Read on Twitter
There’s something really really disconcerting about the fact that coloured culture is constantly violated and toted as a trope or a caricature of a people but as soon as these discussions happen suddenly coloured people must “unpack”
This isn’t an anthropology class what the poes are you asking for with “unpack”? What you really mean is please perform your identity and as an external body I’ll choose and see if it’s worth validating against my knowledge which doesn’t exist bse I don’t acknowledge you anyway.
And unpack... guys... first of all this discussion happens every fucking month. It’s been unpacked despite that process being incredibly violent. But how are you trying to validate a multi-racial culture against monolithic, singular understandings of race??? Idgi
I don’t understand why coloured culture is constantly benchmarked against predominantly old Apartheid ideas of what constitutes nationhood and identity. Like why must it always be show and tell for coloured people??!
Like... y’all understand coloured culture conceptually when it’s time to prescribe problematic understandings of colouredness I.e. make jokes about accents, where people live and gangsterism and and and... but then when these discussions happen on a monthly basis suddenly ?....
Constantly gaslighting coloured identity is a re-enactment of colonial ideology and that’s something you need to reconcile yourself with if you’re going to insist on this particularly violent brand of cultural erasure.
I understand my colouredness in terms of my blackness- and I will not explain that to anyone on this TL but what I will say is this - How people conceptualize and make sense of their colouredness isn’t up for debate when coloured people have endured centuries of erasure.
What I don’t understand is the commitment & insistence on trying to get coloured people to brand our culture as one singular entity. Like this isn’t 1948 WHY are you so determined to prescribe culture to people in a way that makes sense TO YOU when it doesn’t effect you?
Why do you wanna be the minister of race relations SO BADLY IN 2020?? You open this app and dictate to a people comprised of Malay, Indonesian, Chinese, Khoi, Griqua (to name a few) to condense their heritage and then perform it to you??? Like that logically makes sense?
As much as our heritage is vast and ridiculously complex there exists a plethora of commonalities and practices observed which we are aware of and that constitute culture to us.
Erasure of coloured culture was a violent ploy by colonialists further glorified during Apartheid to try create static distinctions of race & culture. To interrogate the validity of colouredness is to green light apartheid notions of race and identity. [& it’s embarrassing]
People whose identity was strategically erased for CENTURIES to the prosperity of whiteness and colonialism have not only maintained some semblance of self and culture but have a justified right to do so and then it’s please perform this???
It’s violent okay? It’s violent.
It’s violent okay? It’s violent.
Y’all align yourselves with colonial thought with great ease whenever this monthly gaslighting session comes around and it’s really scary. People live and exist in their culture and y’all are like “No. That’s not real”. That’s violent and it’s a very old violence that your using
