Firstly, thank you for coming in with such a good question. In South Africa, coloured identity politics is often argued from the perspective that a so called coloured person is not black enough to be black and not white enough to be white, an argument I wholly reject on the basis that first of all blacknesses are not a singular thing, rather a vast spectrum that encompasses many shades and cultures and also I agree with one of the arguments Steve Biko makes, in that he argues that to be black is a position of solidarity and in accordance with a project of liberation. The not white enough part speaks to the aspirational desires of coloured identitarian politics, where the argument goes "we are not black enough to be black or white enough to be white" where white is a thing that could somehow grant some kind of freedom. I'm an outlier in this, many of my beloved friends and colleagues and comrades would wholeheartedly disagree with me on this, and I accept that with love.
Of course, and I would never try and dictate to anyone to not identify with how they choose to identify, I'm just trying to present some of the nuance that gets ignored or goes unknown: the history of the term, its shifting meaning, etc. I believe the longer memoir will have a far broader engagement on this topic.
Firstly, thank you for coming in with such a good question. In South Africa, coloured identity politics is often argued from the perspective that a so called coloured person is not black enough to be black and not white enough to be white, an argument I wholly reject on the basis that first of all blacknesses are not a singular thing, rather a vast spectrum that encompasses many shades and cultures and also I agree with one of the arguments Steve Biko makes, in that he argues that to be black is a position of solidarity and in accordance with a project of liberation. The not white enough part speaks to the aspirational desires of coloured identitarian politics, where the argument goes "we are not black enough to be black or white enough to be white" where white is a thing that could somehow grant some kind of freedom. I'm an outlier in this, many of my beloved friends and colleagues and comrades would wholeheartedly disagree with me on this, and I accept that with love.
Of course, and I would never try and dictate to anyone to not identify with how they choose to identify, I'm just trying to present some of the nuance that gets ignored or goes unknown: the history of the term, its shifting meaning, etc. I believe the longer memoir will have a far broader engagement on this topic.