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Questioning 'colourdness,: Tracing the identity development of people who chose to reject 'coloured identity'
This research project explores the identity development of thirteen people, all of whom reside in Cape Town, and all of whom rejected 'coloured' identity. It investigates ways in which the participants used different ideologies to repudiate their 'legal identity' - 'coloured identity'. The thesis ut...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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Department of Psychology
2014
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| Summary: | This research project explores the identity development of thirteen people, all of whom reside in Cape Town, and all of whom rejected 'coloured' identity. It investigates ways in which the participants used different ideologies to repudiate their 'legal identity' - 'coloured identity'. The thesis utilised the Nigrescence model to locate and to describe the identity development process that the participants went through. It argues that racist incidents experienced by participants while they were growing up, laid the foundation for future questioning of their identities. This study shows that it was not a single factor that led participants to question their identities. Some participants questioned 'colouredness' due to family influence, and in certain cases because of influence at school. The political climate of the 1980s and 1990s gave participants the courage to reject 'coloured' identity. This study shows that in the 1980s the Black Consciousness Movement encouraged most of the participants to embrace a black identity as a form of political resistance. Furthermore, this study argues that in post-apartheid South Africa, most of the participants do not see the need to use racial identities, and therefore do not racially label themselves. Thus, this research project concludes that the black identity that the participants embraced in the 1980s served as a mechanism to protect the participants from negative psychological stress generated by the apartheid regime. It further gave participants a sense of purpose. The findings of this qualitative research study contribute to the understanding of identity development. Keywords: Race, Non-racialism, 'Coloured' identity, postcolonial subjectivities, identity development, apartheid. |
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