“Hey, where's the coloured girl in your class?”

Written by Ruona Agbroko
Monday, 01 March 2010 08:48

A few weeks into life at Wits and it's common knowledge that freshmen are always the ones who repeatedly apologise before asking for directions to places they are standing right in front of. They are also easily identified by their love for neon colours and all things gaudy, which is okay, once your eyes—and ears—get used to the vast amounts of clanging bling.
But there is another type of profiling I got an impromptu insight on; people referring to others by their skin colour.


The journalism department has this nice, cozy newsroom lab where its students converge. The interns strut about like they own the place, while the new students often forget the whole lab is Wits property—you wade through bags, bottles and wrappers to log on to a computer and out pops a Facebook page with a half-dressed male smiling at you.


Anyway, so there I was sitting in the lab, shooting off emails sufficiently buttered up to make my mates in Nigeria jealous when a boisterous voice rose above the din of students basking in the few minutes between lectures.

“Hey, where's the coloured girl in your class?”

I felt a gasp escape me before I could stop it. I turned my head and opened my mouth to speak then shut it fast, after remembering my mother's warning at the airport.


“Ruona, you really should try and mind your business when you get to South Africa. It is not everything you can change by being a journalist,” she had said, before suffocating me in a Chanel No. 5 goodbye hug.


I waited. Perhaps I hadn't heard those words. Maybe one of the voices in my head was being silly, surely?

Just as I returned to telling my friends about my imaginary campus boyfriend, the voice came again; “Guys, where's the coloured girl in your class?”


It finally occurred to me that Mother is not omnipresent.

I got up, and approached the speaker.

“I'm sorry, but…did you just refer to someone by their colour?”

“Yes,” she said, and then started chuckling.
“You should see your face...is it an issue in Nigeria? That's how it goes down here, girl.”

“I'm sorry, I find that hard to believe...aren't you a journalist? Why not get her name, or ask; 'where is the lady who sat next to you', or something?
“How would you feel if someone referred to you based on your colour?” I threw in for good measure.

By this time, I was following her around.

“Look, Ruona, we are a rainbow nation. I wouldn't feel bad... I'd feel worse if someone called me a Kaffir, which is really major here, people don't see anything wrong with being referred to by their colour, as opposed to being called a Kaffir. Then, they’d get really mad.”

“Okay, I have no way of confirming that people like being called black, white or coloured,” I conceded.

“But surely you must know that even if they liked it, rainbow nation or not...it just isn’t proper. You could get sued, or come under serious criticism if you did this elsewhere, you know, right?”


“Well, yeah...I guess I won't refer to people by their colour when I get outside, then,” she shrugged.

“Aha!” I replied.

“If you see the need not to do this elsewhere, why not stop doing it now? Must you wait until you get to another country?”


She was silent. I was pleased.
Winning an argument holds the same level of excitement for me as Marie Curie must have had winning the Nobel Prize.


By now we were back where it all started, in the lab. I asked another student if South Africans all referred to each other by their colour.


She shook her head.
“No. It all depends on who is talking to who…it's not like it's something that everyone does.”



I heaved a sigh of relief and turned to the girl who had been referred to as “coloured” in her absence.


“How would you feel if you were called coloured to your face?”


She shrugged; “It happens, because South Africa has had a history with race and all of that…there were books to literally tell you what colour you were and even now, it's all we're reminded of. In school application forms, bank account opening forms, name it...they ask if you are black, Indian, white, etc.
“They keep rubbing it in your face so I guess it'll always be there”, she finished.


“Do you get that outside?” I asked.


“Not really”, she replied.
“When I was in America they would say; 'please call the girl with a weave downstairs', then you knew it had to be a black person, for whoever it was to wear a weave, or cornrows...they'd have to be black. They are more careful. It's also the way they may say “nigger” in some places there but not say it in like, Seattle.”


“Would you refer to someone by their colour inside or outside your country?”
“No, I would not,” she replied.



“But Ruonah, here it's not like......” the person who brought about the whole debate still had a few more words.


I interrupted her with a joke. I’d had my fill.
Mother did say it is a smart person who remembers his stomach's constitution and knows what foods to select at a buffet.


As I negotiate the “buffet” that is my time in South Africa, I daresay I can live with the fact that freshmen are known by their love of neon colours, but vehemently refuse to accept the (hopefully unpopular) view that being in a country of diverse people, or having a history of racial profiling gives anyone the right to identify humans by their skin colour.

http://vuvuzela.org.za/index.php/wits-voices-a-views/540-hey-wheres-the-coloured-girl-in-your-class

*Agbroko is the 2010 Niall Fitzgerald scholar doing her Honours degree in Journalism and Media Studies at the University of the Witswatersrand (Wits), Johanneburg, South Africa. She writes this column for www.vuvuzela.org.za, the website for Wits' journalism department.