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broadcasting. A third part takes the parallel world of social dancing in which members of a black middle class participated into view. Society balls, ‘improper’ romps and the transformation of ‘crazes’ into ‘respectable’ steps With the interactions between the colonists and local indigenous inhabitants, and the import of slaves and constant influx of settlers, South Africa was a diverse and socially segregated space. Settlers and travellers brought European social dances to the colony from as early as
, ‘coloured’ and Indian) stood at 64 per cent, with female enrolment just under 60 per cent. 10 Many of the students are working class and are among the first in their families to attend university, while others form part of what is now an established black middle class. 11 Black students also make up the majority of the 18 per cent of the overall student population who are international students. 12 Rhodes's white student
relative to mining and manufacturing capital. Urban classes – the black working class, black middle class and sections of the white bourgeoisie – were the prime forces in South Africa’s democratic transition. While structural factors do not dictate political outcomes, the relative weight of rural classes in Algeria by comparison with South Africa suggests that communists in Algeria faced more structural
much from the mythology . . . as from the history of Trinidad’.7 The making of Carnival history itself is in part the story of the movement for national sovereignty that has ‘weaved an evolutionary narrative’ of change and development in Carnival.8 Though there has been a resurgence of interest in writing about Carnival, significant gaps and questions remain in accounting for the history of Carnival in Trinidad. For instance, more research is needed into the changes wrought on Carnival by the emergence of an educated brown and black middle-class after emancipation.9
as caricatures.29 Similarly, in his characterisation of the black struggle, Blake constructs an allegorical ‘choice’ for black women: as symbolic figures of either progress or paralysis. Either they willingly cast themselves as proud black women or languish in a state of self-hatred that inhibits the wider (male) progress of the black race, imagined as a whole. While Blake chastised the un-proud ‘office girl’, an allegory for the black middle-class woman, he praised instead the transformation, with the aid of ‘brush and comb’, of ‘country girls’ into beauties fit
, administrators and settlers from Britain: the coastal towns in particular ‘received assistance from the members of the Military garrison’. 1 Instrumental use was made of sport by missionaries at stations such as Healdtown, Lovedale and Zonnebloem, in their attempt to inculcate ‘respectability’ in the emergent black middle class, and by blacks demonstrating their acceptance of Victorian values. Organised
. 1 Since the end of apartheid and the establishment of majority rule, this familiar entanglement has begun to unravel. The rapid post-1994 expansion of the black middle class and elite – the so-called ‘black diamonds’ – demonstrates that the racial divide between black and white no longer neatly maps onto divisions of poverty and wealth. 2 Indeed, within a decade of the end of apartheid, some scholars argued that class was overtaking race as the main
in the subcultures of the urban slums.33 Not only did the aspiring middle-classes determinedly pursue improvements in their lives through the outward signs of the acquisition of respectability and ‘refined’ culture, but they readily challenged biological racism that threatened to altogether block their path to equality.34 Social theorist Daniel Segal’s analysis of race and colour in preindependence Trinidad shows that race could be mitigated by conduct, such that for the aspiring coloured and black middle-classes ‘achieved lightness’ was possible, to a degree
ineffective British state, became depicted in some quarters as the ‘People’s Palace’.65 212 213 Epilogue However, some commentators, such as Sivanandan, criticised these programmes as ineffective at combatting ‘monumental and endemic racism’, and ethnic politics as weakening the fight against racism by splitting political blackness along class divides, as the black petit-bourgeoisie attempted to further their own specific class interests.66 The Conservative Government attempted the ‘creation of a Black middle class’, after Scarman’s inquiry recommended creating
-being and stability as some race leaders and black middle-class reformers argued. How else were children to be fed, clothed, housed, and educated if mothers did not contribute to the family income? Recognition by family and friends as a good mother, cook, and housekeeper gave many black women a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction not possible in their paid work lives. Testifying to the fruits of her labor, Orra Fisher (a former Washington domestic) remarked: “I worked hard to serve God and to see that my three girls didn’t have to serve nobody else like I did except