To Be or Not to Be: Creating Coloureds in the 1950s

Abstract

From the 1950s, we begin to see white officials’ aggressive advancements to impose Colouredness as a distinct racial categorization in Northern Rhodesia, as well as Eurafricans’ progressive adoption of Colouredness as an ethnic identity to make cultural and political distinctions between themselves and Northern Rhodesia’s European, African, and Indian communities. Despite white officials’ and Eurafrican people’s cultural and political grappling, Colouredness was never legislated as a distinct racial categorization in Northern Rhodesia. Nonetheless, it continued to be used to define the Eurafrican community. In earlier chapters of this book, we have seen the exterior and interior factors that greatly influenced racial policies and practices in Northern Rhodesia, and these factors in turn helped to shape and construct racial and cultural distinctions within the territory.