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 can remember back to the late 90s when even in the US 'coloured' was not always insulting. I've never lived there but I remember (for example) this was how some women on a chat site identified and they told me it was because they were not 'black' but had different colours of skin and they considered black to be too homogenous.

I would imagine many Coloured South Africans will be furious at this attempt to deny their (very rich) culture.

And look at that!

id like someone to tell me who’s making up all the new rules without informing (getting input from) those who it is supposed to be helping.

What's offensive and what's not can be very cultural.

No one does but mostly they just roll their eyes and hide the thread so it’s good that people are asking for clarification.

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

Interesting, that.

See my post regarding earnest academic theories cooked up in US universities in the 70s/80s but which have almost zero relevance in RL. Though have somehow managed to put down very deep and solid roots in the mainstream.

Agreed all I saw when I read the exchanges is a bunch of Americans being a bunch of Americans and because they’re black believing they’re less colonial than their white counterparts. They have little to no knowledge of the rest of the world specifically South Africa and it’s complicated racial history, that is not just simply Mandela and apartheid and are happy to stay that way. Overgeneralisation of course. But very befitting for those tone deaf commentators imo

I'm in my 70s so what is and isn't acceptable has changed in my lifetime. I wont tell you what my (black) husband calls himself as you'd almost certainly think it is offensive.

I struggle with person/people of colour as in my mind I associate it with slavery when the term "free person of colour" was used. Having said that I have no problem with other people using it, it just doesn't trip off the tongue for me.

I know that's how Americans see it, but it is still a normal term of expresion here. We also have a school of 'Oriental and African studies'. The orient and the occident are still valid terms.

Do you mean SOAS? That officially changed its name 10 years ago?

Yes, but that is still what it stands for.

Is it? 🤔 id never use that outside the 4 walls of my house

Look at the website. SOAS is its name now.

A spokeswoman said the institution never used its previous name and requested that others called it Soas University of London

A spokeswoman said the institution never used its previous name and requested that others called it Soas University of London

OK.
So what does the 'Soas' in 'Soas University of London' stand for?

Gosh you managed to say absolutely nothing while pretending to be better than others because ‘news flash’ you ‘get it’.

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)?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thanks @theDudesmummyand @InvisibleBuffy