‘Able to identify with anything’: racial identity choices among ‘coloureds’ as shaped by the South African racial state

Abstract

The Apartheid South African state crafted Coloured racial identities through a powerful racial project that signified and positioned them as a group that was both neither and between White and Black. Non-Racialism in post-Apartheid South Africa has, however, loosened the role of the state in making race. So how has the transition of the state impacted ‘Coloured’ racial identities today? Informed by both macro-level theories of racial formation and micro-level theories of racial identities, I examine racial identity choices as constrained by the state among 50 adults. I find identities choices are influenced by transformations in the racial state: racialisation via reappropriating ‘Coloured’; re-formation and joining of ‘Black’; racial uplift construction as ‘Khoisan’; and a non-racialist approach to identity as ‘Human’. I argue transformations of the racial state shape, or even lead to, a transition in racial identities and therefore clarify theorises of co-constructed racial identity formations.