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Ethnic and Racial Studies
ISSN: 0141-9870 (Print) 1466-4356 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rers20
Hyperracialized: interracial relationships in post-
apartheid South Africa and the informal policing of
public spaces
Melissa Steyn, Haley McEwen & Jennie Tsekwa
To cite this article: Melissa Steyn, Haley McEwen & Jennie Tsekwa (2018): Hyperracialized:
interracial relationships in post-apartheid South Africa and the informal policing of public spaces,
Ethnic and Racial Studies, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2018.1508735
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2018.1508735
Published online: 10 Sep 2018.
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Hyperracialized: interracial relationships in
post-apartheid South Africa and the informal policing
of public spaces
Melissa Steyn , Haley McEwen and Jennie Tsekwa
Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, University of the Witswatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
ABSTRACT
Dynamics of race in South Africa are deeply entangled within a world system
that continues to enable hegemonic white privilege. Prevalent views and
behaviours towards “interracial”relationships reveal a rebellion against the
non-racial philosophies and policies of the new government and are an
indicator of the ongoing salience of race in shaping lived experience. Drawing
on interviews with couples in so-called “interracial”relationships, this article
argues that unequal power dynamics continue to hyperracialize and regulate
these relationships through “privatized”racial boundary policing, even though
such relationships are no longer stigmatized and criminalized by the state as
in apartheid South Africa. Their experiences of racism show up in two distinct
ways: aggressive policing and covert policing; these in turn can lead to self-
policing, and perpetuate racial social organization.
ARTICLE HISTORY Received 19 May 2017; Accepted 30 July 2018
KEYWORDS Interracial relationships; borderzones; informal policing; post-apartheid South Africa; race;
racism
Introduction
With the dismantling of the formal system of apartheid in 1994, it was hoped, by
the historically oppressed especially, that the policies and philosophies of the
new democracy in South Africa would change old mindsets, bring social
justice, and unite the people of the nation. South Africa’s constitution certainly
makes clear the vision for a non-racist and non-sexist society, and has been cele-
brated internationally for being one of the most progressive constitutions in the
world. However, despite formal protections from discrimination and the right to
equal recognition under the law, many people and communities continue to
experience the effects of systemic racism. And, although apartheid laws that
racially segregated spaces and communities have been dismantled, race poli-
cing continues informally by citizens who are still clearly against race mixing.
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
CONTACT Melissa Steyn melissa.steyn@wits.ac.za Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, University of
the Witswatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2018.1508735
This article argues that “interracial”relationships in post-apartheid South
Africa provide an important site and lens through which to observe and
understand informal racial policing. This approach shifts the analytic gaze
away from interracial couples and the individuals concerned as objects of
scrutiny requiring explanation and towards the dynamics that persist in the
society surrounding them, which shape their experiences. After reviewing
the literature and describing the method, the article is structured around
three distinct forms of policing experienced by our participants: 1) obvious
and aggressive policing; 2) less obvious and more subtle policing; and 3)
self-policing behaviour.
In many ways, both conscious and unconscious, members of the public
(particularly those who benefitted from the white supremacist colonial
system and apartheid) have taken it into their own hands to ensure that
the racial order remains intact. While white protectionists “tolerate”integrated
workplaces and schools, the domain that many are still unwilling to relinquish
is the space of intimate relationships. Prohibitions on sex and relationships
between people of different racial groups (as classified by the 1950 Group
Areas Act) perpetuated the idea that clear lines of distinction could be
drawn between different racial groups, which was in turn required for the jus-
tification, establishment and maintenance of the racial hierarchy. The ideol-
ogy of white supremacy, therefore, largely depended on the general
population to invest in stigmas and taboos against love, sex, and intimacy
across colour lines. Ongoing discrimination by “everyday”people against
interracial couples in today’s society reflects one way in which white suprema-
cist ideology continues to be reproduced with real social effects. For example,
recently, many white South Africans expressed their “disgust”on social media
at a black rugby player’s marriage to a white woman. One disgruntled man
wrote: “What a waste of good white genes”. According to another, the
family should disown them (The Citizen, December 12, 2016).
In the United States too, ongoing stigmatization of interracial couples
reflects investment in a white supremacist social order. In 2013, a cereal com-
mercial featuring an interracial couple and mixed race child sparked outrage,
and more recently, a US government office commented: “I am concerned that
media using mixed race couples in ads as normal is one way liberals are trying
to eliminate the white race”(CNN, November 16, 2016).
These instances subvert the idea that societies such as the US and South
Africa are “post”or “non”racial. Goldberg (2009,2015) sees post-racialism
as a form of collective race evasion, as explained in a recent interview:
Post-raciality operates by insisting that the legacy of racial discrimination and
disadvantage has been waning over time. If it exists now at all, such discrimi-
nation is deemed anomalous and individually expressed, not structural or
socially fuelled. Racist outbursts are considered occasional, not systemic or sys-
tematic, with diminishing impact. Proponents of post-raciality are concerned to
2M. STEYN ET AL.
scrub racial reference from social usage, erasing language by which racisms can
be identified, analysed, and addressed. (Goldberg 2015).
It is unsurprising, therefore, that although formal regulations against interra-
cial relationships were overturned as part of South Africa’s transition to
democracy, they continue to be informally policed by the general public
(Ratele 2009), in a similar way to which spatial strategies such as gated com-
munities may restore a level of white control over a neighbourhood. As Ballard
(2005, iii) puts it, “In post-apartheid South Africa, as in the West, the prospect
of racial and class mixing going unmanaged by the state is leading many to
resolve the problem with their private resources.”
The experience of individuals whose relationships have been defined as
“interracial”is one way to acknowledge contemporary racisms. Interracial
relationships do not simply indicate “progress”towards an ideal of “non-racial-
ism”. Instead, the experiences of interracial relationships provide an indication
of how racialized borders continue to exist and shape social imaginaries and
realities. This approach is also taken by Childs (2005b) who uses the metaphor
of a canary in a coalmine to explain her positioning of interracial couples in
relation to racism in the United States. To capture this sense of the interracial
relationship as a site of heightened social investment, of intensely focused
attention for the racial imagination, and where the broader society performs
race work, or “race making”(Marx 1998, xii), we refer to these relationships as
“hyperracialized.”
1
Although some work has been done that specifically
names these encounters as border policing or regulating (Osuji 2014;Perry
and Sutton 2008;Moran2001), the social, discursive processes which hyperra-
cialize these relationships remain significantly under-studied.
Indeed now, more than ever, there is an urgent need to examine the ways
in which the formal regulations that prohibited interracial intimacy in the past
are being informally re-inscribed, and how the privatization of old apartheid
laws works to preserve a social order that is based on ideas of racial difference
and hierarchy. This requires that we listen and see from the borderzones and
in-between spaces that our participants navigate and where forms of racial
policing take place, rather than from a “birds-eye”socio-spatial epistemology
that ultimately reinforces white-centered ways of knowing the social world
(Dwyer and Jones 2000).
Interracial relationships and policing: a contextual review
Gaps in existing research
Previous research on interracial relationships has emphasized the need for
more consideration of the actual experiences, voices and perspectives of
those in relationships labeled as such (Kitossa and Deliovsky 2010; Perry
and Sutton 2008). However, most of the existing research on this subject
ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES 3
has been limited to countries such as the United States, United Kingdom and
Canada. Although there are contextual and historical similarities across these
contexts in terms of the impact of colonialism, racism and slavery, there is a
need for more research in specific national and local contexts (Silva 2012;
Goldberg 2006), particularly in the global South, such as the work done by
Osuji in Brazil (2014), Sue in Mexico (2013), Fernandez in Cuba (2010), and
Sethlhare-Oagile in Botswana (2006).
Attention is paid in the literature to what makes these couples different
and how the public feels or reacts (for example Burton et al. 2010; Qian and
Lichter 2007; Golebiowska 2007), rather than the active role that the public
plays in maintaining racialized borders. In contrast, our approach explores
how “ethnosexual imaginings and ideologies often manifest themselves in
violent behavior intended to police the colour line”(Perry and Sutton 2008,
244). Given the political nature of this violence, it could even be regarded
as a form of terrorism.
2
To understand these dynamics within a broader theor-
etical framework it is necessary to view reactions to interracial relationships in
the context of historical and current racial ideologies.
Ongoing racial formations
White supremacist ideology was embedded in South African society through
colonial and apartheid legislation, upheld by the widely-accepted ideology
that racial groups needed to be kept separate in order to maintain “purity”.
Laws prohibiting interracial intimacy were strictly enforced, and posed a
serious and ongoing threat to mixed couples. As recounted by Sherman
and Steyn (2009, 66):
Authorities frequently followed people suspected of interracial sex. Police raided
homes in the early hours of the morning to examine identity documents to
ensure that sleeping partners were of the same race. Sometimes bed sheets
and genitals were inspected.
Such relationships were extremely dangerous to the couple,
3
and labeled
“rebellious”,“unnatural”,or“immoral”by the state and most members of
the general public. While the Natives and Group Areas Acts regulated the
movement of bodies in public spaces, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages
Act 55 of 1949 (outlawing marriages between white people and people of
“other”races) and the Immorality Act 21 of 1950 (prohibiting “unlawful
racial intercourse”and “any immoral or indecent act”between a white
person and a black, Indian or coloured person) were designed to regulate
private spaces.
Against this historical backdrop, our research suggests that this violation of
personal choices and private spaces persists. However, earlier research in
South Africa (such as Ross 1990 and Morral 1994; cited by Jaynes 2010)
4M. STEYN ET AL.
optimistically regarded interracial relationships and societal responses to
them as a barometer for social change. In contrast, more recent research chal-
lenges this assumption and views interracial relationships as ongoing sites for
the study of racism and racialized identities (Steyn, Tsekwa, and McEwen 2017;
Jaynes 2010; Shefer 2010; Sherman and Steyn 2009; Jaynes 2007), similar to
the ways in which borders are highly contested zones for inclusion and exclu-
sion in today’s world.
Borderwork and the boundary police
Understanding why interracial relationships continue to be sites of pain and
prejudice despite legislative changes is enabled by a critical view of how
power, particularly racialized forms of power, operate in these spaces. Both
critical diversity studies and critical border studies offer insights here in that
both bodies of knowledge seek to examine the way power operates
through social identities and social spaces to create systems of privilege,
advantage, disadvantage and oppression (Steyn 2014; Grosfoguel 2009).
The terms “borders”and “boundaries”have been used in studies of interracial
relationships, such as Childs (2005b) work on Navigating Interracial Borders,
but need to be looked at again as powerful metaphors for understanding
society’s ongoing race-work.
Osuji (2013, 180) defines “boundary-policing”as “the ways that actors
actively stigmatize those who attempt to cross social boundaries”, while
Ruiz (2015, 2) similarly describes boundaries as “symbolic limit lines”.
Mignolo and Tlostanova (2006, 206) argue that:
Border thinking or theorizing emerged from and as a response to the violence
(frontiers) of imperial/territorial epistemology and the rhetoric of modernity
(and globalization) of salvation that continues to be implemented on the
assumption of the inferiority or devilish intentions of the Other and, therefore,
continues to justify oppression and exploitation as well as eradication of the
difference.
In other words, boundaries and border thinking operate in the interests of
social control and domination. Rumford (2012) suggests two properties of
borders that need to be acknowledged if we are to challenge the beliefs
and values that keep racial hierarchies intact. Firstly, borders “do not have
to be visible to all in order to be effective”; and “borders cannot be properly
understood from a single privileged vantage point”(887). Confirming the sig-
nificance of “privatization,”he suggests the need to examine “borderwork”,
which is the “societal bordering activity undertaken by citizens”(887).
Secondly, Rumford (2012, 897) proposes that borders do not require
mutual recognition (consensus) in order to exist, function or negatively
impact on people. He suggests the need to “see like a border”in order to
ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES 5
“recognize the constitutive nature of borders in social and political life”(897)
and notes that the “role that ordinary people play in the construction of
borders is under-represented in the border studies literature”(898). We seek
to do precisely that, by looking at the ways in which the public reassert the
boundary between what are to be considered normative relationships and
fixate on those of transgressors.
In summary, this article seeks to contribute to existing research on interra-
cial relationships and modern racisms by providing a critical framework that
first, challenges us to shift the gaze offthe interracial couples as phenomena
that need to be explained and onto the problematic societies that hyper-racia-
lize them; that second, demonstrates how this informal policing continues to
do the same “work”that formal laws did during apartheid; and third, uses
borders and boundary policing as a powerful metaphor for revealing the
power dynamics within overt policing, covert policing and self-policing
behaviours.
Method and sample
The qualitative interviews conducted for this study are part of an ongoing
research project that started in 2008 and is still ongoing. Seventeen individ-
uals involved in serious relationships with a person of a different “race
group”participated in a set of interviews about their experiences as interracial
couples.
4
Considering the unique perspective of each individual within the
relationship, we did not regard it as necessary to interview both partners in
the relationship, though when both were willing, we did. In these instances,
both partners were interviewed separately. Cape Town was chosen due to
the location of the research team, yet the couples spoke of broader experi-
ences in South Africa as a whole. Therefore, we believe that the findings
from this study are indicative of dynamics across South Africa, even though
there may be some particularities depending on the city or region.
We used a combination of purposive and snowball sampling to identify a
diverse range of participants from within our existing social networks and
beyond. Print and electronic media were also used to advertise the project
and attract potential participants. At the beginning of each interview, we
allowed participants to self-identify in terms of their race. With the exception
of two individuals, all chose to identify themselves and their partners using
the historical South African racial categories –white, black, Indian and
coloured –which shows how entrenched these categories are in the collective
psyche. Throughout this article, we will continue to refer to these race groups,
although we do not agree with the ideology behind their construction (Price
2010).
Eight of our participants were in self-identified coloured/white relation-
ships at the time of the interviews; five were in black/white relationships;
6M. STEYN ET AL.
two were in Indian/white relationships; one was in an Indian/coloured
relationship; and one was in a mixed/mixed relationship. The duration of
the relationships varied from one and a half years to eighteen years.
Participants were mainly South African, although their partners often were
not, and this broadened their accounts beyond South Africa. Our sample was
also diverse in terms of age, with some participants growing up and experien-
cing their relationships in post-apartheid South Africa, while others were able
to reflect on the experience of interracial intimacy during apartheid. Our
sample included both heterosexual and same sex relationships and we inter-
viewed participants from a spectrum of class backgrounds. The intersection-
ality of our participants’diverse positionalities became clear during the
interviews and is reflected in the findings below, although it was not the
focus of our research question. Methodologically, we allowed the issues
they regarded as salient to emerge. If they didn’t raise a particular aspect of
their identity in relation to their interracial relationships (e.g. class, sexual
orientation, nationality, etc.), we did not lead them into a discussion about it.
Similarly, while a couple’s marital status, living arrangements, length of
time together, etc. may lead to varied experiences, this article focuses on
the reactions they encounter from strangers in the public domain who
would not be aware of, or necessarily be able to see, these factors or other
aspects of their diverse identities. Rather than disaggregate their individual
experiences as couples, we are looking at the interface, the border flashpoint
that broader society constructs between the couple and itself, as it turns their
relationship into a site on which they (re)inscribe the salience of race. Focus-
ing on the differences between the couples is a worthy topic for another
article.
Findings from the border
From the perspective of the border, the vantage point of people in hyperra-
cialized relationships, the significant risks to those involved become clear
even though the penalties are not always visible to other parties. The experi-
ences they describe challenge the notion that instances of racism are excep-
tional rather than prevalent.
Aggressive policing
Borders of violence and masculinity
Neo, a black man in a relationship with a white woman, described a confron-
tation at a nightclub in Cape Town, which is frequented by white high school
students. Explaining the way he was “pushed”and “knocked”for “chatting to a
white girl”, he said, “They make it so blatant, you can see it coming in front of
you.”He noted further that the aggression does not only come from white
ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES 7
men, both during apartheid and currently: “With black people during the
apartheid days, there was this thing that like, ‘white is the enemy’, so if you
go out now with your girlfriend, some people still look at you like a traitor.”
Michael, a coloured man, tells of a similar experience, but with a different
age group: “Being hounded by this bunch of old guys because I was dating
this attractive white girl and I could see it was bugging them and they
were doing everything to try and antagonize me.”Like Neo, Michael also
noted that the aggression does not only happen in “white”pubs:
[We were at] a predominantly coloured hangout …and there is a mentality with
a lot of coloured guys that obviously white girls that date coloured guys are easy
and this bouncer started hitting on her blatantly in front of me and we almost
got into a fight.
The disapproval and aggression towards hyperracialized couples does not
come only from white perpetrators. Kitossa and Deliovsky (2010) remind us
that bordering practices carry different weight based on the distribution of
power and the historical context.
5
For example, some reactions possibly
come from internalized inferiority, while others come from a position of
racial dominance or power. The incidents described by Neo and Michael
demonstrate this intersection between raced and gendered experiences. As
black and coloured men who were involved romantically with white
women, they were treated as trespassers and transgressors by other men.
The policing of racialized borders in these instances is also an expression of
patriarchal borderwork where some men have assigned themselves as gate-
keepers of women’s bodies, essentialized as sexual objects through these
encounters (see also Childs 2005a).
Jeremy, a black man in a relationship with a white woman, shared the
experience of two of his friends who were subjected to hostility and physical
violence for being in a hyperracialized relationship:
He is Zambian and his girlfriend was American. So they stopped in Knysna and
she decided to change into her swimsuit. So he was there holding her towel and
hiding her while she was getting dressed. And when she was dressed, all he
remembers was seeing the bakkie stop and four guys coming out and
holding him down saying, “Is this guy raping you or trying to rape you?”He
took time first to register it and they had already punched him once.
This rape trope is highly reminiscent of the narratives that were used to
support anti-miscegenation laws in South Africa and in many other countries,
and demonstrates the ways in which these narratives still play out today. As
noted by Perry and Sutton (2008, 247), “The image of the black sexed predator
is the cultural lens through which some whites [still] perceive black people.”
The violence is as much about reasserting the racial hierarchy within patriar-
chy as it is about outrage at interracial intimacy. As noted by Thompson (2009,
363), citing Wiegman, “The threat to systems of white supremacy was not just
8M. STEYN ET AL.
about racial difference, but about sexual sameness –to be masculine is to be
on top of the hierarchy and anti-miscegenation laws reaffirmed the subordi-
nate position of non-white men”.
Borders of racial hierarchy
While the above incidents underscore the significance of the intersection
between race, physical violence and masculinity, Carina, a coloured woman,
makes sense of the public hostility she and her black male partner experi-
enced somewhat differently:
We were walking on the side of the road and, um, these guys like shouted out of
the car: “Stop holding his hand! Why you holding his hand?”…that kind of inci-
dent has happened twice, where people just shouted outside their cars. We had
an incident where this woman was being really racist toward Sizwe …she said
things like: “Go back to where you guys come from. You’ve been spewed up
from the gutters, and that’s what you will always be.”
In the first incident, Carina tells that male passers-by aggressively claimed
ownership over her body and her partner’s intimate proximity to it in a
verbal, rather than physical, expression of male dominance. In the second inci-
dent recounted, Carina positions herself as collateral damage to racism
directed at her partner, distancing herself from the woman she describes as
being “really racist”. According to Perry and Sutton (2008, 247), regardless
of their gender or sexuality, “people of colour are most at risk when they
visibly cross the racialized sexual boundaries by engaging in interracial
relationships.”In Carina’s case, the racial hierarchy embedded by apartheid
continues to situate her “colouredness”as separate and distinct from her part-
ner’s“blackness”and possibly enables her to also distance herself psychologi-
cally from her partner’s experience of racism, even while she tried to defend
him.
Carina’s narrative highlights the significance of one’s own racial positional-
ity in making sense of the borders encountered as a couple. Perry and Sutton
(2008) note that: “The white offender is the permanent insider, the raced
victim the permanent outsider, who must forever be reminded of their relative
status positions”(256). We noticed in our interviews that in some instances
white or coloured participants with partners who have a darker complexion
than themselves seemed able to retain their sense of relative privilege or
being the societally “unproblematic”partner even when they were on the
receiving end of racism directed towards them as a couple.
Covert policing
Our participants made it very clear that it is important to not only pay atten-
tion to aggressive examples of boundary policing, but also to more covert, but
equally dehumanizing, policing practices. Collins (1991, 266) provides a
ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES 9
powerful analysis of how stereotypes, what she calls “controlling images”of
black women, have provided and continue to provide “ideological justification
for race, gender, and class inequality”.
Amanda, who is married to a white man, describes “social scenes”in Cape
Town where she has been the only black person. In these instances, the scru-
tiny of identities and subjectivities extends to the way in which she is ideologi-
cally separated from the racial group that she represents by those who hold
the social power:
People do stare at us quite a lot. It depends where we are …often I’ll get irritated
‘cause say like I’m the only black person around a particular social scene that
we’ve gone to, and everyone wants to know where I’m from ‘cause I must be
special, you know, I’m not like Them –capital “T”.
Whether an individual is seen as an exception or not, such scrutiny, steeped in
damaging stereotypes, usually results in self-questioning or self-doubt.
Conversely, the behaviour of withholding attention can also reinstate
difference. Participants described their experiences of being avoided or neg-
lected as a couple. Restaurant servers, sales staff, cashiers, guest house
owners –all of them subtly reinstate positionalities of power in how they
choose to respond to the couples. Nasir highlighted the covert nature of
these experiences: “We’d go to a restaurant and the waitress always spoke
to Susan not to me. And this just happened all the time.”The selectivity
also extends to who gets the bill, which can re-inscribe the unequal and
racially determined economic relations of South Africa’s past and present,
even in the face of patriarchal expectations, as described by Neo: “[I’d]
take her out and then the bill [should come] to me. But the waitresses or
waiters will take it to her.”
While some participants shared about the seeming “invisibility”of the
black, Indian or coloured partner, others like Michael shared how he and his
partner have been ignored as a couple:
We were standing in front of the bakery waiting to order some food, right in
front of the counter, and um, we stood there …[she was] blatantly making us
feel very uncomfortable. You know it was as though we weren’t even there,
she treated us like we weren’t there.
Being rendered invisible is quite different from the aggressiveness described
previously; however, it works just as effectively to accomplish the work of
hyperracializing these couples, marking them as exceptional in their racial
composition. As highlighted by Perry and Sutton (2008), both the super-visi-
bility and the invisibility of interracial couples are played off each other. In
both instances, society sends a consistent message about the abnormality
and transgressive-ness of border-crossing relationships, which gives
10 M. STEYN ET AL.
license to perpetrators and can also be internalized by the couples
themselves.
Self-policing
Conscripted into the policing role
Similar to Osuji (2013), our data revealed another form of oppression that
hyperracialized couples often experience. Many of our participants have
engaged in forms of self-policing, confirming that racial borderwork continu-
ally shapes and influences the intimate lifeworlds of romantically involved
couples.
Limiting social contact
One of the most common self-regulating behaviours we found was the cre-
ation of “safe spaces”where the couples could insulate themselves from
public hostility through limiting their social circles. As noted by Nasir: “Our
friends are still Lefties, and you know, all kinds of Lefties. …black Lefties,
white Lefties, all kind of Lefties –but that’s who we hang out with.”Similarly,
Sara said, “I think [our social worlds] are constrained with who we like. And we
tend to like people who don’t have issues with us being gay, or her being
black or me being white.”While such measures might protect the relationship
to a certain degree, Sara’s use of the word “constrained”illustrates how this
behaviour limits the relationship as well.
Emotional distancing
Another common self-regulating mechanism involved the creation of psychic
borders that attempt to establish emotional distance from hostile outsiders.
As described by Nadia, “I don’t actually care what anyone else thinks about
us, that’s their problem. We are in a relationship, so their opinion doesn’t
matter.”Janelle, a coloured woman with a white partner, described a similar
sentiment: “It’s not their life, it’s my life, and if I’m happy, then I don’t care
what they say or what they want to say.”
The decision not to care may look like a refusal to self-police rather than an
example of self-policing. However, while it may indeed be an epistemic
achievement in the face of severe hostilities, it comes at a cost. Continually
guarding and controlling emotional reactions and cutting oneself offfrom
emotional connection stunts one’s sense of relationship with other human
beings. Our data suggests this is alienating and hard work to maintain the
sense of detachment.
Marriage and staying home
For some couples, marriage was seen as a way to add legitimacy to their
relationship, while others experienced marriage as having minimal impact
ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES 11
on the perceptions of outsiders. For example, although Nadia said that she
found a greater degree of freedom after marrying her white partner, she
also confessed that they rarely go out in order to avoid people’s reactions
to them as a couple. Similarly, describing her experiences of being stared
at, Janelle said: “We haven’t been out much because of that, we’d rather
just buy some food and eat at home, but after a while, I just think, no man,
why should we hide away?”
As Nadia and Janelle demonstrate, staying at home is not just a personal
preference. Rather, for some, a greater level of isolation than merely limiting
one’s social circle is used to protect their relationship from hostile policing.
Janelle’s description of “hiding away”highlights a threatening external
environment not dissimilar from the way in which hyperracialized relation-
ships had to be hidden during apartheid days. Osuji (2013, 194) found that
her own research participants frequently avoided certain public spaces,
noting specific zones where “hostility to the relationship is frequent”.
Pretending to be something else
Self-policing also included pretending not to be romantically involved in
certain contexts. This self-regulating behaviour was best described by
Maureen who said:
“When we go on holiday together we make it a point of not holding hands, you
know. We had a car problem and we had to get our car fixed and Jeremy sud-
denly just came out of the car and said we were sort of colleagues.”
And for some couples, it isn’t so much about pretending not to be partners,
but about capitalizing on racially ambiguous features in order to blend in.
Greg described his partner in this way: “Arabs have thought him Arab, colour-
eds have thought him coloured. There have been plenty of cases where
whites have thought him white in South Africa. He’s a chameleon.”While
Greg and others described these scenarios with humour, the undertone is
that they must be constantly conscious of how to blend in.
Discourses of denial
In addition to the examples of self-policing cited above, we also noted a
degree of self-protective denial in some of our participants. Sara, a white
woman, said: “You probably hear this a lot but I don’t think of myself as in
an interracial relationship. But I am. I just don’t think of it like that.”While
this may be a good step towards positive reframing, it can increase the like-
lihood of ignoring or denying the reality of persistent racial policing, and
racism more broadly, in the society.
As highlighted by Sara’s partner Bonnie, a coloured woman: “I don’t feel
like I’m really discriminated against, or that there’s racism, I think I have just
found a lot of people are uncomfortable, and they don’t know what to do
12 M. STEYN ET AL.
with us.”What does this discomfort and awkwardness arise from, if not expec-
tations of racial homogeniety within relationships? These comments may
point to the wide-spread hesitancy to name racism and prejudice as such.
Even for those on the receiving end of prejudice, racism is treated lightly –
“they don’t know what to do with us”–rather than naming the damage
that it causes.
Conclusion
The experiences of persistent race borders and the boundary police that
patrol them refute claims that “race is not an issue”or that South Africa has
entered a non-racial or post-racial future. Our participants have described
the way in which “race-work’has been “privatized”and continues to be
enforced and re-enacted by individuals long after formal laws have been
removed. Even without official sanctioning, we learn from these examples
that informal policing has similar characteristics to the state policing of the
past. It is highly unpredictable and can happen at any time, leaving many
victims on edge in public places. It can cause emotional and psychological
trauma, and often leads to internalization of the belief that the relationship
is “not normal”. Subtle forms of policing are probably the most common
and yet are often invisible to those not experiencing that particular border-
zone –which can lead even the couple to normalize their negative experi-
ences, and not challenge the racial hegemonies. As a result of extensive
exposure to subtle policing, aggressive policing is often not questioned
when it does happen.
While our study did not include individuals who have opted not to enter
interracial relationships, we suspect that a society that tolerates such policing
sends the clear message that racially “pure”relationships are safer and
preferred, which in turn constrains private life choices. Thus, the privatized
“policing”of hyperracialized relationships is a mechanism through which
change is prevented and the status quo maintained.
Through the stories shared by our participants, we can see and feel from the
borders that they inhabit and the ways in which profoundly racialized mind-
sets and norms continue to operate in South African society to preserve racial
boundaries and hierarchies. The experiences of our participants and their
internalization of the bordering practices shows the gravity of having these
mindsets continue to shape post-apartheid perceptions of race. It repeats
the manner in which one’s sense of self-identity and social mobility were
directly informed by one’s racial classification under apartheid, and the
limits of one’s desires and aspirations were constrained by the borders divid-
ing “them”and “us”(Ratele 2009, 290). This presents a significant critique to
the notion of “personal choice”in societies that are structured by persistent
hierarchies.
ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES 13
Our study does not ask for “interracial”relationships to be explained; rather,
it shifts the critical gaze onto what is seen as “normal”society, and interro-
gates the processes by which intimacy becomes problematic, even unwork-
able, for some, as a result of the extent to which others in the society take
it upon themselves to act as interracial boundary police. Our participants’nar-
ratives reveal the parallels between the experiences of immigrants who cross
physical, national borders. While borders socially sanctioned by history,
power, and group interests may be invisible, their materiality is registered
in and on the bodies of those who violate the “ban”, and their authority con-
tinues to shape South African society.
The racial border patrol that our participants have described is experienced
as immobilising and dehumanizing in unremarkable contexts of everyday life.
This is how the border feels. As with debates on bordering and “othering”
linked to immigration, the necessary response requires actual practice –
something must be done differently. What becomes very evident in reviewing
our data is that knowing and experiencing social life across racialized borders
continues to be a characteristic of post-apartheid discursive constructions of
South African society. The bordering practices of “them”and “us”are achieved
through racial discourse, which loads lines of demarcation with powerful
taboos and affective “charge”. As noted by Thompson (2009, 357):
Regulations of interracial intimacy are more than simple by-products of other,
more powerful ideas about race or gender; rather, the creation, proliferation, dis-
course, and consequences of laws regulating the sexual and marital relation-
ships of people categorized and classified through race have also helped to
shape ideas about our conceptualization of race, gender, sexuality, and their
interlocking and systemic relationships with one another.
We need to be alert to how entrenched antagonisms, while no longer legally
sanctioned, continue to hyperracialize interracial relationships. These
dynamics may vary and mutate, but they persist in overt and covert policing,
and energize the racial imagination to maintain damaging boundaries that
secure racial hierarchies.
Notes
1. Instead of calling relationships ‘interracial”or even ‘multiracial”, labels which
reinstate the assumption of distinct racial categories, we use the term “hyperra-
cialized relationships”to better reflect the way in which race is usually the first
attribute noticed about such relationships. While we acknowledge that all
relationships are racialized in racially divided societies, relationships between
people ascribed to different racial categories receive more attention for their
perceived race categories and difference (See Steyn et al. 2017).
2. If one examines the way the informal race “police”often use aggressive force
and violence to maintain a particular social order, such incidents should be
14 M. STEYN ET AL.
called terrorism –“generally defined as an act of violence against civilians by
individuals or organizations for political purposes”(Bergen and Sterman 2015).
3. Even now, several decades later, the memory of living in constant fear of perse-
cution or humiliation is still fresh in the minds of those who were affected. As
described by Nasir, one of our respondents: “The security police would kick
the door down, you know, Gestapo-type stuff. Quite scary shit.”
4. By “serious”, we mean that they had been with their partner for at least one year
or more at the time of the interview. Appropriate ethics clearance was obtained
to conduct the research and pseudonyms have been given to protect the iden-
tities of the participants.
5. We look at the question of varied impact in more detail in a separate article
(Steyn et al. 2017).
Acknowledgements
This work is based on research supported by the South African Research Chairs Initiat-
ive with the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation
of South Africa. Any opinion, finding, conclusion or recommendation expressed in this
material is that of the author(s) and the NRF does not accept any liability in this regard.
We also acknowledge the research assistance of Reuben Message.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
ORCID
Melissa Steyn http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0644-3606
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