Earlier at the conference, Professor Trefor Jenkins, formerly the head of the department of human genetics in the school of pathology at Wits University, spoke of how he, as one of the few geneticists in South Africa during that time, was approached to identify the race of babies so that they could be adopted.

Jenkins explained that the genetic tests that were available at the time were very basic. He said that it was difficult to genetically determine the race of South Africans, as they are so mixed. Previous research, done in the 1970s, showed that the genetic makeup of white South Africans contained 7% “black inheritance”.

Erasmus’s talk, based on interviews with people involved in racial classification and on the facts of court cases, highlighted how ambiguous a concept race truly is. Her research looked at the role of science and society in the way race was classified.

The legal definition of race, as contained in the Population Registration Act of 1950, used three criteria to classify race: descent, appearance and social acceptance. As the process of implementing the Act gained momentum, and more cases emerged where classification was neither obvious nor easy, acceptance by society played an increasingly important role.

Appearance was considered Odeceptive, and descent was difficult to apply in cases of mixed parentage. This difficulty is illustrated by one of the cases Erasmus described, in which a baby was returned by its adoptive parents after they saw that it didn’t fit into the race they were classified as belonging to.

Read full article here…

>> Lynne Smit <<

Are you black, brother? Growing up, I just was. My mum was white and my dad was brown. My mum’s relatives lived here, and the old ones had German accents. My dad’s relatives lived in Israel and mostly couldn’t speak English. When we went there, they said things in a funny language and pinched our cheeks. They smelled of garlic. And they came, originally, from exotic-sounding places like Bukhara and Isfahan (in today’s Uzbekistan and Iran respectively).

This was no big deal. My friends’ families came from Jamaica and Guyana and India and Ireland and England and Wales and Spain and South Africa. I was vaguely aware that I was Jewish; but everyone was something. None of it seemed very serious. Things started to change when I went to secondary school. My state primary had been mixed, multicultural, and multi-ability. My new school was private, posh, and predominantly Jewish. But these Jews weren’t like my family. They were all white, and a lot of them were blond with blue eyes. Not only that, but they liked football, talked like cockneys, and lived in the suburbs. They went to synagogue – ‘shul’ – and hung around only with other Jews. Some of them called black people ‘schwarzes’ and brown people ‘pakis’ and they didn’t know what to make of me, this olive-skinned Jew who didn’t practise. One of them told me that because of my irreligiosity the Messiah would not be coming.

At about 14, I started playing basketball seriously. The Harlesden Cougars basketball club was 99% black. The other 1% was me. I wasn’t black, and couldn’t understand the patois into which the other guys sometimes lapsed. I was basically the white kid, or the whitest they had. And then came university. Where Harlesden had been black, Oxford was white. I went from being the only white kid on the team to the only black kid on the team. The blackest they had, anyway. They even told me that I had natural athleticism but lacked control and shouldn’t shoot the ball.

Away from the basketball court I had a few amusing incidents. One night, a very drunk, very blonde girl staggered into my room. ‘I’ve never really met a coloured person before,’ she confided in me. When I told her that we didn’t say coloured, we said black, and in any case I was not black but Jewish, her reply was: ‘I’ve never met one of those either’. All this time, I scrawled sarcastic comments across any ethnic monitoring forms that came my way. Well, it’s not nice when they don’t have a box for you.

That became considerably harder after university, when I got a job running diversity policy for a big company. I learned about institutional racism and about monitoring and about glass ceilings and about how, at every imaginable stage in recruitment, promotion and termination, across all employment sectors, people with darker skin get treated worse than people with lighter skin with the same aptitudes and qualifications. And I understood that without hard data, you couldn’t prove this was happening, and do anything about it. And that I ought to fill the form in. So I started to tick the box ‘mixed race’.

As part of the job, I started to try and get more people from different ethnic backgrounds to apply to the company. I went out and started talking to groups of black people or Muslims or whatever. And they all thought I was one of them. The black people thought I was black – light-skinned, certainly, but black. Muslims assumed I was Muslim. Indians had me down as an Indian. Arabs thought I was an Arab. Greeks – well, check the surname: Mokades.

Read full article here…

>> Raphael Mokades <<

• Afatasi: Mixed ancestry between Samoan and White
• Afrasian: Mixed ancestry between an African and Asian
• Afro-Asian: Mixed ancestry between an African and Asian
• Afro-European: Mixed heritage between Africa and Europe
• Africasian: Mixed ancestry between an African and Asian
• Ainoco:Mixed ancestry between White and Japanese
• Amerasian: Mixed ancestry between American and an Asian
• Amalgamation: Archaic term for the intermarriage and interbreeding of different ethnicities or races
• Anglo-Asian: Mixed ancestry between an English and Asian
• Anglo-Burmese: Mixed ancestry between Burmese and European
• Anglo-Indian: Mixed ancestry between an English and Indian
• Atlantic-Creole: Mixed ancestry between European and African
• Bastard: A person of mixed blood
• Baster: People with a mixed racial and ethnic heritage
• Biracial: People of white and black origins
• Blackanese: Mixed Black and Asian
• Blackinese: Mixed ancestry between Black and Chinese
• Blacktino: Mixed of Black and Latino
• Black Dutch: People with mixed racial. cultural and ethnic heritage
• Black Indians: Mixed heritage between African and Native American
• Blasian: Mixed ancestry between Black and Asian
• Blaxican: Mixed ancestry between Black and Mexican
• Brown Skin: A political, racial, ethnic, societal, and cultural classification not limited to people of mixed heritage.
• Bruin-ou: People with a mixed racial, cultural and ethnic heritage
• Bruinmense: People with mixed racial, cultural and ethnic heritage
• Burgher People: Mixed ancestry between Europeans and Sri Lankans
• Bushie: People with a mixed racial, cultural and ethnic heritage
• Cablinasian: Causcasian/Black/American Indian/Asian Mix
• Caboclo: Mixed ancestry between White and Amerindian
• Cafuzo: Mixed ancestry between Black and Amerindian
• Capie: People with a mixed racial, cultural and ethnic heritage
• Castizo: Mixed ancestry between White and Mestizo
• Chewish: Mixed ancestry between a Jew and Chinese
• Chestnut Ridge People: see Melungeon
• Chindian: Mixed ancestry between the Chinese and Indian
• Cholo: Mixed ancestry between American Indian and Black African
• Chino: Mixed Asian and African American ancestry
• Coffee Coloured: People of mixed race with a brownish skin texture
• Colored: People of mixed blood or black
• Coloured: People with a mixed racial, cultural and ethnic heritage
• Con lai: Half-breed
• Coolie: Mixed ancestry between Black and Asian Indian
• Creole peoples: Locally-born people with foreign ancestry
• Creoles of color: Mixed-race blacks residing in the Gulf Coast and Louisiana area of the pre-existing indigenous population of Spanish Guinean originating from the island of Fernando Pó
• Daburu: The mix of races, cultures and ethnicities
• Dougla: Mixed race typically African and Asian India
• Eurafrican: African and European ancestry
• Eurasian: Mixed ancestry between a European and Asian
• Jingoism: Judging one’s own country as superior to others – an extreme type of nationalism.
• Gado Gado: Mixed
• Goffals: Mixed ancestry between Ndebele/Shona and White
• Griqua: People with a mixed racial, cultural and ethnic heritage
• Haafu or Hafu:  Half Japanese
• Halfbloed: Mixed Blood
• Half-blood: A person of mixed blood
• Half-breed: A person of mixed blood
• Half-caste: People of mixed caste
• Half-Chat: People of white and black origins
• Halfling: People with a mixed ancestry, racial, cultural and ethnic heritage
• Halfrican: Half African/ Half White
• Halvsie: Mixed Japanese Hapa: Half Hawaiian or half Asian, half Caucasian
• Hapa: A person of mixed Asian or Pacific Islander racial/ethnic heritage
• Hasian: Half Asian
• Honhyeol: Mixed blood
• Hotnot: People with a mixed racial, cultural and ethnic heritage
• Hun xue: Mixed blood
• Hybrid: Fusion or mix of race, ancestry, race, culture and ethnicity
• Indo: Mixed ancestry between a European and an Asian
• Kablungajuit: Mixed ancestry between White and Inuit
• Kailoma or Vasu: Mixed ancestry between European and Fijian
• Kleurling: People with a mixed racial, cultural and ethnic heritage
• Lai Má: American mix
• Lobo: Mixed ancestry between Black and Amerindian
• Louisiana Creole: People of mixed ancestry
• Luk kreung: Mixed racial heritage, literally means half-child
• Lumbee: Products of mixed unions
• Malaynese: Mixed ancestry between Malay and Chinese or Japanese
• Marabou: Mixed ancestry between black African/European and an Amerindian, specifically the native Taíno
• Melungeon: Mixed European, African, and Native American ancestry
• Miscegenation: Mixing of different racial groups
• Métis: A person born to parents who belong to different groups
• Mischling: Mixed person
• Mixedasians: Mixed Person
• Mixed: People of mixed origins
• Mixed ancestry: People of mixed ancestry
• Mixed-Bloods: Individuals of mixed European and Native American ancestry who are not of Hispanic descent
• Mixed race: People of white and black origins
• Mongrel: Fusion or mix of ethnicity
• Morisco: Mixed ancestry between Caucasian and Mulatto
• Mudblood: A person of mixblood
• Mulatto: Mixed ancestry between white European and black African
• Mule: Fusion or mix of horse and donkey
• Multiethnic: People of mixed ethnicity
• Multiracial: People of white and black origins
• Mutant: A mutation or mix between race, culture and ethnicity
• Mutt: Fusion or mix of ethnicity
• Nguoi Lai: Mixed-race person
• Octoroon: Mixed ancestry between a Quadroon and a European
• Pardo: Mixed ancestry between for black and white
• Passing: A person of mixed-race heritage assimilating to the white majority
• Peranakan: Indonesian Chinese
• Pointee: Mixed ancestry between an African and Caucasian
• Polygeneric: Neologism from Greek, poly-, (many) and genera (races)
• Quadroon: Generally three quarters white and one quarter black
• Quintroon: Mixed ancestry between an octoroon and a white parent
• Race of the Future: All the races are blending to become one race in the future
• Rojak or Rujak: Mixed vegetable/fruit salad
• Romani people: An ethnic group of Europe tracing their origins to medieval India
• Gypsies: An ethnic group of Europe tracing their origins to medieval India
• Redbone: Racially mixed ethnic groups in the the Sabine River region of Louisiana and Texas
• Réunion Creoles: A name given to those born on the island, of various ethnic origins on Reunion Islands
• Rhineland Bastards: Afro-German children of mixed German and African parentage
• Sri Lankan Moors: People of mixed heritage in Sri Lanka
• We-Sorts: People of “mixed-race” origins who claim descent from the Piscataway Native American population
• Zambo: Mixed ancestry between Black and Amerindian

>> Ross Rayners <<

For some uniquely and proudly South African neologism visit www.kakduidelik.co.za

We still live in a society that emphasis differences based on intolerance, a righteous determinism that demeans the importance and significance of uniqueness and diversity. People fear that which they do not understand. This shared human trait has been part and parcel of man since the dawn of mankind. History reveals that this control drama of man has taken many shapes and forms since the day of mythical man.

It is practically illegal to be a race, color, creed, religious or philosophical determinist, thus the new battle ground for this fear lies squarely and primarily in the redefinition of human identity. Long gone and distant are the days of an identity or group identity defined by race, color, creed, religion or philosophy. The synthesis, natural evolution, mutation and synergy are to varied and eclectic to still cling to archaic identity of being white, black and.

In the beginning the difference may have been stark and sharp. In time this became an illusion, not that the difference was no illusion in the first place, for we all are human first and foremost. The illusion in the minds of people started taking a knock with the birth of mixed race people. In various parts of the world they are either called colored, mixed, biracial, multicultural, mulatto, multiracial, hapa and; which only reflect cultural, geographic or historical bias. Fortunately the name, word or concept does not matter; the principle is the same, a fusion of people. Get up, and get ready for in the near feature – we will inhabit in world where racial purity will be an anomaly. The human race of the future will be a fusion, a mixture, hopefully just people, beyond identity stereotypes.

>> Ross Rayners <<