Racialism and Representation in the Rainbow Nation

Fileve T Palmer

doi:10.1177/2158244016673873

Abstract

Despite a commitment to non-racialism in the South African Constitution and anthropology’s steadfast position that race is a social construction, race is still a highly valued ideology with real-life implications for citizens. In South Africa, racialism particularly affects heterogeneous, multigenerational, multiethnic creole people known as “Coloureds.” The larger category of Coloured is often essentialized based on its intermediary status between Black and White and its relationship to South Africa’s “mother city” (Cape Town, where the majority of Coloured people live). Through research on Coloured identity in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, I show how the nuances of personal and collective histories, spatial constraints, and education affect the identities of youth and elders differently from their Cape counterparts. By incorporating a photo-voice methodology, which I called Photo Ethnography Project (PEP), participants produced their own visual materials and challenged essentialized versions of themselves (specifically) and South Africa (in general). Through three public displays of photography and narratives, youth in three communities answered the question of what it means to be Coloured in today’s rainbow nation.

Highlights

In 1994, the world witnessed the dismantling of the last bastion of White supremacy on the African continent: the South African Apartheid state
Tutu was not denying difference; rather, he was attempting to use the analogy to foreground his belief in the ability of all South Africans (Black, White, Coloured, and Asian) to co-exist in spite of and because of difference
My work investigates identity formation among youth of “mixed-race,” or creole people living in smaller pockets of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province

Summary

Introduction

In 1994, the world witnessed the dismantling of the last bastion of White supremacy on the African continent: the South African Apartheid state. Recognizing that creolized societies, communities, and peoples merge two or more “formerly distinct” ethnic or cultural entities over multiple generations in new spaces to create unique social orders, human beings, and/or languages in heterogeneous styles, structures, and contents disengages race as a primary focus. In this way, I challenge the West’s obsession with the idea of racial purity. I stress that alternative venues of identity expression and oral histories are valuable in that they offer a fuller display of human diversity and reality that allows greater access to the public and community members that may be more visually literate and less academically inclined

Methods

Conclusion