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.

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.

No it isnt!

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.

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

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.

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

I can't tolerate intolerance....

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I've been following the discussion but only just got the chance to reply. Thanks to everyone for your thoughts but particularly thanks to @InvisibleBuffy for your insight.

Just reflecting on what everyone says, I of course think it is fine for members of a group to determine how they self-describe and which labels they find offensive applied to themselves. And it is of course fine for members of a group to disagree with each other on that.

But I think this plays out inconsistently with a certain amount of double-standards in some areas. (I'm not aiming that at the black Americans in this instance, because it's simply not my place to do so - but this young woman certainly does have the right.)

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'.

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.

The School of Oriental and African Studies now self-identifiying as SOAS.

I don't understand how this issue relates to gender identity politics and is on this board.

A man calling himself a woman is not the same as this. Tyler is using a term that is accurate, albeit offensive to people with a different cultural reference.

In terms of coloured as a phrase in South Africa, it is a uniquely specific culture that came about through generations of people who were descended from a wide variety of races, and is in no way the same as being mixed race in America or the old fashioned, now considered offensive, generic catch all for anyone who is not white.

I don't understand how this issue relates to gender identity politics and is on this board.

As said on many threads on this forum which is actually FWR (look at the web links for this page) ie Feminism and Women's Rights, and for some reason MNHQ took it into its head, that it could separate off the discussion about sex and gender as though somehow it wasn't about feminism and women's rights.

So if a woman writes an article about something impinging on her rights, and someone thinks this is an issue other women interested in feminism and women's rights, why shouldn't it be here?

I don't, on the face of it, really accept the whole idea that identity is wholly self defined. It has a significant social element. And I'm not convinced that what is really stupid about this is that some people aren't being "progressive" because they won't accept someone's self-identity.

It's stupid because they are so damn parochial that they can't understand that not every place has the same history and cultural context.

It's stupid because they won't understand that even within one place (like the US) not everyone who is black will have the same views on these things. "Coloured" was even an option on the American census until pretty recently, because it was the "identity" some older black people preferred. That generation has now pretty much all passed away, but only just.

And it's stupid because it constructs a false linguistic history in order to justify why it's supposed to be offensive. It was never a slur, quite the opposite, early in the civil rights movement it was promoted as the new, non-racist word of choice, and it's heavily used in the writings and speeches of civil rights advocates.

If people are offended because someone from a different part of the world uses some words differently, frankly I wonder how real their offence is. It's not about being progressive or not.

Because identity politics isn't separate things. It comes out of the same sets of ideological premises. There are differences in how it applies to different things, but if you want to understand gender ideology you have to understand the larger ideology. And frankly, it's toxic whatever you apply it to.

Back to the main topic, I think it is clear that over time what words are acceptable and what aren't does change. So when I was quite young (this is UK) it was thought rude to call someone "Black" and more polite to call them "Coloured" even though within memory the term "coloured" used in former UK colonies would be a negative or derogatory term.

But certainly by the 70s if not earlier the word Black was part of fighting back against the white establishment deciding what was or wasn't acceptable. ie Southall Black Sisters was named out of those politics (in the early days of its use a list was provided of who was considered Black, which extended to most countries in the southern hemisphere).

And although not maybe as presumptive as US academic speak, it was not universally accepted, which is how we ended up with BME and then ... (cant remember).

So it seems it isn't just the change that happens over time, but what seems to be the totally unthinking acceptance by US politicos and academics that their view of the world is the correct view, and so ironically ending up as being as much part of American cultural imperialism as those they would say they are the opposite of.

In some political groupings in the US the term "Brown People" is now used, and am not sure if that is a term being imposed on a group, or is one of the groups own choosing.

But as said up thread there is a huge difference between someone saying that is their identity to someone from a totally different culture and background imposing that on someone.

Thanks for the article OP.

That phrase 'divided by a common language' springs to mind. I think America sometimes struggles with the idea that other countries have a history and culture that is not the same as America or that common words have different meanings in other places.

It's very rude to tell someone who is describing themselves, that they are doing it wrong. The caveat being that a person shouldn't be able to compel others to accept outright lies either.

And although not maybe as presumptive as US academic speak, it was not universally accepted, which is how we ended up with BME and then ... (cant remember).

Some of the changes though aren't so much about some people not accepting whatever was current. Nor just normal language change over time, where some words become old-fashioned sounding.

Not just in racial politics, there has for since the 60s been a tendency for people to think that by changing language, they can rid words of any kind of negative connotations. That kind of makes sense when you see certain words used very negatively. "Retard" is a good example, and later, Sped which had the same meaning. In practice it tends not to be that effective though, because as long as people think the same way, the new word acquires the old connotations, often very quickly. So you get a constantly changing technical vocabulary, that seems to be on about a ten year rotation, and it doesn't really seem to achieve anything much.

But what we've also seen is people deciding that some words should be changed just because they are associated with the past, and people in the past were too old-fashioned. These words hadn't become pejorative in themselves, and in every case I know of, they were still currently used by many members of the group. If some people don't want those words, why couldn't they use something else and leave others to use what they like?

I think there is something else going on in those cases. There might be some honest hope that by changing language we will somehow move into a brave new world. But in a lot of cases, I think it's about marking out in and out groups, much like the use of jargon does. The thing is, if you accept that others have different backgrounds, different preferences, and will use different language, you have to accept that people out in the world may not always use the words you yourself prefer, and that is ok.

Some of the changes though aren't so much about some people not accepting whatever was current.

I probably didn't explain it well, but for instance the attempt by some to say the word Black should be used to cover a wide ranging group, came out of a particular politics, so even though being promoted by people who would identify with that use of the word Black, they didn't allow for those who weren't and never would be part of the leftist anti colonialist political activism.

The problem was that some in the establishment then thought we will accept this and promote it.