Un(fair) Comment?

In the past few weeks, the debate around coloured identity (particularly in relation to its stereotyping) has proven a popular topic in public conversation - sparked by Kuli Robert's article in the Sunday World.

The recent spate of debate around coloured identity has really got me thinking, what is the obscene underside of this all? What are we not seeing? Ostensibly, it all seems pretty obvious: a denial of the fact that “coloured people” make up a heterogeneous group, and should not be subject to the generalisations encompassed in crude stereotypes. So we will (rightfully) make a big noise, and stamp up a fuss, when someone like Kuli Roberts or Jimmy Manyi inserts their voice into these often repeated ideas about coloured society. Why is this necessary? Because on a deeper level, ideas MAKE reality (or more particularly, people’s understandings of reality), and these understandings construct culture: either entrenching or destabilising norms. However, whilst these columns cause uproar, they emerge as a symptom of the real issue: all that lurks under the surface.

The real issue here is the amount of airtime these stereotypes are unquestionably afforded. Just turn on your TV and you will find them within the advertisements we know, love and love to laugh at, in the subtle comments of random people, and (importantly) in daily interactions. We might want to call them “harmless reproductions”.  But, these constant reproductions leave their residue within our minds, and soon that residue builds to form an image – a “face” of colouredness if you will. It might seem “harmless” to reproduce these, but again “ideas make reality”. And when the reality slaps us in the face, in the form of unqualified comments by Kuli Roberts, or anyone else, we speak out – but when do we confront the subtleties of these realities: the daily representations that are hard at work within the minds of people to form that self-same, unquestioned image of “the coloured”?.

So while some may want to call the recent debate a “storm in a teacup”, I have to wonder whether they are ignorant of the subtleties within representations of coloured people, or simply too disinterested in how these ideas continually manufacture a 2-dimensional identity, or just don’t care. Because from where I stand, that tea sure does leave a bitter taste in my mouth.