to graduate to this level, as race is very much a material and highly consequential matter in my life and the lives of other Coloured people like me. In my many conversations with White South Africans, race is almost always dismissed in a very knee-jerk fashion because it is popularly believed that entertaining any discussions on race will further perpetuate racism and a backward-looking perspective which delays progress.
I have a different perspective on this as I believe that talking about race and racism in all its manifestations is the only way for us to attain a far more qualitative and meaningful social integration than to merely sweep issues under the carpet and pretend there’s social harmony. As much as apartheid has ended since 1994 and we have had freedom, beneath the veneer of a seemingly integrated South African society lie some very deeply rooted systemic inequalities which require more than fanciful thinking and fluffy, rainbow nation imagery to vanquish.
Make no mistake, I am not a ‘so-called Coloured’, not parenthesised, not your average, garden-variety, roll-over, ‘yes baas, no baas, three bags full baas’ Coloured. I’m a 99% pure, Durban born and bred Coloured with dreams and ambitions of making a material impact in this world even if it kills me. Unfortunately, racial discourse in South Africa has become a tit-for-tat two-sided affair in which Black comeuppance is met with White derision and the failings of the state serving to fuel any misgivings which White society may’ve had about the ANC-led government. All this in a vicious cycle of one-upmanship, cheap, dirty-politics and insidious racial skirmishes on website forums.
I also know that many South Africans, both Black and White, probably know more about the mating habits of the Madagascan tree frog than they know about Coloured South Africans… I would therefore like to unpack this whole Coloured conundrum for you once and for all and introduce you to my website www.bruin-ou.com.
