Strategies employed by biracial people when encountering unofficial racial census-takers in post-apartheid

Abstract

In post-apartheid South Africa, remnants of apartheid segregation linger, resulting in uneasy relations between the country's four major so-called race groups: black African , coloured, Indian and white (Potgieter 2017). Protecting racial 'purity' and maintaining white supremacy were primary goals of the apartheid system. A key element underpinning this was the effort to eliminate interracial mixing by prohibiting sexual relations and marriage between black and white South Africans through legislation. For biracial people born during and after apartheid, constructing and identity that is neither white nor black particularly challenging in racialised society. This chapter explores the lived experience of 15 biracial South Africans, aged 21 to 59. Most participants had white/Indian parents (n=11), two had white/black African parents and two had white/coloured parents. Participants were eligible to participate if they had one white parent and one parent who was identified as belonging to another race. These participants were therefore, able yo describe their lived experiences in terms of both their majority (white) and minority (black African coloured and Indian) in-group racial classification. In this way, participants could describe if , and how, they straddle the privilege and oppression associated with their proximity to both whiteness and blackness given the residual effects of apartheid.