(Editor’s Note: Chicago Defender Archivist Ayana Haaruun is on fellowship in South Africa. Every Wednesday, until the fellowship ends, her latest experiences will run in the Courier. Here’s Ayana’s latest report from the Motherland.)

I met Hazel, a freckled woman with a cropped hairdo at a crowded outdoor bar.   Sitting among other members of the South African Air Force, I immediately noticed that she and her girlfriends looked different from the Black South Africans I normally see. While heading to the table where she was sitting, my toffee-colored Black African friend mumbled to me, “What are those guys doing sitting with those coloureds? Don’t talk to them.  We don’t like them because they think they’re better than us.”  

Curious about the group often overlooked in conversations about South African politics and history, I sat down next to Hazel and her friends. The first thing I noticed was they spoke Afrikaans, the language of South Africa’s Dutch descendants. Three of the four women had a tan skin tone; one woman had hazel-colored eyes, and another had hair that looked straighter than mine. Through my eyes however, they looked like many African-Americans I know.

From Hazel and her friends, I learned that coloured does not mean biracial in American terms. Neither Hazel nor her friends have any immediate white relatives. Their history began in the 19th century where “coloureds” emerged as a result of early interactions between white settlers, African slaves from Southern Africa, and African and Asian slaves brought to South Africa from elsewhere.

In most European colonies and places where Africans were enslaved, skin color was an important tool used in maintaining white supremacy and racial divisions. In South Africa, the term “coloured” was created under apartheid to define a population that was neither white nor members of African tribes, and to create a racially hierarchal society. During apartheid, coloureds and cape coloureds —a mix of coloured and Indian, Malaysian or other South Asian groups—were forced to move into segregated coloured communities on the western coast of South Africa.

Accustomed to the one-drop rule—one drop of Black blood means you’re Black—I had a difficult time acknowledging any racial differences between coloureds and myself. “How do you know someone is coloured,” I asked Hazel and her friends. Apparently, “coloured” is loosely defined by family lineage, skin color, and sometimes hair texture. In addition, each of them acknowledged their white ancestors. Hazel told me her great-grandfather came from England and married a Black Portuguese woman. Her friend, Ally, said she met her white great-grandmother at a family reunion.  

Aside from race, language is an important defining characteristic of cultural identity in South Africa. There are 11 official languages and most South Africans speak English, as well as a “mother tongue.” The first language of white Afrikaners is Afrikaans, while Black Africans are conversational in at least a handful of local tribal languages. Coloureds first language is Afrikaans. Most do not speak indigenous African languages, nor do they acknowledge African tribal affiliations. And perhaps because many Black Africans refuse to speak Afrikaans, the language most associated with apartheid and white dominance, communication between Black Africans and coloureds is often strained.

In addition, the relationship between coloureds and Black Africans is still undermined by white supremacy. Although all non-whites suffered discrimination under apartheid, the coloureds enjoyed a slighter higher status than Black Africans. I asked Hazel and Ally if they felt whites treated them better. “Yes,” they responded. “It’s because we speak the same language as them, not because we’re mixed.”

Hazel told me as a coloured she feels left out of the new post-apartheid South Africa, where Black Africans now govern the country. “All everyone talks about is Blacks and whites, they never mention coloureds and Asians.” Ally described the alienation she feels: “While working at a bank, the electricity went out—I had to choose between sitting among Blacks and whites. Because I speak Afrikaans, I sat with the whites. A Black woman said to me, ‘you must not sit with the Blacks or the whites—sit in the middle because you don’t fit in anywhere.”

In the midst of a peculiar societal position, Hazel informed me “dating a coloured is still considered a ‘step up’ for Blacks,” in the same way that African-Americans privilege lighter skin and straighter hair. Hazel elaborated, “In my mother’s family, white was very important, Blacks were inferior. When I had a Black boyfriend my mother got upset. I don’t think she would have had the same response with a white man. She only saw Blacks as farm workers, mine workers, stealers and thieves.”

Most noteworthy for me were Hazel, Ally, and Granwill, Hazel’s 14-year-old son’s ideas about African-Americans. “Most Black American singers and actors we see on television are coloured. You can tell that they’re mixed, even though you guys just call them Black.” After Granwill bombarded me with questions about young American celebrities, I asked the group which celebrities they’d identify as “coloured.” They proceeded with a long list that included  Halle Berry, Beyoncé, Mariah Carey (they gave her a “maybe”), Ciara, Christina Millian, Whitney Houston, Chris Brown, Raven, Tyra Banks (they weren’t sure because her mother “looked Black” on television), Bow Wow, Ludacris, Usher, Mario, TI, Michelle Williams and Will Smith (whom they described as the only coloured man married to a coloured woman.)

(Send comments to: ayanahaaruun@yahoo.com.)