Africana Periodical Literature 
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 Periodical article |
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| Title: | 'God Made the White Man, God Made the Black Man': Popular Racial Stereotyping of Coloured People in Apartheid South Africa |
| Author: | Adhikari, Mohamed |
| Year: | 2006 |
| Periodical: | South African Historical Journal |
| Issue: | 55 |
| Pages: | 142-164 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | stereotypes Coloureds racism apartheid History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Ethnic and Race Relations |
| External link: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02582470609464935 |
| Abstract: | This paper uses a well-known apartheid-era joke about the supposed origins of the Coloured people of South Africa to explore the racial stereotyping of this social group. The joke in question hinges on the audience's awareness of the status of Jan van Riebeeck as the 'founding father' of white South Africa. By unravelling the attitudes and assumptions that underpin this joke, the paper reveals how associations of racial hybridity, illegitimacy, marginality and residual savagery coalesced in the stereotyping of Coloured people in the popular mind. It not only demonstrates how these racist clichés about the nature of Coloured people reinforced the South African racial hierarchy and their position within it, but also provides insight into how Coloured people negotiated this racialized social terrain to forge their own identities. The paper, in addition, sheds light on contestations around status within the racial order of the apartheid era, the extent to which Coloured people internalized many of the racist values of white supremacist South Africa, as well as the degree to which these attitudes have been carried over into the postapartheid period. It, moreover, argues that jokes provide an accurate indicator of the values and attitudes prevalent in the societies in which they circulate. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
