Race and South Africa

Today in class, we discussed the racial groupings in South Africa during apartheid. My mom is South African, so I thought it would be interesting to talk to her about her experiences.

In South Africa during apartheid, everyone had what was known as a "Book of Life." It contained a ton of information about the person to whom it belonged, including his or her race. Apartheid was much like segregation, and there were limited opportunities for people who weren't white. Train cars were segregated, among other things. My mom remembers one time that she was riding the train and started talking to this girl sitting nearby. When they both got off the train, the girl was met by her family, and my mom saw that her family was racially mixed. But since the girl only looked tan and not "colored," she was able to board the white car without hassle.

I asked my mom about her experiences coming to America. I told her about our conversation in class and asked if she remembered living in a country where people differentiated between black and colored. She did. I asked her if she identified African American people that way when she came to America. She told me that she didn't classify people as black or colored, but if someone was lighter than another, she would observe that they had mixed ancestry. She still thinks that way today.

I don't know if anyone here has heard of the Capitol Steps, but they are a musical political comedy group. I remember during election season, they put out a song called "A Leader Named Barack," to the tune of "Leader of the Pack." There was one line that went, "Is Obama black? Not very... Not like Whoopi Goldberg, more like Halle Berry." It just occurred to me that as Americans, we can't describe people of mixed race like Obama and Berry. We don't have the words for it. So they're both light-skinned blacks. But Berry is easily as light as any tan white woman. I asked my mom how she would classify both, and she said that Goldberg is black and Berry is of mixed ancestry. She asked me how I classified them, and I told her I always thought they were both black, even though I observed a clear distinction between their skin colors. It's really interesting to see that since Americans don't have the language to describe race as acutely as South Africans, we perceive people differently.

Race is such a sensitive subject, which I find interesting. We feel completely comfortable describing the color of someone's hair, but skin color is a different story. I remember when I was in 9th grade, I wrote a paper on apartheid for World History, and I struggled. I couldn't say "African American," which I thought was the politically correct term, because South Africans aren't American. But black seemed derogatory, even though I describe myself as white. A black girl I know hates being called "African American" because she's, in fact, Jamaican. History is so fraught with race tensions that no one wants to step out of line.