Talking straight about race

[miltonlouw]

Many years ago I was asked, “Who are you?” This was before Independence and I understood my credentials were being questioned. My reply was, “First, I am a human being, and secondly I am a Namibian. Last, and least important, I am coloured”.

Now I am at the brink of turning 40 and take the time to sit back and look back at the mileposts during my life. It is also the time to look forward to the end of my days, and consider where I have gone wrong, and perhaps where I have made a meaningful difference. It is most definitely like sitting in an armchair and contemplating “in order to understand itself and mentally grasp its own activity, that of the mind.”

As I look back, I must address a mistake that I have made in my feeble attempts at contributing to the nationhood of our beloved land. I have thought it unimportant where my family comes from, what their cultures and beliefs were, and often thought these were to be considered and ultimately rejected as part of their living in a past dominated by the racial classification given by the system of Apartheid.

Who I am is not dictated by our external environment, but rather by the internal. As humans we tend to blame our culture, society, government, employers and even our own families for things that go wrong, but rarely give them credit for “our” achievements..

As time has passed I have gone from reading science fiction to more biographies on the historical figures in our history. (Imagine my surprise when I found out that Benjamin Franklin had already added a thought for the month in his “Poor Richard’s Almanac, and written advice to a newly establishing tradesman.☺)

Reading through these biographies, and accessing their quotes has made a dramatic impact on my life. Throughout my writings in emails newsletter or blogs, I have often put forward an argument to find that a similar proposal has been done by great men before me. I was not the first, and hopefully not the last, to have these great expectations form the human race.

So to this I address myself to the words of Albert Einstein, “He who cherishes the values of culture cannot fail to be a pacifist.”

Thus I sat down and wrote the following:

Differences in Namibia

We have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. This is the only explanation of the total lack of information based on tribal affiliations in our census in Namibia. Unfortunately, this attitude of “let’s pretend it is not there” does not make it so.

Even in South Africa, where the Apartheid system was the most formalised, they have recognised the need to keep the information and knowledge of all cultural groups as part of the “rainbow nation”. Discrimination because of race colour or culture is a thing of the past and is replaced by recognition and acceptance of our differences.

We have also outlawed discrimination on the basis of gender, yet still need this categorisation to measure the needed changes that must take place in our country for gender equality. In the same way it is important to note that when a previously marginalised group, such as the San people, have qualified teachers from within their own tribe and culture (Republikein – 14 April 2009).

The lack of recognition of certain groups can have detrimental affects on our country. Look at what has happened to many of our pre-Independence orphans who returned from East Germany. More recently we have seen the SWAPO veterans and orphans also wishing to be recognised as a distinct group with specific needs. In the near future we will see a new group forming of AIDS orphans who have grown up differently with specific disadvantages that need to be addressed to allow them to fully pluck the fruits of our freedom. What culture shall all these groups inherit?

There is a national culture Namibia. Thus we can refer to our language as Namlish with its peculiarities and pronunciations. We are known by our friends and foes on the sport fields as the Brave warriors and the Biltongboere.

In business we refer to the marketing process. It starts with an analysis of the present and then moves to develop a strategy. In marketing it is recognised that to provide the best product for the customer you need to segment the market. Tools such as the Living Standards Measurement are used to focus our marketing efforts. A typical LSM would include age, gender, race or cultural group and income. (Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) household surveys have become an important tool in measuring and understanding poverty in developing countries.)

The people of Namibia are the customer. To serve our people better we must recognise our difference not only in gender or language but also in race. The census in Namibia must measure the race and culture embraced by each resident in future.

[Omer]

Here is my story.

i come from a country with a very very mixed population .. everyone race color and breed exists in that country. i did not grow up in an Apartheid system and quite frankly most of us probably did not fully understand what Apartheid was.

The word Apartheid was never mentioned at school , the subject of what was happening was never brought up.
I was completly clueless about Nelson Mandela or South Africa.. i guess it was not that newsworthy? No one around me ever talked about it .. like i say i was totally in the dark .. maybe i was alone.

I grew tired of my job that i had for 16 years and finally accepted an offer that i declined twice already. Why would i go to Namibia .. a place i never heard of.

After some google searches i deemed it safe enough to come and give this job a chance, i am glad i did .. i love it here.

But .. imagine being me .. first day in the country and being pulled over to the side by this Afrikaner man who insisted he would school me on the blacks.
what came out of his mouth horrified me to the point i did not want anything to do with that man. Sadly .. i had to endure his hate speach for a month until finally i refused to even talk to him.

Unfortunetly for me word got around that i was not to be trusted and now at some Afrikaners " not all" have done everything possible to get rid of me .. lies , exageration .. you name it they have tried it.

So that first day was my education that things were kind of weird here.

One day i was sitting down for dinner with 10 of the "black" people i work with and one of the ladies says "So and So must be stupid because he's too dark".

Then i hear how Herero's are like this, Owambo are like this etc

the darker you are the dumber you are .. this being told to me by a well dressed Owambo lady?

Now call me a stupid foregner but having the label "coloured" has always struck me as odd. Who gives you that label? Are you white.. are you black.. are you both?? Does it matter ..
in Namibia of course it does.

Then again i am told i don't live in the real world.
I love Namibia and have adjusted to it but that does not mean i have to change
who i am.

your all racists and narrow minded as far as i'm concerned .. none of you seem to be imune from the disease.

sorry if i have offended anyone .. it is not my intention at all

[miltonlouw]

Thanks Omer,

Sorry but does this country that you come from not have words like creole, mischling, mulatto, English, German, American Indian, Liverpoolian?

If I ask you what your parents are would you say their country of origin, or their belief system, or their religion?

BTW. being Racist sometimes, narrow minded NO - It is from the viewpoint of having the ability to post topics like this that show we are open-minded.

[pangkas]

Nitty gritty issues or is it petty issues ... playing with words ... no i think not ... here is some more information on the topic that might be handy.

enjoy reading.

Identification.

The term "Cape Coloureds" generally refers to those South Africans of mixed cultural and racial stock whose ancestors include Europeans, Khoi and other indigenous African people, and Asians. The Coloureds were complexly and artificially defined for political convenience by the South African state in the Population Registration Act No. 30 of 1950 (as amended) on the premise that they occupied a middle political estate between Whites and indigenous Blacks, a designation that entrenched still further that structural position and the varying attendant feelings of marginality among individuals. The legal definition distinguished seven subcategories, only one of which was designated the "Cape Coloured group." The remaining six were listed as "Malay," "Griqua," "Chinese" (sic), "Indian," "other Asiatic," and "other Coloured."


Location.

Historically, the ethnonym "Cape Coloureds" alluded specifically to their origin in and around what is now the city of Cape Town and, more generally, in the Cape Colony (Province). Today their descendants are found throughout South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe, and the term "Coloured" is often used indiscriminately for all people of mixed racial origin.


Demography.

In 1988 the total Coloured population in South Africa, excluding Asians, was 3,127,000, representing about 8.7 percent of the total population of that country. Roughly 75 percent of the Coloured population live in urban areas. In neighboring Namibia, 42,241 people were classified as Coloureds in 1981. The 25,181 Rehoboth Basters, who physically resemble the Namibian Coloured people, regard themselves as a separate "nation" because of their historical and political position in that country. The various Baster groups in South Africa tend to maintain a similar ethnic aloofness.


Linguistic Affiliation.

By and large, Coloured people speak either or both of the official state languages, Afrikaans and English. In 1980, 83.3 percent claimed Afrikaans as their home language, as opposed to the 10.3 percent who spoke English. Only 4.5 percent of all Coloured families reported that they were bilingual. Various dialects of both English and Afrikaans are also spoken, especially in Cape Town. Some families in rural areas speak Khoe or a Bantu language (nearly 2 percent in 1980).

MixedFolks.com - The Coloureds of Southern Africa

We all label ourselves and others to signal different aspects of our identities. Labels are means to construct our social world:

They define norms in relation to others who bear similar or different labels. Similarly, labelling is commonplace within the world of international development.

Unintended and sometimes unwelcome are the consequences when we quantify and measure categories of people to define needs. These labelling processes are sometimes dynamic and political of nature.

This labelling may shift or sustain power relations in ways that trigger social dislocation and prejudice efforts to achieve greater equity.

Striking those discourses [imposed by the apartheid government] down was an easy
Intellectual task, in that it did not call for any difficult moral choices. But now we are
Faced not only with the imposition of “ otherness” by the powerful on the powerless, and with
The inscription of this “otherness” in the cultural rhetoric – the texts – of those who have
Power. We are also faced with the claiming of “otherness” as a weapon in the hands of those
Who see themselves as weak, and as a means of articulating their demands for recognition,
Dignity and resources. Now we have some difficult distinctions to make. (Sharp, 1996,
Pp102-103)

(see, for example, James, 1990; Sharp and Boonzaier, 1994;Webster, 1991). Prior to the 1994 elections and the development of a democratic government, anthropologists tended to reject ethnic particularism primarily because of the manner in which ethnicity was mobilized by the apartheid government as a means of enforcing political division and economic exploitation
(Dubow, 1994;Sharp, 1996). Ethnic identity was therefore seen from two perspectives during the apartheid era, which have been summarized as “naming” and “claiming” by Comaroff(1996). “Naming” referred to the primordial and essentialist approach adopted by the apartheid state to delimit other weaker collectives. For this reason any knowledgement of the primordial elements of ethnic identity resonated strongly with the imposition of racial categories by apartheid engineers. “Claiming”, however, referred to the understanding of ethnic identity in a “situational, contextual, and subjective sense.” According to this usage, ethnicity is understood as a form of social identity that acquires content and meaning through
A process of conscious assertion and imaging” (Dubow, 1994, p368). It was this social constructivist approach that anthropologist and historians adopted, insisting that South African ethnic identities were historically constructed. The deconstruction of primordial discourses of identity during the 1980’s thus acted as a critique of apartheid domination
And came to termed “exposé analysis” (Gordon and Spiegel, 1993).

During the apartheid years, the government approach to identify was one of “naming”.

As early as 1953 it was recognized by government officials that this labelling process would pose many problems and that it would be difficult to prove people’s “race”. The main challenge officials experienced was how to distinguish coloured people from African people. Officials may have felt that they had some idea of what coloured and African people looked like and that their classification was therefore relatively sound, but Griqua people posed a particular problem because of their heterogeneous origins. The 1957/58 Race Relations Act reported:

Another group of people who are encountering great difficulties are the Griquas of the Northern Cape, who have mixed White, Hottentot, Bush and a little African blood, but who over the years became a distinctive group with a distinctive appearance, speaking the Griqua Hottentot language … In recent years some of the younger ones have inter-married with Africans, and have adopted Afrikaans as their home language. They have, however, been regarded as Coloured: those who draw pensions are paid Coloured rates, and most
Of the men hold certificates of non-liability for Native taxation.

… At the time of writing, their position was extra-ordinarily confused. They were not
Africans for the purpose of the Representation of Natives Act, yet could not qualify for the
Coloured voters roll. Some of them, while holding certificates of non-liability for Native taxation, had been issued with reference books making them liable to pay poll tax. (South
African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), 1957-1958. p32)

[Omer]

milton you are a very wise man.

Namibia needs more people open minded and informed people like you.

i need to be more informed before i open my mouth.

Thanks as well pangkas

[der-die-das-namibia]

@Milton: You state below:

The people of Namibia are the customer. To serve our people better we must recognise our difference not only in gender or language but also in race.

I agree with you that language is important, and that everybody should have the right to be taught in his or her's mother tongue.

But for what purposes do you need race? What is race anyway? So I am German speaking -- do the English speakers belong to my "race"? Do the boers also belong to my "race"? I beg to differ.

[miltonlouw]

OK DDD,

Let us use the term culture. You have your German. English, Herero and I my coloured culture.

[Mie1]

Something I came across:

How come white people don't all look alike?


Dear Cecil:

Though I recently completed a course in physical anthropology, there is something that I still don't know. How come there seems to be a greater range of variation in the hair color and texture and eye color of Caucasians than in the other three or four races? Caucasian hair goes from practically white to black; eye color, too, can vary from pale blue to black. There aren't as many Caucasians as some of the other races, and they seem to be plenty close together, geography-wise. I know this sounds an awful lot like "all those people look alike," but I'm curious.

— Rosa, Seattle

Dear Rosa:

I'm glad you have disavowed any unworthy motives in asking this question, because we are dealing here with a highly touchy subject. Nobody knows for sure why Caucasians exhibit a wider range of physical traits than other races, but there are a number of theories, some of them more dubious than others.

But let's clarify a few things first. For one thing, Caucasians don't all live "plenty close together, geography-wise." Even in precolonial times, ethnic groups now classified as Caucasian were spread across Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. Given the enormous distances involved, you'd expect considerable variation.

Second, Caucasians don't show the widest variation in all traits, just certain superficial ones--hair color and texture and eye color, as you point out, along with skin color, which varies from very light to almost black. When it comes to something like height, on the other hand, Caucasians lose out to Africans, whose average stature ranges from 4'8" for adult male pygmies to 5'10" for adult male Batutsis. Similarly, other races show greater variation in nose configuration, distribution of body fat, and so on.

Finally, whatever may be said for Caucasians, all major races show substantial variation in coloration, largely because of adaptation to local conditions. For instance, it's generally conceded that skin pigmentation acts as a filter for the sun's ultraviolet rays, and it's possible to plot out a sort of gradient called a "cline" showing that the closer you get to the equator, whether it's in Africa, Europe, or Asia, the darker the characteristic skin color of the locals. Something similar may conceivably apply to eye or hair color.

Still, that doesn't explain why there are no blond, blue-eyed Eskimos. Here's where the theories come in. The least controversial is that Caucasians are the most thoroughly "hybridized" of the major races--that is, they've had the most additions to their gene pool as a result of invasions, migration, slave trade, and so on.

Caucasian "territory," if you want to call it that, spans three continents. It has been repeatedly overrun by Asian tribes such as the Mongols and the Huns. The Romans imported Nubian slaves, and the Moors, with a significant percentage of Negro blood, invaded during the Middle Ages. One might plausibly argue that Negroid and Mongoloid peoples, by contrast, either (a) suffered fewer invasions and other such traumas, or (b) totally annihilated anybody who did try to invade. The trouble with this line of thinking is that it's extremely difficult to document tribal migrations, especially in prehistoric times.

The other theory, which is widely regarded as racist, is that Caucasians show more variation in color because they're the furthest removed from mankind's hominid ancestors, who (some think) were all heavily pigmented. To put it another way, Caucasians are most "advanced," Mongoloids slightly less so, and Negroids least of all. The most elaborate expression of this theory was given by the anthropologist Carleton Coon in the mid-60s. Coon's idea was that there originally were five basic races that evolved separately, in widely differing times and places, from our homo erectus forebears--Caucasians, predictably, being the first.

Coon, I should point out, was not a crackpot, and there is a certain amount of fossil evidence to support his view. But there are some major objections to it as well, the most obvious being that one would expect races that had evolved separately to be unable to interbreed, as all humans today clearly can.

In addition, there's nothing to indicate that our ape grandparents were necessarily all dark-skinned--after all, under their hair, modern chimps are often relatively fair-skinned. And Caucasians are generally hairier than other races, which you would think would be a more primitive trait. Besides, haven't you ever been to a white- boy frat party? You'd swear some of those guys were in trees eating bananas last week.

— Cecil Adams

The Straight Dope: How come white people don't all look alike?



Will all humans one day be the same color?


Dear Cecil:

I seem to remember reading sometime in my childhood (but I can't remember where . . . I bet you get a lot of letters like this) that given the present rate of interracial births, somewhere in the future--say, several hundred years--the entire human race will be the same color. Is this true? If it is, approximately what color will our descendants be? Will the makers of flesh-colored Band-Aids finally be able to settle on a shade that makes everybody happy? Most important of all, will we have to come up with a new reason for hating each other?

— Absalom C., Phoenix

Dear Absalom:

Cecil is always happy to answer questions on racial topics, which give him the opportunity to alienate vast new segments of his already disgruntled readership. The likelihood is that widespread interracial mating would result in rapid (i.e., within several generations) lightening of skin tone among that portion of the population we now inaccurately call black.

Cecil bases this statement on his anthropological researches in Brazil, where he conducted a combination field trip and all-night beach party several years ago. Racial mixing in Brazil is common and in fact has come to be a point of national pride there. This apparently traces back to the rabbitlike sexual proclivities of the original male Portuguese settlers, who liked dark-skinned women and who also were accustomed to assembling vast hierarchies of wives, mistresses, and concubines, with whom they cheerfully begat kids by the cartload.

The story is told of one Correa (called by the Indians Caramuru, "man who makes lightning"), a European who may have been a castoff from one of the original exploring parties. He supposedly fathered an entire village full of people in the present-day state of Bahia, over which he presided as chief.

The current population of Brazil exhibits an amazing variety of racial characteristics in every conceivable combination, including such novelties as the blond Afro. Skin tones range from very dark to very light. The belief among Brazilians, however, is that the population is "bleaching," and in fact the percentage of inhabitants who describe themselves as white has been steadily increasing during Brazil's history, even though a large percentage of such persons actually is of mixed ancestry. (Admittedly there has also been substantial immigration from Europe.)

This is not to say that Brazil is necessarily headed toward some sort of national average, skin-tone-wise. While overt racial hostility is virtually unknown in the country, there is a widely shared feeling that a light skin is more desirable than a dark skin.

For this reason, dark-skinned people make an effort to mate with lighter-skinned folks, with the result that the percentage of persons of pure-blooded African descent is small and in all likelihood steadily decreasing. On the other hand, the number of pure-blooded Europeans is sizable and likely to remain so.

The upshot of all this, some think, is that eventually Brazil will probably have a fair number of pink people, a whole passel of brown people, and not very many black people. Cecil regrets to report that he failed to investigate the impact of this development on the Brazilian Band-Aid industry, but he promises to do so at the earliest opportunity.

— Cecil Adams

The Straight Dope: Will all humans one day be the same color?

[miltonlouw]

28.12.2009 - Marson Sharpley writes:
As a man of God I realize that I cannot afford the luxury of being so heavenly minded that I become earthly useless. There are three distinct types within the Colored community that I have come to be aware of, i.e. those who consider themselves to be more Black than White, those who consider themselves more White than Black and those who are simply Colored and that’s it!

In fact it has very little to do with skin pigmentation as much as it has to do with upbringing. Nevertheless, no matter what side of the racial divide they lean towards, Coloreds born in Africa are Africans who have the full right to be part of the action and have a piece of the cake. My previous article on this subject must not be viewed as an emotional tirade by what one newspaper termed “proud to be colored”.

No, this matter I intend rationally and pragmatically addressing through systematically forming a delegation of eminent Colored leaders to go and seek an audience with His Excellency the President of the Republic of Namibia. The intention here is not to be subversive, undermining or destabilizing.

The idea is to ensure that the status quo, which seems to be that Coloreds have to have leaders imposed on them because they do not have the ability and capacity to present their leaders, has to be stopped. The sense that the existence of Coloreds is ignored now has to come to an end because we are here and we are real.

We are members of both the ruling party SWAPO and some among us are members of the opposition parties. However, the argument I am pursuing and putting on the table goes beyond party political matters and directly to the very existence and representation of a specific minority group of people who also need to have leaders that they can culturally identify with who will be able to address their specific concerns as a distinct ethnic and cultural group.

The Colored community is made up of some of the best artisans and administrators in the country. Whilst the generalization of the love of strong liquor has established itself in the description of Coloreds, we are also intellectuals, revolutionaries, community activists, students, entrepreneurs, politicians, soldiers, civilian intelligence scientists, journalists, lawyers and doctors.

With this capability I together with otherlike- minded members of the Colored community realize that if we do not have national, political leadership in the RulingParty from our community, the exploitation of Coloreds will be automated. National political leadership status allows the individual(s) to have authority in the society and their community so as to be able to guide, organize and counsel the community or in this case the ethnic group.

This will help to see Colored youth as part of the security apparatus, the diplomatic corps and other strategic areasof governance such as security detail for even the Head of State, and even as drivers for Government VIPs. We want to see our unemployed matriculants in the army, the police force and other sectors where they can be trained so that they become contributors instead of merely maintaining an existence of being parasitic consumers.

We also need to see young people from the Colored community receiving bursaries to Cuba, Russia, USA, Europe and China. I would like to see Colored people also heading State Owned Enterprises and Parastatals. I am making this call in a bid to draw attention to the plight of an entire community that, if it does not have political representation to enhance and instill discipline, will in future breed a level of gangsterism through organized crime like Namibia has never imagined could exist within its borders.

A good example of this is what happened on the Cape Flats in South Africa as recently as 2004. The tendency has been to confine us to tenders and church activity in the hope that that will satisfy us and make us ignore the fact that we have been politically hijacked and systematically marginalized.

One of us is an Under Secretary in Cabinet or something like that, one of us is the Ombudsman, some of us are High Court judges, but who of us are going to be a Deputy Minister, a Minister, a Permanent Secretary, a Governor, a General in the army or a Commodore in the Navy?

Who of us as Coloreds is trusted enough to even be the DG of the civilian intelligence apparatus? If the requirement here is the ability to speak, read and write an indigenous language(s), then let us know so that we can study the language by living in the target language community. Should the main requirement be loyalty, patriotism, commitment and determination to see Vision 2030 realized, then vet us, do background checks, do IQ checks, but for heaven’s sake, stop marginalizing us as Colored people.

Please also understand that as a man of God and as a pastor, I am all things to all men just as the Bible requires, but my background will inform you that I did not just drop out of the sky as a pastor. Everyone in the ministry I lead with my spouse and many other pastors knows that I am raceless and do not tolerate any form of racism, tribalism or ethnic divisionist agendas.

In my interaction with many of you as my political leaders, I realized that many of you have no clue of some of us and where we come from and what our capabilities and experience is. Some of you have been blinded by your own prejudice and tribal arrogance to the point where you have forgotten that we all have minds to think and that we have all been on life’s journey and seen and heard enough to inform us as to what our status is.

Jesus Christ meets a woman at a well and he asks her for water, referring to his tiredness because of the long journey he has made. Metaphorically in the physical, but real in the spirit, the journey He refers to took him 4000 years to the point where He speaks to the woman at the well. Now that is the same with all of us as grown ups.

We have journeyed, politically, academically, spiritually and been around many places and many people. We are NOT VILLAGE FOOLS AND IMBECILES, we are NOT! I believe that there is a need for a Coloured People’s Convention (CPC) within the next three months before posts and positions are allocated. The aim of such a convention will not be to lament how we are being unjustly treated, but rather to identify and elect legitimate and acceptable Colored leaders who have the capacity to fully work for Namibia as a country and for the Coloured people.

Please note that any national leader, especially in the ruling party must be loyal to the party first and then serve the interests of the nation at large and then make sure that they represent their constituency, which is usually tribally and/or ethnically demarcated! That is a given!

However, my concern here is the lack of Colored representation in Government on a more political, national level. Let’s talk, let’s deliberate, let’s discuss, let’s debate and let us reach an amicable win-win situation where I like any other parent can be at ease in this beautiful, peaceful country knowing that my children’s future, like any other child is secure and not undermined just because of being Colored!

[Oneword]

Milton, I trust that you do realise that you are f....g against thunder and are pi....g against a hurricane because I have to disillusion you and demolish your grand designs.

Until SWAPO starts to actually TRUST coloureds of all hues - and they have not really done so since 1960 (despite a few notable examples!) - you have no leg to stand on.

A friend of mine (who shall mercifully remain anonymous) spent some longs years in the dungeons of Lubango - you know, those SWAPO says did not exist - because he is of mixed race. You'll probably recognise the name should I ever mention it; it is well-known in certain circles.

That he came out of it with his mind intact is a miracle because many did not. He still maintains today that under Apartheid he was too black and under SWAPO he is too white. Yes, I know it is a cliché, but true nevertheless!

A lady I worked with some years ago (she is now in government service) told me exactly the same thing - except in her case the male-dominated society of the last regime added to her trouble.

A friend of mine at the coast is of the same opinion. These three are all of different aptitudes and abilities.

Who are you now to say it isn't so? Wishful thinking in your advancing years?

Oh, by the way, I am quite a mixture of races and cultures myself - just to make my point clear.