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| Title: | 'Poking Holes in the Sky': Professor James Thaele, American Negroes, and Modernity in 1920s Segregationist South Africa |
| Authors: | Kemp, Amanda D. Vinson, Robert Trent  |
| Year: | 2000 |
| Periodical: | African Studies Review |
| Volume: | 43 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Period: | April |
| Pages: | 141-159 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | South Africa United States |
| Subjects: | segregation African National Congress (South Africa) politicians History and Exploration Ethnic and Race Relations Politics and Government Law, Human Rights and Violence Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/524725 |
| Abstract: | In 1920s South Africa, white segregationists justified accelerated racially discriminatory legislation by casting blacks as 'uncivilized primitive natives' undeserving of full citizenship rights. Africans often countered this discourse by pointing to African Americans as proof of black capacities to modernize. Black South African leaders often associated themselves with African Americans to further legitimize their respective political activities. This article explores this phenomenon with the example of James Thaele, the American-educated president of the ANC (Cape Western provincial branch), one of the most actively militant organizations in the late 1920s. Previous scholars have viewed Thaele's flamboyant dress and hyperbolic language as evidence of a curious eccentric. Instead, the present authors show that Thaele's dress and language were important performative tools that subverted white modernity narratives. Black America was an indispensable aspect of Thaele's attempts to 'poke holes in the sky', a colloquial term for subverting segregationist discourse. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. |
