The Entanglements of Race, Gender and Sexuality: South African Indian Contradictions
Durban South African Indian people possess very heteronormative attitudes in their perception and enactment of gender and sexuality. In this talk, Braedon Steven claims that the racialization of Durban South African Indians, marked by British coloniality is the key to understanding the conservative heteronormative attitudes that the Durban South African Indian community possesses. There is a migratory history of coloniality that Durban South African Indian identity is marked by. The migration of British coloniality from the colonized Indian “colonies” into the colonized context of South Africa entagles to create the unique identity of South African Indians that is conservative and heteronormative because of the Christian-Victorian era attitudes and enactments of gender and sexuality enforced by the British colonial powers onto the Indian subject that is carried over and enacted, resulting in the emergence of the conservativeness that is seen as synoymous with Durban South African Indian Identity. The entanglements of race via racialization of Durban South African Indian Identity and the effects of these entanglements onto systems of gender and sexuality as expressed by the Durban South African Indian community is imperative to understand to explain the conservative position of the community and the effects the conservativeness has on the expected enactments of gender and sexuality for people who conform and for people who do not.