"What is today owned by Jews in the Slovak Republic, is, basically, the property of the Slovak State": Preparation for the Aryanization of Jewish Possessions, its Course and its Results in the Period 1938-1945.
This study examines how South Africans construct and negotiate racial identities in written commentaries via a forum of the Mail@Guardian website Thought Leader in response to a blog by Ndumiso Ngcobo entitled “I’m a coconut and I am proud of it – say it with me.” Ngcobo’s ironic opinion piece, written in 2008, which plays with the label “coconut” (frequently employed in South Africa among “black” people in reference to another “black” person who seemingly behaves “white”), triggered 163 responses from individual readers. An essential point made by Ngcobo is that perceptions and attitudes around “whiteness” and “blackness,” or what can be considered “white” or “black” in racial terms, vary greatly, depending on circumstances and perspective. However, the author’s irreverent and ironic style is misunderstood and misinterpreted by many of the comment writers. Relying partially on the methodological framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, I analyze the commentary texts and interpret the categories people use in their discursive constructions of race and identity by examining their stylistic choices and content markers and focusing on sociolinguistic and cultural issues. It is argued that the analyzed comments are representative not only of the pervasiveness of “rigid” race thinking but also of how intra-racial boundaries are constructed in the post-apartheid state.