South Africa's Tyla sparks culture war over racial identity

[BlueBrush]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-67505674#more-menu-button

Apologies if this is too off-topic but I thought it was interesting from a general identity politics point of view.

A South African woman uses the term "coloured" to describe her racial identity, having a specific meaning in South Africa around mixed heritage. But the term "coloured" is a slur in the US, and she is receiving pushback. Another South African woman in the US, who identified herself as "coloured":

It did not go down well with her classmates; her roommate pulled her aside and said she had made the American students feel uncomfortable.
She was forced to defend her own identity, background and culture while trying to assuage the discomfort of others.

I thought it was interesting from the general point of who is and isn't allowed to choose their own identity, who is allowed to decide what is and isn't offensive. I thought of different views of the word "queer", an identity for some and a slur for others, as a contrast.

I suppose this is one of the consequences of globalisation.

Conversely I've seen US people get enormously defensive when it's pointed out that some words they commonly use are offensive elsewhere (spastic and retard being two common examples).

'Oriental' to describe people of far eastern heritage is another one that really offends people in the U.S, but is normal to use in Britain.

I have a friend from SA who identifies as 'Cape Coloured' and she has a lot of push back from people who think she's insulting their 'Blackness'.

Thanks for posting this, I read it and thought about posting too.

This is the quote that interested me:

"To have the audacity to question somebody's self-identification and replace it with your own - that's ridiculous. You are not progressive."

Some might argue this supports the view that biological women should not question a man's self-identification as a "trans woman". But really it says to me that no-one can force the identity of "cis woman" on anyone else. It is equally not progressive to try and force a new system on our society of "gender by declaration" (meaning 'woman' includes transwomen i.e. men who declare themselves women and ciswomen i.e. women who declare themselves women) instead of what we already have which is "sex by observation" where nobody needs to declare anything to be a member of a sex class.

Yes, many South Africans would be offended to be called 'Black', because their identity is Coloured/Cape Coloured or another sub group. SA has so many different cultures, tribal, and ethnic identities. 30 odd 'indigenous' languages, 12 official languages, lots of inter racial tension and history going back centuries. If you're going to get into identity politics there, you'd better read some books first.

By 'you', I obvs don't mean you, Buttercup. I mean 'one'.

I mean she has trouble here in the UK when she calls herself 'coloured'.

It's US cultural imperialism. Anything that they deem offensive is unacceptable, no matter the different contexts around the world.

The rules for race are as tricky as those for 'gender'.

Of course I would never intentionally use a term that offends someone, but I have never been given a rational explanation as to why 'coloured people' is offensive but 'people of colour' is polite.

Newsflash. Academic theories around “identity” more often than not are ridiculously impractical so don’t work in real life and create more tension and division than they solve.

I find it all horrible depressing tbh. Especially when I see and hear them parroted as though fact and attempted to be applied in real life and if you don’t comform then you’re slurred as racist.

interesting from the general point of who is and isn't allowed to choose their own identity, who is allowed to decide what is and isn't offensive.

Isn't it? Where the power lies.

And yes. Gay people not allowed to reject the word queer, or to call themselves homosexual without nicely re defining it to value other people's identities by sacrificing their own.

Try telling an activist that you identify as a biological adult human female, or that it's rude of them to coercively label you 'cis' when you don't identify as such as you quickly find you're not part of the powerful group who gets to have identities and command that others respect them.

It's never reciprocal. Only oppressive. And never rooted in genuine values.

Sorry I've not dug deep here but America appoints itself the last word. This offends. This does not.

I follow an instagrammer who is a dancer. She posted a thing about how dancers using the word 'gypsy' to describe an aesthetic are being racist because gypsy is a racial slur. I don't disagree that 'gypsy' as an aesthetic is problematic but gypsy outside of the US is NOT a racial slur. It's a descriptor word used by gypsies and travellers to describe their ethnicity and culture. She literally hadn't thought that her US perspective might not be the only one.

I've just lost TWO attempts at typing a post, an unfortunate keystroke followed by an unscheduled reboot😠
To sum up:
I discovered Tyla yesterday, I saw the 'Water' video and crikey! Sexualised or what! Available at any time to any child of any age. Anyone else concerned about the images of women in music videos, which don't seem to have progressed much, except for a layer of surliness and aggression added to the hectares of bare flesh... Sorry for the derail.

Words across borders: I was often called the word that rhymes with 'maggot' in Fairytale of New York as a child, it was a term of mild rebuke, derived from the word for a bundle of twigs i.e. something worthless. It had nothing to do with sexuality. It's obvious from the context of Fairytale that it's the traditional meaning that's intended.
But to most people outside of my sociolinguistic milieu, it's a homophobic slur.
Tricky. Trickier still if as in Tyla's case, it's how she identifies... I don't know what the solution is.
I'm now hitting 'post' before Fate censors me again ☺

It is not.

It’s an archaic term - because ‘the orient’ was a colonial expression that encompassed Western ideas of the exotic.

When people say they have a problem with white feminism, threads like these are part of the reason.

My husband and I found the same - a term we and others happily use in our communities from our part of the word to describe ourselves, especially as a historical identifier from a British stand point, is immediately pounced on by arrogant Americans as "racist", "oh my god you can't use that word!" etc.

But what we find bizarre is that they tend to use "Asian American" only for Chinese Americans, whereas from a British standpooint that is ridiculous and a wide-sweeping paint brushing of a huge swathe of peoples, seeing as Asia is made up of 48 countries (which the majority of Americans can't seem to understand), many of whom have a large representative population in Britain so we use specific location identifiers rather than just "Asian". Asian who? Where? Southern? Western? Far East? And which country within those areas? So the term we use for ourselves we see as perfectly fine, it's been fine for the 4 decades we've lived here. no one in the UK has ever said anything about it or called us or others up on it, and we only had an issue when we went to America. We don't go to America any more, it;s way to racist.

LOL - proving my point. We use it, Duchess. My friends use it. I;ve never known anyone in my community, or close communities from the same part of Asia, to ever be offended. No one ever say s "far East Asian" lol.

So we'll keep using it, thanks. We don't bow down to what American's tell us how we should call ourselves.

Could you expand on that please?

And when people hide any thread on racism (as I'm about to do with this one) in order to escape the coming wokescolding and bunfight instead of staying, talking and learning, it's because of posts like these.

Americanah by Chimanda Ngozi Adichie is an excellent book in every way, but is also interesting on the topic of African American vs African in America and how the cultures clash.

Anymore. I grew up with the term as normal, I’m in my forties. It used to be very normal.

I have a friend who is annoyed because she was Asian growing up but now (she was told in Uni) she’s not allowed to describe herself as simply Asian, she’s south Asian (Indian background) and that the term Asian is reserved for those who used to be, what we now know is offensive (oriental).

I think you should get a say in how you describe yourself, but I also think you need to consider your audience. I would never use the N word on myself or anyone, but there are people who need to hold on to that word. I find it offensive but I’m not arguing with anyone on how they describe themselves, but if they try to use it on me we will have a problem

I’m not even sure what this means.

I thought it was interesting from the general point of who is and isn't allowed to choose their own identity, who is allowed to decide what is and isn't offensive.

Using race to bolster your gender critical position. If you can’t see the problem, you are the problem.

It is not at all the same as gender issues. A man calling themselves a woman is lying and denying reality, because he is not a woman. This artist calls herself Coloured, truthfully, because she is Coloured and always has been. With a capital letter. That is a distinctive ethnic and cultural group in South Africa, it not the same as saying "mixed race" as we would in the UK, which does not say anything about which cultural group you feel a part of. Being physically mixed race is part of being Coloured but not all of it. Calling herself Black would feel wrong for her, as to her that signifies a different group of people.