Afrikaner and Coloured School-Going Adolescents Negotiating Ethnic Identities in a Post-Colonial South African Educational Context: A Dialogical Self Interpretation

Abstract

A qualitative investigation was conducted into Afrikaner and Coloured adolescents’ ethnic identity negotiation in a post-colonial educational context in South Africa. Identity formation was taken up as discursively produced in conversation and context and interpreted from a Dialogical Self theoretical perspective. Focus group discussions were conducted with six groups consisting of Coloured and Afrikaner boys and girls between the ages of 15 and 18 years at a multi-cultural secondary school. The interview schedule contained questions and probes relating to what it means to be Afrikaner/Coloured in the post-apartheid society under a black majority government. Participants constructed the school setting as a positive space where Born Frees meet as equals, friendships were forged and cultural boundaries crossed. Afrikaner adolescents to a greater extent than their Coloured peers ventriloquated collective cultural voices regarding having close heterosexual relationships with partners from other ethnic/racial groups. Coloured adolescents were more unreserved and free in their embracing of the Black Other as well as condemning apartheid. Afrikaners were multi-voiced protesting the generation of leaders that instituted apartheid but also the social stigma that they are burdened with as younger generation. Both Coloured and Afrikaner adolescents were critical of the post-apartheid dispensation as minority groups, the continued emphasis on “race” and a substantial group narrated a pessimistic outlook on their future in South Africa. Practical implications for educational settings are presented.