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.

Yes, right.

I think that maybe that is necessitated by the theory though.

If you still have some members of the group who use the "old" word, the problem is it undermines the claim that it is problematic in itself.

And also, if some members of the group continue to use the word and it's acknowledged that is ok, it usually becomes very difficult to police the use of it of those outside of the group.

I guess what I am saying is it looks like the point is not to have some people who prefer it use a different word, it's about managing the language of others. And I think right there you can begin to see the links to GI, even though it manifests differerntly.

Is it? I have the distinct impression it’s offensive here too now, and that the term is now Asian?

Anyway we all know that identity politics is all about pushing a particular narrow prism of identity on everyone, and is not at all about allowing everyone to decide their own identity or self-understanding at all.

I have understood from travelling in SA that this is a common way for people of a particular ethnicity/geographical area of the country to describe themselves. Ethnically it’s a very diverse place.

Ditto “gypsy”: I have met people from Albania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic who call themselves this. Some monitoring forms have it as an ethnicity.

Some Americans need to “educate themselves”.

If you only talk in vacuous slogans, you are the problem.

People in the west used the term oriental (eastern) to describe people (and culture) from the east. Yes, such people and cultures were exotic to those in the west, just as western people and cultures were to those in the east. A lot less so now.

The change from oriental being being a totally fine descriptor to one that must not be used, was recent, sudden and imposed. I believe it arose when an academic suggested it was a colonialist term, not because it was actually offensive or a slur.

Of course all descriptive terms - even though not slurs - can be used in racist ways or to perpetuate racism. Sometimes that use is so extensive that I can see why it tips over onto being a term people would rather not hear or assume is being used in a racist way, and I think for Americans coloured is one of those words. It appears that that wasn't the outcome for that word in SA, however.

Lots of great analysis here about the parallels so I won't repeat it. (Also some nice discussions of linguistics, happy days.)

The crux of the matter for me is that with identity politics it becomes necessary to police the identity of others. Otherwise the whole house of cards falls down.

My daughter asked the other day how 2 women have sex. The first thing I said was "well, there's no willy for a start". Later, I was telling someone this and suddenly realised this might be a controversial statement which I could be "re-educated" for. Just as the singer in the article who apparently was simply stating something self-evident.

I don't have any problem with people identifying as trans. I just won't change my definition of myself as a woman which already has a set meaning which for me has nothing to do with declared identity.

'Orientalism' by Edward Said was 1978, I just looked up the date. That was often cited as groundbreaking in terms of how Western academics viewed other cultures.

In Zanzibar, which is a real melting pot of many cultures, there are people who describe themselves as 'Persians' but Black African in appearance.

In a TV documentary Henry Louis Gates, an African American academic, talking to two young locals said something like:

"In the US you can forget all that Persian shit - you would just be Black"

He sounded sneering when he spoke but not sure if he meant it that way.

It’s usually left wing Americans who are so strident in their believes who can’t see they’re coming at things from their own cultural perspective. Surely if you think racism is socially constructed you’d realise that what’s racist in your country isn’t going to be universal. I once made the mistake of trying to point this out to an American about the term gypsy and they just responded by giving me links to American sites and just couldn’t take in what was being said.

I love threads like this, you brilliant people.

I thought language was supposed to share ideas within social groups now it's weaponised to divide us. I'm sure I've heard somewhere that social groups have a critical mass, maybe the division is a product of that.

Did anyone see the Dr who recap? Russell Davis(?)was saying that celestial was offensive to the Chinese. He was tying himself in knots trying to be pc. I was a wee bit offended by the heavy handed moralising and amused by the society where everyone was right and basically pretty 'fighty', was Dr who laughing at itself. (Btw love Catherine Tate)

The crux of the matter for me is that with identity politics it becomes necessary to police the identity of others. Otherwise the whole house of cards falls down

Yes, this.

My understanding was that the term 'Orient' developed from the use of where the sun rises/where the dawn is (rises in the east, sets in west) to meaning the part of the world that is east of Europe. This is why 'Occident' was used for the West as it is where the sun goes down/sets. The words were a pair of opposites/antonyms that were geographical. It wasn't to do with being 'exotic' and 'non-exotic.'

I do accept that meanings change naturally and slowly over time. I also agree that quick, imposed changes are grating.

Slightly off topic, but I was thinking about Oriental Cats and then I remembered the following:

I was once part of an absolutely insane conversation on the subject of 'is it racist to use the term Gypsy for the breed of horse known as 'Gypsy cobs'?' These horses also often have a patchy coat which is known in general as 'coloured' in the UK which is a shortening of 'broken coloured'. You can give more detail about the specifics of the coat colour (piebald, skewbald, black tobiano, chestnut tobiano etc.) but most people use 'coloured' as a shorthand. Maybe using 'cob' is problematic for body positivity as it refers to a stocky body type?

So there we are... a coloured Gypsy cob. I wonder what they would make of that in a US university?

I don't think anyone would care if you said it at Appley Fair.

The whole idea of exoticism as a negative is interesting.

Obviously its a positional attribute, people don't find their own culture exotic. But a culture that seems little known, different in unexpected ways, and interesting - that's likely to be perceived as exotic, i, and this is important, if your orientation to it is basically positive.

If it's not basically positive than what you are likely to see is a denigration or disgust towards the little known culture.

Asian cultures had both of these responses to western culture too, historically, though actually quite a lot of the latter.

Lots more to think about.

Quite clearly there is an issue not so much of language, but of people (some people) in the US only seeing or knowing about the world through their own cultured. And added to this a concept that somehow the US is always the leader. And this being expressed by teenage tiktokers who are probably just following trends.

But I suspect that in the UK we aren't much better. So if you compare when Ceylon and then Turkey announced how they now wanted their countries to be called, ie Sri Lanka and Türkiye, must news outlets etc., made the effort to do that.

Obviously with the multitude of communities around the world, and the different histories it would be hard to come out with agreed names etc., but was thinking more about how it shouldn't be a particular grouping, or as self elected expert imposing "correct" names.

And just going back to the OP, in fact it wasn't that long ago that in the US and it started to be used here you saw the expression Women of Colour.

But obviously it should be the right of the group itself to say what word they want even if some would say be that is a derogatory word. Reclaiming and making it their own is surely the principle.

In fact, going back a few decades the word "woman" was not commonly used other than in a negative way, interferring old woman or some such. And it was a deliberate decision to call what became the WLM the Women's Liberation Movement to reclaim for our own. (Little knowing what was to come re gender!) So because an oppressing group uses a descriptor that is accurate, in a derogatory way, reclaiming and rejecting their right to do that is very much not allowing a power group to tell us who we are and what our value is.

But there is never going to be an agreement by any group (or indeed who forms a part of that group) on what word they want, on which parts of their history or the linguistic journey of their country/culture they value. Many people also don't care and value the diversity of language we use to describe each other.

What most people don't like is prejudice and hate, and it is possible to use all the same words to communicate such attitudes. We absolutely shouldn't tolerate slurs, but so many of these words are not slurs (see the example of "woman" above), but are descriptive words that are capable of being, and sometimes have frequently been, used as slurs (normally against marginalised or oppressed groups) which is not the same thing.

We seem to be in a position that if anyone expresses a view that they find a word to be offensive/problematic/incorrect/historical inaccurate/western/used by someone as a slur, then we must all be on high alert to completely abandon that word on pain of social faux pas (at best) or accusations of racism (at worst)

My own view is that we need to allow people to speak freely using the words that come most naturally to them and, as PP said, allow natural change (including change away from language favoured by dominant voices, academics and charities) aiming to maximise the range of language that "can" be used.

Sometimes using precise, nuanced and thoughtful language is really important (in particular I think that special interest charities and groups do have a role to plan in examining language and word choice in how they represent the people and cultures those groups were founded for), but it shouldn't be an expectation in day to day life. What I want in day to day life is to encourage more interesting cross-cultural conversation, not less.