and is it a common phrase outside SA)?