In February of 2018, I visited South Africa for a week. I went as part of a church group to play at various locations in Johannesburg and Capetown. I had no idea it was also a trip that would include visiting historical sites and learning the country's history.
I didn't make much money from the gig, but the knowledge I gained was priceless.
I listened to the audiobook Long Walk To Freedom by Nelson Mandela before I arrived. I learned so much about him and the country I was about to visit. Absorbing this information also helped to verify the information our tour guide was feeding us. I saw so many sites, met many people who live there, and had some deep conversations. One of those talks stood out and popped back into my memory banks this morning.
On a flight from Johannesburg to Capetown, I sat next to one of the trip organizers. A native of South Africa explained the difference between people classified as White, Coloured, and Black. I picked her brain to understand how they ranked people, their status in connection with that color, and her experience being a White person in a post-apartheid country.
She explained how she was proud to be South African because "it's her country too!" I was taken aback by that at first, but I later understood what she was saying.
Since then, I've done more research into South Africa and its history. There is still more to learn. What I took away from that week was the reality of forced segregation and its residual effects. It has many parallels to the post Civil War era here in the United States. From reconstruction through Jim Crow and the Civil Rights era, enslaved Africans' descendants have lived as second-class citizens. Things have progressed since the mid-1960s, and the walls of segregation have slowly crumbled in the United States.
Apartheid was a system of institutionalized racial segregation introduced in South Africa in 1948. The Population Registration Act of 1950 demanded South Africans be registered and segregated according to their racial group: White, Black or Coloured. Asians and those of Indian ancestry were considered Coloured.
According to this social stratification system, White citizens had the highest status, followed by Coloureds, then Black Africans. People would then be treated differently according to their population group, which formed the basis of apartheid.
The criteria used to determine each category's qualification were based on appearance, social acceptance, and descent. The Act described a White person as one whose parents were both White. The other things that categorized a person as White were his habits, speech, education, deportment, and demeanor. Blacks belonged to an African race or tribe, and Coloureds could not be classified as Black or White.
Apartheid severely disadvantaged most of the population simply because they did not share the rulers' skin color. Many of the non-Whites were kept just above poverty or relegated to shantytowns.
'Colored People,' in the United States, was a synonym for people who were descendants of enslaved Africans in the early twentieth century. Since the late '80s, we've heard the phrase 'people of color.' It's an alternative to the term 'non-white' and was eventually popularized as a more mannerly—modern-day substitute for 'minority.'
Today, it seems as if the phrase 'people of color' is used by those uncomfortable with saying 'Black.' The term 'people of color' tends to group all Whites at the top of the food chain and everyone else in another category. Lumping all people who aren't considered White into a separate category has a way of overlooking certain people's unique cultures and contributions. It also ignores the unique struggles of many ethnic groups.
For instance, bias against Chinese Americans looks utterly different from discrimination against Mexican Americans. Why should we connect them under the umbrella of people of color (POC)? This term has expanded to a new acronym: BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color). The term was meant to engender oppression-based solidarity by grouping ethnicities together, but who counts as a person of color? Who can be classified as Black? Who fits under the umbrella of Whiteness and non-Whiteness? Aren't White people a color too?
Near the end of my week-long trip, I went out for a bite to eat by myself. I had a great conversation with the bartender/server. He schooled me on the differences with the black population in South Africa. I learned about the country's several tribal groups: Khoi-San, Xhosa, Zulu, Ndebele, Sotho, Shangaan, and Venda. He was a member of the Zulu tribe, which comprises the biggest percentage of the black population. There are other tribes: Tswana, Venda, Ndebele, Swazi, and Pedi, among many others.
I asked the bartender if he could tell what tribe I was from to humor him. It was pretty obvious I was an American, but I thought I'd ask anyway. We spoke about many things, and in our conversation, he confirmed what I've heard over the years: Africans do not consider Black Americans as 'African.' We shouldn't either. We are AMERICAN. We should be proud of that fact.
The contributions of descendants of enslaved Africans to the culture, founding, and growth of this young country are immeasurable. My ancestors helped build this country like any other group of people who came to this continent. I, therefore, consider myself American.
Why must we re-segregate ourselves? What's wrong with all of us being Americans? When we leave the continent of North America, we are indeed viewed as the Americans we are. Today, we have people insisting only specific people are authorized to speak on behalf of their assigned racial group. I find that troubling. The truth is, we can never escape who we are and where we come from. We all share one common identity here in America. We are American.
With each passing year, we are becoming a society where rigidity is becoming less and less definable. The phrase 'people of color' recklessly lumps non-whites into a bland monochrome. This broad, regressive, all-inclusive sweeping of people into specific categories will continue to do significant damage — just like it did in South Africa. The push for Critical Race Theory only exacerbates the harm to those who might need the most help.
After seeing the residual effects of 25 years of post-apartheid life firsthand, I don't know how reverting to an apartheid-like phrase like 'person of color' is being, in any way, progressive. Many media outlets universities are promoting a reversion to a defacto-segregated system. Why on earth do people want to use apartheid-style terminology in the USA in the twenty-first century?
The idea of race is something that people in the west imagined into existence. The notion that people are qualitatively distinguished based on skin color is, unfortunately, an idea that remains influential.
Does it matter whether race exists, or does the significance of what is attached to that idea matter more? Would race be an issue if a preponderance of white people had positive opinions about black people and vice versa? If that were the case, identifying as any specific race wouldn't be an issue after all. Maybe the real problem is the blanket attribution of negative characteristics to certain racial groups.
Does 'people of color' bother you? Are you confused with the acronym BIPOC? Should we continue the segregation of different ethnic groups into 'White' and everyone else? What does it mean to be White?
What are your thoughts?
Clayton Craddock is an independent thinker, father of two beautiful children in New York City. He is the drummer of the hit broadway musical Ain't Too Proud. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Howard University's School of Business and is a 29 year veteran of the fast-paced New York City music scene. He has played drums in several hit broadway and off-broadway musicals, including "Tick, tick…BOOM!, Altar Boyz, Memphis The Musical, and Lady Day At Emerson's Bar and Grill. Also, Clayton has worked on: Footloose, Motown, The Color Purple, Rent, Little Shop of Horrors, Spongebob Squarepants, The Musical, Evita, Cats, and Avenue Q.
If I'm not a person of color, I guess I'm transparent and I'm good with that. If calling me Transparent Person is too long in this age of abbreviations and acronyms, you may simply call me Person. If you say, "Hey, you," I'll reply to that, too. If you say, "Stranger, can I buy you a beer" I'll reply with a smile. It's your intent that really matters.
To paraphrase Porky Pig, "that's it folks." It's what's in our hearts that matters.