Not White Enough, Not Black Enough: Racial Identity in the South African Coloured Community (Volume 83) (Ohio RIS Africa Series)

Not White Enough, Not Black Enough: Racial Identity In The South African Coloured Community Is The First Systematic Study Of Coloured Identity, Its History, And Its Relevance To South African National Life. A Combination Of Wide-ranging Thematic Analyses And Detailed Case Studies Illustrates How Colouredness Has Functioned As A Social Identity From The Time Of Its Emergence Through Its Adaptation To The Postapartheid Environment.--book Jacket. Continuity And Context : An Overview Of Coloured Identity In White Supremacist South Africa -- History From The Margins : Changing Perceptions Of Its Past Within The Coloured Community -- The Predicament Of Marginality : Case Studies From The Earlier Period Of White Rule -- The Hegemony Of Race : Coloured Identity Within The Radical Movement During The Mid-twentieth Century -- The Emperor's New Clothes : Coloured Rejectionism During The Latter Phases Of The Apartheid Era -- New Responses To Old Dilemmas : Coloured Identity In A Transforming South Africa. Mohamed Adhikari. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. The concept of Colouredness—being neither white nor black—has been pivotal to the brand of racial thinking particular to South African society. The nature of Coloured identity and its heritage of oppression has always been a matter of intense political and ideological contestation.Not White Enough, Not Black Enough: Racial Identity in the South African Coloured Community is the first systematic study of Coloured identity, its history, and its relevance to South African national life. Mohamed Adhikari engages with the debates and controversies thrown up by the identity's troubled existence and challenges much of the conventional wisdom associated with it. A combination of wide-ranging thematic analyses and detailed case studies illustrates how Colouredness functioned as a social identity from the time of its emergence in the late nineteenth century through its adaptation to the postapartheid environment.Adhikari demonstrates how the interplay of marginality, racial hierarchy, assimilationist aspirations, negative racial stereotyping, class divisions, and ideological conflicts helped mold people's sense of Colouredness over the past century. Knowledge of this history, and of the social and political dynamic that informed the articulation of a separate Coloured identity, is vital to an understanding of present-day complexities in South Africa. There is a general lack of familiarity with the history of the Coloured community of South Africa, except perhaps for an awareness that it has generally been a story of racial oppression and that for nearly the whole of the twentieth century, it followed a discernible trend of intensifying segregationism and a continual erosion of Coloured people's civil rights. The concept of Colouredness - being neither white nor black - has been pivotal to the brand of racial thinking particular to South African society. This book presents the study of Coloured identity, its history, and its relevance to South African national life.