You can’t racially classify complexity

RACIAL CLASSIFICATION is a foolish practice that compartmentalises the single human family into supposedly distinct population types. The terms we use to describe someone’s race as white, black, coloured or Indian in South Africa are fictitious, arbitrary, ambiguous and oppressive.

Such terms reduce people into homogenising racial labels that do not take into account variations and complexities within the apparently homogeneous racial groups.

In South Africa, Europeans invented and popularised racial classification despite the fact that the millions of inhabitants of the land were objectively unclassifiable due to their ethnic and phenotypic complexity.

But Europeans used arbitrary rules and principles to cram the diverse peoples into a few identity categories.

Within those classified as white in South Africa we find extensive variations in ethnic origin and physical appearance. Those who trace their ethnic and national origins as British, German, Irish, Italian, Dutch, Australian, Spanish and Russian, among others, are homogenised under the totalising white identity.

Individuals under the white category exhibit a great range of difference in skin pigmentation, facial features, eye colour, hair texture and other superficial physical markers.

All white people are not physically alike. Even though those classified as white are ethnically and phenotypically varied, the category “white” is habitually used to refer to a heterogeneous people of European descent.

The racial classification coloured is also a totalising racial label that does not consider enormous ethnic and phenotypic variations within the community. Many coloured people trace their ethnic origins to the Khoisan, Africans, Europeans, East Asians, and South Asians, among others. Therefore

reducing the ethnic complexity of coloured people into a single racial box is absurd.

The term coloured does not capture variation and complexity in their ethno-cultural origin. Those classified as coloured are also diverse in physical appearance and hence classifying their phenotypic richness and diversity into a homogenising “coloured” racial category is erroneous.

The racial category black is also another false classification that does not take into consideration linguistic, cultural and ethnic richness and variety of African people in South Africa.

The diverse African ethno-linguistic groups in South Africa, namely Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, Venda, Xhosa, Sepedi, Tswana, Sotho and Swazi, were reduced into a single racial identity.

Those classified as black in South Africa are heterogeneous and diverse in appearance and hence classifying them all as black is a ridiculous practice.

The category Asian or Indian is also a homogenising racial classification and it does not capture the ethnic and phenotypic variation and complexity of the people classified under this category. The term Indian or Asian is too vague to represent the heterogeneity within the group.

In biological, genetic and objective terms, there is no such thing as white, black, coloured or Indian. These classifications were fabricated to justify the differential allocation of resources.

We must resist defining ourselves and others using these ambiguous, arbitrary and oppressive racial labels. We must resist being reduced to a race. We must resist accepting stereotypes and ideologies attached to these racial categories because racial groups do not objectively exist. You can’t racially classify complexity.