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Check out an excerpt from the post, “I’m Beige; You’re Brown,” from Mother City Mama, a regular column by Katherine J. Barrett written for Literary Mama. Barrett is a columnist and reviews editor for Literary Mama. She is currently living in Cape Town, South Africa. She holds PhD in Botany and Ethics from the University of British Columbia in Canada and her new series chronicles what it is like to be a mother, foodie and environmentalist in Cape Town.

Cape Town, South Africa (Photo credit: Vanderbilt.edu)

I met Wendy the morning we arrived in South Africa. She breezed through the door of our empty home with local grapes, mini-pizzas, and a bouquet of flowers. At the time, she managed my husband’s office, but Wendy has since become a family friend. She has babysat our kids, brought chocolate at Easter, and involved me in the Christmas parties she plans for a nearby orphanage. Wendy has also told me stories of her youth and early motherhood in apartheid South Africa — stories that make me question how I teach my children about race and equality.

Like citizens of most countries, Wendy received an identity number at birth. Her ID, however, established not only citizenship, but race. Apartheid — the word derives from the Afrikaans apart — rested on the principle that races must be physically separated. Classification of people by their race was therefore institutionalized.

According to her birth ID, Wendy is Coloured. This term (always capitalized under apartheid) included people of mixed ancestry, usually a combination of African, Indian, Southeast Asian, and European. While subjected to fewer restrictions than Blacks, Coloureds could not freely choose a job, a beach, a spouse, a public washroom or a place of residence.

Wendy says that her parents acquiesced to their status as a Coloured family, probably out of fear. Wendy, however, was forced to question her race at an early age. Her skin, she tells me, is lighter than that of her siblings, a fact of biology made more complex by society. She recalls standing outside a whites-only swimming pool at age five. Her older sister and aunt stood with her, all of them eager to plunge into the cool water. But the gate attendant performed his own racial assessment and permitted only Wendy and her aunt to enter. What was a five-year-old to do? Wendy swam; her sister did not.

To read the rest of “I’m Beige; You’re Brown” or other posts from Mother City Mama, check out Literary Mama.