Am I Black, am I Coloured, am I Indian? An autoethnographic account of a refugee’s everyday encounters with ascribed racialisation in South Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACT Much of academic debate about race in South Africa has focused on South African citizens. An overlooked phenomenon in the field is how non-South African, such as refugees, experience racial ascription by South Africans in everyday life. I address this knowledge gap by reflecting on my own everyday experiences of racial assignation, as an Eritrean refugee who originates from a society whose other and self-identification habits are based on non-racial cultural and ethnic distinctions. I employ an auto-ethnographic qualitative approach to reflect on my lived experiences of racial ascription. This personal narrative forms part of a larger project that examined experiences of racial ascription of 46 Eritreans refugees and asylum seekers in South Africa. In my day-to-day contact with South Africans, I am racialised as Black, as Coloured and as Indian in random encounters. Drawing on my everyday lived experiences, I argue that in South Africa, racial ascription in everyday life tends to be inconsistent, and racial self-identification may also be contextual and fluid.