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mother reported that: "only close friends and family who knew her before the operation know she is white" (Newsweek 7/3/70, 31). In a statement rich with an unconscious, ironic pragmatism, her mother said, "Some of her school friends have ostracized her completelyjust as though she were a real nonwhite" (Newsweek 7/3/70, 30). She noted that "All this is particularly embarrassing for us because we are a purely Afrikaner family and strong Nationalists. We believe in white supremacy" (Newsweek 7/3/70, 31). |
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Johanna was an infant when she contracted Addison's disease. "No white school would accept her when she reached school-going age. Her father told a reporter that he intended applying to the Education Department for a tutor to teach her at home until she had passed standard V, after which she would be able to take correspondence courses." (Horrell 1969, 26) Her mother "lives in constant fear that, because of the past difficulties, 'someone' will come and take her daughter away from her" (Wannenburgh 1969). In both cases, the children are stuck with the rigidity of the Aristotelian definition of raceboth were born with parents with white identity cards and were thus whitetempered with the prototypical face-to-face judgments of skin color, which would render them coloured. |
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Perhaps the most famous case of sudden identity change was that of Sandra Laing, who was brought up by white parents and was evicted at the age of ten from her white school for being coloured. The United Nations reported that when she was expelled by school officials under the Population Registration Act, it became illegal for Sandra to attend her Piet Retief boarding school, which was all-white (United Nations Office of Public Information 1969, 4). This reclassification denied her access to all other white institutions. The only way Sandra could continue living with her family was by being registered as a servant. |
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Scientists explained Sandra's appearance as resulting from a "dormant 'throwback' gene." It was posited that among the six color-determining genes, this throwback was responsible for Sandra's coloring (Ebony 1968, 85). Sandra's parents rejected the idea that this made her coloured, however. Sandra's father stated that she had been brought up "naturally" as a white child (Ebony 1968, 90). They attempted to tutor her at home, while appealing her case up to the level of the Supreme Court. After two years, she was reclassified again as white, and was legally permitted entry back into white schools. Ebony continues, "Out of the fire and back into the frying pan. That's what it all amounted to, because it had been Sandra's appearance, not her |
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