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Living with the Huxtables in a State of Emergency

in Starring Mandela and Cosby: Media and the End(s) of Apartheid

This chapter considers the role of television in further breaking down the absence of Black South Africans under the States of Emergency in the mid-and late 1980s, paying particular attention to the ... More

This chapter considers the role of television in further breaking down the absence of Black South Africans under the States of Emergency in the mid-and late 1980s, paying particular attention to the third fence post: the overwhelming popularity of The Cosby Show among White South Africans. Ethnographic research shows that the SABC's version of current events during the States of Emergency was widely viewed as untrustworthy by Black and White South Africans alike. While Black South Africans lived the States of Emergency in an immediate and visceral way, White South Africans turned away from television news to make sense of their world. One of the places they turned, in extremely large numbers, was The Cosby Show. Through transnational media flows in general and particularly The Cosby Show, White South Africans were able to appropriate the language and attitude of “racial tolerance” in the United States while simultaneously conceptualizing a profound difference between Black Americans and Black South Africans. While this often led to apartheid apologetics, the shift from a biological to a cultural foundation for racial domination made formal apartheid increasingly difficult to maintain.Less

Surfing into Zulu

in Starring Mandela and Cosby: Media and the End(s) of Apartheid

This chapter investigates the apartheid regime's introduction of “Black television” in the form of two new channels aimed exclusively at the growing Black middle class in 1983. The introduction of ... More

This chapter investigates the apartheid regime's introduction of “Black television” in the form of two new channels aimed exclusively at the growing Black middle class in 1983. The introduction of these channels, known as TV 2/3, was part of a larger attempt to develop legitimacy for the apartheid regime in the face of growing international pressure through constitutional reforms establishing a tricameral parliament with a limited franchise for Asian and Coloured South Africans. Instead, massive resistance to the tricameral parliament among all those disenfranchised by apartheid gave birth to the United Democratic Front, the mass movement that would lead the resistance to apartheid. Paralleling the failed attempt of the regime to win legitimacy through constitutional reform, the South African Broadcasting Corporation also failed to win legitimacy through TV 2/3. In spite of apartheid's ideology, which believed that only White South Africans would be interested in the “White channels” and only Black South Africans would watch the “Black channels,” interviews indicate a large amount of so-called “surfing into Zulu,” that is, channel surfing by White South Africans onto so-called Black television and vice versa.Less

In the Absence of Television

in Starring Mandela and Cosby: Media and the End(s) of Apartheid

This chapter briefly sketches the mediascape of South Africa prior to the first fence post—television's introduction. By examining the positions of political parties and the resistance movements ... More

This chapter briefly sketches the mediascape of South Africa prior to the first fence post—television's introduction. By examining the positions of political parties and the resistance movements regarding television, it shows how Afrikaner political identifications imbued television with qualities that enforced its structured absence and perpetuated a separation of nearly all aspects of life between Black and White South Africans. While this absence was an explicit attempt on the part of the apartheid regime to resist transnational media flows—particularly representations of the civil rights movement in the United States—the denial of television exacerbated many White South Africans' sense of exclusion from the international community. The chapter also includes an overview of other forms of media in South Africa at the time and an analysis of why the apartheid regime finally allowed television to enter the country.Less

“They Stayed 'til the Flag Streamed”

in Starring Mandela and Cosby: Media and the End(s) of Apartheid

This chapter examines television's introduction to South Africa in 1976. In spite of the political contention around television before it arrived, the medium quickly became a popular and important ... More

This chapter examines television's introduction to South Africa in 1976. In spite of the political contention around television before it arrived, the medium quickly became a popular and important part of the mediascape of South Africa. From the very beginning, television remained under the strict control of the ruling party and its allies. Nonetheless, White South Africans began to form a new communicative space through television and, most important, shared that space with the world beyond South Africa through transnational media flows. And even though the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) initially excluded Black South Africans from both television and its conceptualization of its own audiences, Black South Africans also began to participate in this newly forming communicative space of television. Thus, television's initial presence in the context of South Africa immediately began complicating the tightly controlled mediascape of apartheid, with transnational media flows crossing both national and racial borders.Less

Introduction

Jeanne Pitre Soileau

in Yo' Mama, Mary Mack, and Boudreaux and Thibodeaux: Louisiana Children's Folklore and Play

This chapter covers the timeline from 1960 when New Orleans integrated its public schools, to 2011, the age of computers and the Internet. Integration had an immediate impact on children and their ... More

This chapter covers the timeline from 1960 when New Orleans integrated its public schools, to 2011, the age of computers and the Internet. Integration had an immediate impact on children and their folklore – African American and white children began to communicate on the playground, sharing chants, jokes, jump rope rhymes, taunts, teases, and stories. Through the next forty-four years, schoolchildren of South Louisiana were able to conserve much traditional schoolyard lore while adapting to tremendous social and material changes and incorporating into play elements from media, computers, smartphones, and the Internet. As time passed African American vernacular became trendy among teenage whites. Black popular music became the music of choice for many worldwide. This is a story about how children, African American and “other” have learned to fit play into their rapidly changing society.Less

Of Homecomings and Homesickness: The Question of White Angolans in Post-Colonial Portugal

Cecilie Øien

in Africa in Europe: Studies in Transnational Practice in the Long Twentieth Century

This chapter presents an ethnographic study of the perceptions of home and belonging of white Angolans living in Portugal since decolonisation, and the differences between their self-understanding ... More

This chapter presents an ethnographic study of the perceptions of home and belonging of white Angolans living in Portugal since decolonisation, and the differences between their self-understanding and the dominant public narrative that treats Angolan-born Whites as Portuguese returning to the homeland. White Angolans typically had ongoing relationships with both black and white Angolan friends and partners, and maintained a critical approach to colonial history since the time they lived in Africa. The rejection they face shows that they present a challenge to the post-colonial national discourse that distinguishes between African-black and Portuguese-white and thus to a state-building process that while formally democratic depends on forms of exclusion, exposing ‘Luso-Tropicalism’ as a myth.Less

Merging Traffic

Mark Slobin

in Motor City Music: A Detroiter Looks Back

This chapter surveys the institutions and movements that brought together the city’s musical life with the aim of merging disparate styles, trends, and personnel. First comes the auto industry, based ... More

This chapter surveys the institutions and movements that brought together the city’s musical life with the aim of merging disparate styles, trends, and personnel. First comes the auto industry, based on archival sources from Ford and General Motors that show how the companies deployed music for worker morale and company promotion. The complementary work of labor follows, through the United Auto Workers’ songs. Next comes the counterculture’s musical moment in the age of the folk revival and the artist collectives of the 1950s–1960s. Motown offers a special case of African American entrepreneurial merging of musical talent and style. The chapter closes with a look at the media—radio and newspapers—with their influential role in bringing audiences together, through music, in a city known for segregation, oppressive policing, and occasional outbursts of violence.Less

The “Hottentot Apron”: Genital Aberration in the History of Sexual Science

Rebecca Hodes

in Global History of Sexual Science, 1880-1960

This chapter examines the role played by racial scientists in the sexual scientific readings of the “Hottentot apron,” a perceived elongation of the labia associated with the Khoisan women of South ... More

This chapter examines the role played by racial scientists in the sexual scientific readings of the “Hottentot apron,” a perceived elongation of the labia associated with the Khoisan women of South Africa. It begins with the story of Georges Cuvier, a zoologist from the French academy who in 1816 performed a postmortem on Sarah Baartmann. Known in Europe as the “Hottentot Venus,” Baartmann became a popular fixture in “freak shows” and salons across Britain and France. The chapter rejects the liberationist claims made by sexual science and shows how the systemic study of perceived genital anomalies became a means for South African whites and European scholars to categorize who was civilized or barbaric. It argues that scientific claims about the “Hottentot apron” spread and evolved worldwide in relation to the doctrine of scientific racism and other important developments in the history of science and empire, including the onset of the “new imperialism.”Less

Excavating Diaspora: An Interview Discussing Elleke Boehmer's Novel Nile Baby

John Masterson and Elleke Boehmer

in Africa in Europe: Studies in Transnational Practice in the Long Twentieth Century

Elleke Boehmer’s Nile Baby (2008) is a novel which explores the layers of the African presence in Britain through the story of two London children who steal a preserved foetus which they believe to ... More

Elleke Boehmer’s Nile Baby (2008) is a novel which explores the layers of the African presence in Britain through the story of two London children who steal a preserved foetus which they believe to be the child of a black First World War soldier. The protagonists’ debates around what to do with their find, their relationships with their families and the discoveries they make about themselves, their own histories and the history of Africans in Britain as they attempt to return the foetus to its ‘home’ constitute an extended reflection on the interpenetration of cultures and the permutations of diasporic identity. John Masterson discusses with Elleke Boehmer the making of the novel, considered both as a creative approach to the challenge of narrating transnational connections and experiences and as the work of a distinguished postcolonial critic who is also a white African.Less