Sweating Race: White Expatriate South African Readers Constructing Race and Racial Identities in JULUKA’s Mail Bag

Abstract

This article examines the rhetorical construction of race and racial identities by letter writers in a US-based, South African newsletter. I highlight the rhetoric of crime, the strategic rhetoric of implying race, the construction of blackness, the rhetoric of white victimization, and the relationship between whiteness and nationality. I conclude with a brief query as to whether these letters are exemplary of racist discourse.

Keywords:

• whiteness
• South Africa
• race
• racial identity
• rhetoric

Acknowledgments

I owe many thanks to my dissertation committee for their input on the original version of this essay (Kent Ono, Ruth Frankenberg, Gayatri Gopinath, Moradewun Adejunmobi, and Jay Mechling). Kent Ono was a particularly helpful editor. Ruth Frankenberg also provided useful insights during the initial revision process. I also wish to thank an anonymous reviewer and the editors for very insightful comments and suggestions

Notes

¹ Juluka is the Zulu word for “sweat.”

² See e.g. Ballard, “Assimilation, Emigration”; Distiller and Steyn, Under Construction; Farred, “Bulletproof Settlers”; Griffiths and Prozesky, “The Politics of Dwelling”; Ndebele, “Iph’ Indlela?”; Steyn, “Whiteness Just Isn’t”)

³ Blecher, “South African Immigrants”; Cohen, “Brain-Drain Migration”; Van Rooyen, The New Great Trek.

⁴ See Bornman, “Emigration among Afrikaners Today”; Rooyen, The New Great Trek.

⁵ Brown, Kaplan, and Meyer, “Counting Brains”; Crush et al., “Losing Our Minds”; Van Rooyen, The New Great Trek.

⁶ Ballard, “Assimilation, Emigration”; Blecher, “South African Immigrants”; CNN, “Some Natives Flee”; Cohen, “Brain-Drain Migration”; Cohen, Global Diasporas; Crush et al., “Losing Our Minds”; Gill, “Brain Drain”; Griffiths and Prozesky, “The Politics of Dwelling”; Grusd, A Cognitive-Attributional Analysis”; Hawthorne, “The Beleaguered Country”; McDonald and Crush, Destinations Unknown; Politicsweb.co.za, “How Many”; Polonsky, Scott and Suchard, “Motivations”; Polonsky, Scott, and Suchard, “A Profile”; Crush and McDonald, “The Brain Drain”; SAPA, “SA’s Brain Drain”; Steenkamp, “Brain Drain”; Van Rooyen, The New Great Trek.

⁷ See Brown, Kaplan, and Meyer, “Counting Brains”; Politicsweb.co.za, “How Many”; Van Rooyen, The New Great Trek.

⁸ Tölölyan, “Rethinking Diaspora(s).”

⁹ Crush et al., “Losing Our Minds”; Ray, “Brain Drain.”

¹⁰ Schiller, Basch, and Blanc-Szanton, “Transnationalism,” 14.

¹¹ See Andrucki, “’There’s a Drumbeat,” who notes “the propensity of WESSAs [White, English-speaking South Africans] to construct imaginative geographies through a meld of both fantasy and embodied practice, as places one has experienced come to be understood in relation, and often opposition, to each other” (2). He also notes the “multiple ways that South Africans imagine, code and perform the transnational spaces through which they move” and the “ways in which South Africa …  is constructed and performed, co-constitutively with the UK, through racialized discourse of desire and abjection, as well as the everyday embodied practices of whiteness” (2). See also, Schroeder’s Africa After Apartheid, which highlights the transnational migration of particular white South African ideologies.

¹² See Bailey, Georgiou, and Harindranath, Transnational Lives; Brinkerhoff, Digital Diasporas; Christensen, Jansson, and Christensen, Online Territories; Fortunati, Pertierra, and Vincent, Migration; Hepp, “Localities”; Rigoni and Saitta, Mediating; Thronley, “Talking Film”; Thussu, Media on the Move; Walsh, “British Expatriate Belongings.”

¹³ See, e.g. Griffiths and Prozesky, “The Politics of Dwelling”; Van Rooyen, The New Great Trek; Schönfeldt-Aultman, “Racial Appropriation;” Schönfeldt-Aultman, “White Rhetorics”.

¹⁴ Matheson and Kekana, “Welcome to the First Issue,” 2.

¹⁵ www.africasouth.com/juluka/index.html, accessed, 2/24/2001.

¹⁶ I do not, however, treat letters in the Dec 99/Jan 00 issue since JULUKA printed letters shared by Colin’s Family Focus website (http://www.colindcan.com) due to the receipt of “few thought-provoking letters this month” (Dec 99/Jan 00, p. 14). It is also important to point out that my analysis and theorizing, given the specific temporal range of letters surveyed, are not necessarily applicable to Mail Bag letters prior to Mbeki’s presidency. While there may exist similar discourses in earlier issues, I am not attempting to apply my arguments to these issues. In fact, there is more interaction by non-white letter writers in prior issues, which may provide for more production of counter-discourses and a differently nuanced analysis, theorizing, and description of Mail Bag.

¹⁷ See, e.g. Doxtader, “Making History;” Schönfeldt-Aultman, “Day of Reconciliation”.

¹⁸ Matheson, email, 24 September 2003.

¹⁹ Frankenberg, “The Mirage”; see also Charland, “Constitutive Rhetoric.”

²⁰ Dyer, “The Matter of Whiteness,” 540.

²¹ See Dyer, “White”; Frankenberg, “The Mirage”; Nakayama and Krizek, “Whiteness.”

²² Keith, “Identity,” 521.

²³ Ibid., 529.

²⁴ Hall, in “The Whites of Their Eyes” (41), states about popular culture’s representations of blacks, “Primitivism, savagery, guile and unreliability—all ‘just below the surface’—can still be identified in the faces of black political leaders around the world, cunningly plotting the overthrow of ‘civilization.’” These ideas are often called into circulation by white rhetorical critiques of black leaders such as Mbeki or Mugabe or other prominent black figures.

²⁵ Hall “New Ethnicities,” 167).

²⁶ See Kincheloe, “The Struggle”; Nakayama and Krizek, “Whiteness”; Projansky and Ono, “Strategic Whiteness”; Shome,”Race.”

²⁷ Obviously, multiple interpretations of JULUKA and the letters it contains are possible (one of which I offer here by reading with attention to whiteness). One has to recognize that multiple readings are often indicative of multiple fields of experiences. To read it as a coherent whole or as espousing one ideology is extremely problematic, however, for it is not one perspective that JULUKA offers, but the confluence of many ideologies vying for position and expression. There is always space for ideologies to be reworked, and challenged, though given its predominantly white readership and contributors, JULUKA’s transformative potential and significance may be more difficult than I suggest. Whiteness will remain central, normative and dominant—and racism an easier charge for many - if the presence of counter-discourses is not continual and strategic.

²⁸ See Frankenberg, White Women, “The Mirage”; Jackson, “White Space”; Nakayama and Krizek, “Whiteness.”

²⁹ See, for example, letters attributed to Dedricks, “President”; Richardson, “Lesson.”

³⁰ Slement, “Bad Attitude.”

³¹ Ibid., 10.

³² Buchanan, “New Year Satire,” 10.

³³ Luker, “Feedback,” 10.

³⁴ Ibid.

³⁵ Ibid.

³⁶ Saunders and Southey, A Dictionary.

³⁷ See Maher and Thompson Tetreault, “Learning”; Kincheloe, “The Struggle”; Shome, “Race.” A letter from Canada, in the February/March 2002 Mail Bag addresses Mbeki’s stance on HIV/AIDS and writes, “The president has his head in the sand. He has surrounded himself with so-called scientific experts who claim that AZT causes more harm than good” (Dedricks, “President,” 10). Such rhetoric questions Mbeki’s wisdom, and links to rhetorics that often question black intelligence and competence. Similarly, other letters suggest that professor of Black Studies and former author of JULUKA’s “Bridging the Gap” column, Ridwan Nytagodien, is not as clever or as productive as they believe he thinks he is (see December 2002/January 2003 and February/March 2003 Mail Bag letters). Again, such rhetoric props up white intelligence/activity while downgrading people of color’s intelligence/activity (Cf. Kincheloe, “The Struggle”: Shome, “Race”).

³⁸ While Botha’s vision and statement really resulted only in token parliamentary participation/representation of Coloureds and Indians due to a new tricameral constitution, it still drove the far right away (Saunders and Southey, A Dictionary). Moreover, a BBC News report (“World”) suggests,

Botha's reformist instinct was generally attributed to a desire to preserve the pre-eminence of whites by giving limited concessions to other races. Constitutional reforms were combined with bloody crackdowns on violent opposition, and increased military repression by the South African police force and the State Security Council (SSC).

One could argue, as well, that the appeal to Botha in the letter also is undergirded by a wish to maintain the centrality or supremacy of whiteness and its privileges. Moreover, it is a phrase that may be identified with by many whites and one that may unify some whites ideologically (if Burke, A Rhetoric, is referenced).

³⁹ Saunders and Southey, A Dictionary.

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ Wilson, “Attacks,” 10.

⁴² Ibid.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ Shome, “Race.”

⁴⁵ See, for example, Preller, Piet Retief; the 1916 film Die Voortrekkers; Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines; McClintock, “The White Family of Man.”

⁴⁶ Banton, “The Idiom,” 51.

⁴⁷ Tyson, Steyn, Gibson, Trail, and Desai, “SA 2000–01,” 12.

⁴⁸ See Alexander, “Rainbow people,” “Colors,” “In the Great River”; Anonymous, “Rainbow Nation”; Anonymous, “Can Anyone”; Davis, “In Search”; Giliomee, “We Are Not”; Mattes, “The Meaning,” “No Lack,” The Election Book; Mda, “Has the Rainbow”; Reuters, “Mandela”; Robins, “Rainbow Nation”; Roefs, “An ‘outsider’”; Thaver, “Inclusion”; Thornton, “The Potentials”; Welsh, “Can South Africa.”

⁴⁹ See Dyer, “The Matter of Whiteness”; Frankenberg, White Women, “The Mirage.”

⁵⁰ Hall, “Cultural Identity,” 393.

⁵¹ Goldberg, “Racial Knowledge,” 165.

⁵² Martin, Krizek, Nakayama, and Bradford, “Exploring.”

⁵³ Solomos and Back, “Introduction,” 21, commenting on Goldberg’s essay in their edited text.

⁵⁴ Scholtz, “Biltong?,” 10.

⁵⁵ Fernandez, “Warm Fuzzies,” 10.

⁵⁶ Ibid.

⁵⁷ Goldberg, “The Social Formation,” 307.

⁵⁸ Cf. Burke, A Rhetoric.

⁵⁹ McGee, “In Search,” 243.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 245.

⁶¹ Steyn, “Whiteness”; “Rehabilitating.”

⁶² Coetzee, “Krotoä.”

⁶³ Dyer, “The Matter of Whiteness,” 537.

⁶⁴ While it is not the intention of this project, one might also make a case, given the use of nationalist rhetorics and traditional framings of masculinity/femininity in JULUKA, that these discourses serve and create an imagery of gender that supports patriarchy as much as it does whiteness. Scholars have noted that nationalist rhetorics have implications for women’s identities (cf. Brah, Cartographies; Grewal and Kaplan, Scattered; McClintock, “No longer”). The nationalist rhetorics employed in white South African discourses do work to prioritize national identity and consequently to often project traditionalist images of women. These rhetorics, which also maintain whiteness’s centrality, demonstrate Goldberg’s contention that racist discourse is intertwined with other powerful discourses, such as those of gender, class and nation, all of which work to “determine the subjectivity of agents at a given time and place” (“The Social Formation,” 311). Important to also note here is that white South African expatriate/emigrant subjectivities (as well as the letters in JULUKA) are racialized not only by a historical national (South African) context of racism but also by another nation (USA) historically marked by and structured on white supremacist patriarchy.

⁶⁵ See Tyson et al., “SA 2000–01”; cf. Frankenberg, White Women.

⁶⁶ Frankenberg, White Women, 239.

⁶⁷ Brah, Cartographies, 105.

⁶⁸ Frankenberg, White Women, 5; cf. Dyer, “The Matter of Whiteness.”

⁶⁹ Brah, Cartographies, 106.

⁷⁰ Goldberg, “The Social Formation,” 300.

⁷¹ McGee, “In Search.”

⁷² Cf. Anderson, Imagined Communities.

⁷³ Frankenberg, White Women, 239–40.