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purity here are apparent, yet the search for purity remained strong in the popular white racist opinion through the 1980s. |
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Language and Race as Conflicting Categories |
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There are thousands of ironic and tragic cases where classification and reclassification separated families, disrupted biographies, and damaged individuals beyond repair. The rigid boxes of race disregarded, among other things, important linguistic differences, especially among African tribal languages. Presented here are a few of the more extreme borderline cases. Collectively, they provide a powerful ethical argument against simple-minded, pure-type categories and for the positive value of ambiguity and complexity when applying racial categories to human beings. |
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The filiations of appearance and linguistic group become tangled in the case of "Dottie," a girl born to black African parents in the Randfontein area. She "happened to be lighter-skinned than are most Africans and to have long, wavy, copper-colored hair. Because of this she was rejected by principals of African schools and cannot attend a Coloured school because she can speak only Sotho" (Horrell 1968, 21). A similarly cruel situation appeared in the case of the Griqua group, which has a distinctive physical appearance, with "yellowish skin, high cheekbones, hair growing in little curly clusters" (Horrell 1958, 5354). Many of this group married other native African tribal groups. They were classed by the Population Registration Act as African. This meant that they would be ruled on education by the Bantu Education Act and thus educated in one of the indigenous African languages. This was "completely foreign to most of the Griquas who speak Afrikaans'' (Horrell 1958, 5354). |
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Layers of invisibility were being enacted here by proapartheid forces. The idea of a separate development required that black people fit into mythic categories of pure tribal groups. The basis on which these groups were established and reported only partly respected actual tribal affiliations and not at all the conditions of people's lives. The hypothetical types were adorned with many natural features such as language and customs. In turn, each hyper-prototypical tribal group must have its own language, its own land, and its own unique customs. There was no room for people or circumstances that did not fit this image. |
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Again there is resonance with the ways in which Americans have enacted race in different regions. There are thousands of Native |
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