Our Life,
Sandra Laing is a phenomenon. Born in Apartheid-era South
Africa to white Afrikaner parents, a quirk of genetics meant that she developed
the skin colour and facial features of a black African. By the age of ten she
had been officially reclassified as 'coloured' and expelled from white society.
As well as being cut off from her family and friends, Sandra suffered
imprisonment and domestic abuse. However, with the end of Apartheid she tracked
down her mother and enjoyed a tearful reunion. This emotional film exposes the
insanity of racism and questions the whole notion of racial identity.
This film was first broadcast: 2009
****
Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post presents information about Sandra Laing and showcases a YouTube video about Sandra Laing and presents selected comments from that video's discussion thread.
My transcription of a comment that a White student made during Sandra Laing's visit to an integrated South African girl's school is included after comment #2 in this pancocojams post.
The content of this post is presented for socio-cultural purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to Sandra Laing and thanks to all those who are quoted in this post. Thanks also to all those who are associated with this YouTube video and thanks to the publisher of this video on YouTube.
****
INFORMATION ABOUT SANDRA LAING
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Laing
"Sandra Laing (born 26 November 1955) is a South African
woman who was classified as Coloured by authorities during the apartheid era,
due to her skin colour and hair texture, although she was the child of at least
three generations of ancestors who had been regarded as white. At the age of
10, she was expelled from her all-white school, and the authorities' decisions
based on her appearance disrupted her family and adult life.
Laing was the subject of the 2008 biographical dramatic film
Skin, directed by Anthony Fabian, which won numerous awards.[1][2] In addition,
she is the subject of the documentaries In Search of Sandra Laing (1977),
directed by Anthony Thomas for the BBC, which was banned by the apartheid
government of the time,[3] Sandra Laing: A Spiritual Journey (2000), and Skin
Deep: The Story of Sandra Laing (2009).
****
COMMENTS FROM THIS VIDEO' S DISCUSSION THREAD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8gOKhChewo&ab_channel=OurLife
All of these comments are from 2021. Numbers are added for referencing purposes only.
In some cases, quoted comments begin with an asterisk [...] instead of the name of the commenter that they were written in response to.
1. Devonte Huntley
"For the record, this is from 2009. I've been wanting to see
this documentary then but had no way to view it since no one really uploaded it
other than the opening clip and I was so disappointed. Now here in 2021, it's
finally been posted. I've seen the other one from 2000 titled: "Sandra
Laing, A Spiritual Journey". It's good to see Sandra speaking English
here, whereas in the 2000 documentary she was speaking in only Afrikaans with
subtitles added. There was a prior documentary on her made in 1977 that I am
curious to see that had clips featured in the 2000 one. I was curious to how
they obtained footage of her as a young teen and of her younger brother at
school. Anyway, I'm hoping she and her brothers made up because they were not
speaking to each other for the longest time. This is a beef that has gone on
since the early 1970s due to her betraying the family when she went to live
with a black man. I think that's ridiculous, especially since it wasn't
entirely her fault and she had it very bad given her condition and trying to
fit into a society that saw her like any black person out there. The woman at
19:20 sums it up pretty good. To think by 2009, almost forty years since they
last seen each other, the brothers still didn't speak to her is just sad. By
2021, I hope that all changed. I'd like to see an update story on this all."
**
2. Johannes Eddy Nowaseb
"I truely salute the white student for the closing remarks!"
-snip-
This is part of the clip of Sandra Laing visiting a classroom in the now integrated St. Mary's girls school 41:21 to 45:59]. Here's my transcription of the comment from the White student: [begins at around 45:04 in this video]
"I told my dad that Sandra was coming.
His response was 'It's history. Stop digging it up because you just bringing up resents in the people that sufferred.'
And I got so mad with him because it's that thinking process that if you just leave it alone then it will go away. And it doesn't. And we learn about it on the...we watch the videos and we learn about it on a grand scale that the Black community suffered. And it's awful because you you hear about an entire community sufferring. But I think what makes it, what makes it real is hearing individual stories- Like Sandra's story."
**
3. Mizera
"I've seen this story multiple times over the past year on
the Internet but what I have not seen is a modern day DNA test confirming her
story. Personally, I don't believe that she is a genetic mutation of epic
proportions but rather a woman of mixed race whose parents withheld the truth."
Reply
4.
**
Reply
5. Mizera
@Mary M Not at all Mary, this is simply the narrative
that this story teller chose to use. The first original telling of her story
remains focused on telling the world that this untested woman is white. Either
Mom had an affair, was raped or an unknown or deliberately not talked about
family member was mixed and the genes showed up in this woman.
Apartheid has nothing to do with her story and it is wrong
of others to use her for that reason."
**
Reply
6.Ash louw
"Both parents passed on so they took that secret with them. I don't think it was an affair because Sandra's brother also looked mixed. Im sure if her dad would've kept tabs on her mom, after the birth of their daughter. They were too relaxed as if they knew what they were hiding. Her ancestor's genes are very strong"
-snip-
"Passed on" here means "died". However, some other commenters used the word "passed" or "passed as White" to mean "a person identifying as White or being perceived as being White although biologically society would designate them as being a part of another racial group".
**
Reply
7. Avril Dixon
"@Ash louw Yes.. it's hard to say also very confusing.. I am also mixed race.. Indian, Hollander and English .. classified as coloured in SA.. During the apartheid era when the government started forced removals lots of so called coloured people ( mixed) reclassified themselves as white in order to continue living in the area and ofcourse to keep their homes... But their was a fee to be paid and many who would have preferred to be reclassified could not afford it.... On my first identity document I was classified as " OTHER Coloured".. I still don't know what that means. I could write a book on living in SA during the apartheid era."
**
Reply
8. Ash louw
"@Avril Dixon I know yes, it's sad that they had to denounce ethnically who they were to navigate through those days. My family was also classified as Coloured and we all ranged in different colours. My gran and mom were also removed from where they lived through the Group Area's act. I also believe lot of Afrikaners have mixed heritage that they're shy away from, some look coloured, tan faster and darker unlike a white person. It just seemed to me that this was happening with Sandra's parents. They knew the privilege it gave them and they wanted that for their kids"
**
Reply
9. Avril Dixon
"@Ash louw You,re South African as well?? Interesting...yes those were tough times but we also had good times.. it was much safer tho.. Yes one can also see on some Afrikaner features their mixed heritage.. at the end of the day Race doesn't bother me .I'm more about good character, principles and values.. As for Sandra...I'm confused. Must say in my opinion something is amiss."
**
Reply
10. "Avril Dixon
"@Ash louw And yes ..We can't forget the privileges given to the whites.. white supremacy.. Sad.. can u imagine for example how far in life lots of coloured people , generation after generation could have been had it not been for apartheid. It surely stunted the growth ."
**
Reply
11. Lynette Stewart
"@Mizera The most important point of her story highlights the problem with the apartheid system. It would have been a non-issue if the system did not enforce strict rules as it pertained to racial identity. This couple lived happily before she went to school. After school, the system was hell bent on changing her racial identity and forcing her to live apart from the white mainstream. The parents fought hard to maintain their identity because their whole life was in jeopardy if their child (children) was deemed black."
Reply
12. Cat Lily
"
**
Reply
13. shaysworld
"I think one of her parents was passing"
**
Reply
14. Kaya Nurshiya
"There was an Indian couple who had a green eyed , bright red
haired , white as a snow daughter. When she was born they thought she was
switched and the hospital self did 3 dna tests . She was their biological
daughter and both the parents had European ancestors that they didn’t know
about. It was the same case as this woman and you can find the video on
YouTube. Just like the Nigerian couple who had a white baby with blond hair ,
pale skin , blue eyes. Turns out they also had European ancestors and the baby
didn’t have albinism either."
15.
"My Irish collegue is the same genetic case like this lady.
White parents, white siblings... but one of far ancesters was not. So he looks
like black Irish. Good for him, there was no apartheid in Ireland. Apartheid
and racism is an unforgivable sinn and shame of white people."
**
16. Mapitso Rangaka
"Thank you Sandra, we were born and grew up through the
apartheid system, your story is different but clearly affected different but
deeply so, you were so beautiful and young and didn't deserve to go through
that. I can imagine how you were viewed, felt and treated in differently, inside your home and in your
community and the only people who treated you like a whole human being were the
same people that were viewed as second class and subhuman, unfortunately
unknowingly to you that was the beginning of more misery to you.
Thank you for your Resilience and faith in the humanness of
the black people who all the time embraced you while no one in the white
community was moved by your predicament."
**
17. Baja Manuela
"Apartheid (pronounced a-par-teed) "ended" in
'94........1994.......1994! My husband from S.A. was born in '85. He has scars.
I can only imagine hers. 🙏🏿"
**
18. Maggie Follett
"As a South African (in full admission of the horrendous
former racial policy), I can state that, as a well-hidden but proven genetic
fact, the vast majority of so-called "White Afrikaners" are
ultimately of mixed race, some of which dates very far back, to the early days
of settlement, when marriage with slaves - whether high-born or not - was
freely permitted. Through the subsequent eras, it was not at all uncommon for
many slave- and servant women to be impregnated by their masters, and this
continued throughout the dark days of Apartheid, when interracial relationships
were forbidden. The striving for an illusory Afrikaner racial purity resulted
in the 1949 Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act and 1950 Group Areas Act, which
cruelly split familes, causing those "Coloured" people with lighter
skins to legally "try for White", to obtain advantages their
swarthier parents or siblings would lack. This was tested in court via various
humiliating procedures, including the infamous "hair pencil test".
Sandra Laing is the epitome of a South African mixed-race woman, whose
embarrassed family (having probably passed for "White") preferred to
disown. Unfortunately, even now, this previously enforced racial policy causes
issues My elder daughter's fiancé is
very dark-skinned, whereas his brother could have passed for White under
Apartheid. My friend's two son's are also utterly different, and my neighbour,
who is a very fair-skinned woman of evidently mixed race, says her side of the
family grew up White and were ashamed when she married a "Coloured-looking
man". There you have it ... and this prejudice is global. The South
African Afrikaner National Party government just made it law!
**
19. karlos _infamous
"I love the movie about her, Skin which was shown in 2008 and
she was played by Sophie Okonedo, who is mixed Nigerian and Irish. And wow, I
am surprised she speaks English. In her past interviews, she only spoke
Afrikaans.
Race/phenotype/genetics is a very strange thing of nature.
Another example are the mixed race British twin sisters - one was a
pale-skinned redhead with straight hair texture while the other one was dark
skinned with black, curly hair."
**
Reply
20. Lechiffresix six
"Karlos, its Sophie's
dawta who is half irish. Sophie herself
is half jew."
Reply
21. karlos _infamous
"
22.
" “She’s White again! Sandra you are White again!!!” Lol the
madness of it all smh 🤦🏽"
**
24. Moses Matsepane
"also when that white dude said she was "very
dark", I was like WTF?"
Reply
25. Purple Love
"
Reply
26. Moses Matsepane
"
**
27. georgina Djan
"I am still weeping
from this heartbreaking story. Let me put my two cents advice or lesson here-
Sandra’s mom did not have to have had an affair, the matter of genes is nothing
any of us can control. Her black heritage genes could have come from her dad’s
side of the gene pool. I know of an African tribe who during marriage make it
clear to the marrying couple if they know of a distant Caucasian in the family
so that when any of the descendants come out looking mixed race there’s no
surprise. What humans put in place about prejudice can only be described as evil.
Sandra is a brave, forgiving person and clearly even with her painful past, God
has blessed her. For all those who were kind to her, thanks. May we never
witness such evil in this country again and May she heal with all the love
she’s surrounded with."
**
28. Chocolate Queen
"Looking at her demeanor shows that she’s literally
still reliving the nightmare all
over again ! You can see that It had
a psychological effect
on her, not about not being white but
the brutal , evil , demeaning and humiliated treatment , that she had to
endured through out her life and it’s still affecting her to this day ! That is
so painful to just imaging a child going through all that ! 😡"
**
29. Kasnar F Burns
"What a story!!! It would have been almost criminal to NOT
document this story into film. It's interesting to witness how she
communicates. It appears once she
relinquished her white status all formal education ceased as well. I could only think how strange it must have
been to be in apartheid South Africa in the 50s!! However, it was not
dissimilar to being in the Southern USA during the 50s or before. You could see
the trauma she still carries. How
triggering it was making her recollect what happened to her. I'm sure the students weren't anticipating
her brief meltdown. It was triggering and emotional for at least one student.
It's one thing to watch, read or hear a story.
It's another to have lived it."
**
30. Maggie Follett
"During the 1970s, Afrikaans genealogist JA Heese
uncovered records of more than 1,200 European men in South Africa who married
non-white women between 1652 and 1800. Through this he determined that
approximately 7.2% of Afrikaner heritage was non-white. This complicated
history was not admissible within the apartheid imaginary."
**
31. Jerome Lubabalo Jacobs
"I have an Afrikaaner friend who has a darker hue and he
acknowledges that he has Bushman heritage."
Reply
32. Maggie Follett
"
**
Reply
33. Rutendo Chemhere
"There were also a lot of African women raped by the European
settlers it was not all concentual"
Reply
34. Jerome Lubabalo Jacobs
"
**
Reply
35. Sandra Morrison
"This is fascinating information! Thanks for this. There's some white South Africans that I would see on television that I use to say to myself, now that person looks a bit black. People know or have memories of who their " people" are. Black people knows who their people are."
**
Reply
36. Josephine Joseph
"My grandfather and his 3 brothers were of Irish
decent. Him and his younger brother married 2 fair Coloured ladies and the
older 2 brothers married 2 white ladies. In the early 1940's my grandfather and
his brother were instructed by the goverment to either leave their families and
remain white or choose their families and register as coloureds. They chose
their families and were told to break off any ties with the other brothers.
They seldom saw their brothers after
their decision but would occasionally sneak to visit their siblings but without
their families. When my grandfather died, his siblings were not allowed to
attend the funerals. This family history was never kept a secret from us but we
were the dirty little secret story I guess were never talked about in their
family. In the early 2000's we moved to PE and I was employed at a financial
institution and guess who was one of my clients that became so attached to me
and would only deal with me and we always had lovely conversations. Yes, it was
my grandfather's nephew ( he was the splitting image of him and my mother's brothers with the family names, who and although we had a bond and he would
chat about his family, I never told him who I was. My colleagues knew the story
and always use to joke "blood is
thicker than water" meaning the old man does not know why he is so attached
to me."
-snip-
"PE" = Port Elizabeth, South Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Elizabeth
**
Reply
37. yvonne Mc Cullagh ward
"@Josephine
Joseph why did you not tell him your
connection?"
Reply
38. Sip Nog
"
**
Reply
39. Josephine Joseph
..."Hi guys, as I said I dont know if
they were ever told any of this as we were the 'dirty little secret' and it was
not my place to tell and this also was a professional relationship and
environment."
40.
..."Nature is a funny thing but it it known that
genetics can jump generations..so two light mixed race who pass for white can
have a darker skinner child. We come on all shapes colours and sizes and should
be celebrating diversity."
**
Reply
41. April Augustine
..."Her parents were passing. I believe this story 100%. I have black family that could 100% pass for white. Genetics are real. Such a sad story."
Reply
42.
"Please let's not perpetuate white American ideas around the
world. Her parents do not pass for white. They ARE European (white). They still
are white even if a distant ancestor is African"
**
Reply
43. Sandra Bentley
..."I was called gollywog in school because I had
afro hair. My mother and father were white, Irish and Russian. Come to find out
one of my relatives in the far past was Jamaican, related to Harry Belefonte's
family. True story. I looked like a little black girl, my skin color got
lighter as I got older, probably living in England. Still have tight curly
frizzy hair, definately genetic. I love Motown too, even as a young child, no
one in my home listened to it, I was just drawn to it."
**
44. Prickly Pear
"The funny thing is that most Afrikaners whose
forefathers arrived in the 17th century has a mix of genetics between the Dutch
and a person colour. We are a mixed race, even if we vehemently deny it, it
will not change the reality. And in this case, this genetic trait became the
dominant one. Apartheid was the most horrible piece of denyalism ever."
**
Reply
45. RVE9
"She has strong "Khoisan" features I wouldn't be
surprised if it was indeed a throwback."
Reply
"Plenty afrikaaners who have khoisan blood"
**
Reply
47. EarthsEcho
"A distant memory ?
The legacy of Apartheid and afrikaans people being both
racially and culturally superior is still very alive today. Have you seen the
generational wealth of Afrikaaners...
The fact that her brother won't associate with her due to
his whiteness being questioned - Afrikaaner White Supremecy at its finest.
Most Afrikaans people won't acknowledge their mixed race
ancestry in SA. But in the same breath , Black South Africans wouldn't accept
them today as coloured peoples.
SA is a society obsessed with the concept of race and as a
result 'racial purity'. Racial classification is very much still based of your
appearance in SA."
**
Reply
48. eee ooo
"Yup. As a very light skinned coloured person you never hear
the end of it. You're too white or too black. You can never just be a person
and no one listens to you. They don't even understand by being like that, they
are supporting the frame that held up apartheid and make things like apartheid
possible"
**
Reply
49. Morwick Chesterham
"What is likely is that half the people who ostracized her at
school for being 'mixed', are probably roaming around the world pretending to
be decent people.... there are a lot of Afrikaners in Australia pretending to
be woke and nice people... but get them drunk... their racism will disgust
you..."
**
50. Kojo Amonoo
"Call it" divine intervention" but I think Sandra
and others like her, were born to underline the absurdity of racism and the
evil of the Apartheid system. It certainly brought with it many questions that
the evil system had no answers. One can sense
the repercussions even now."
**
51. Robert Polaco
"Unless you live or have lived in South
Africa can you understand How the
Genetics of colored people work I am married to a half black man who’s father
is as black as night, he was born very light complected, I am Hispanic but also
carry genes from Nigeria and Ghana my three daughters are dark, medium and
white, saying Sandra’s Mother stepped out on her husband, shows ignorance and
disrespect for this Woman and her family, she has already gone to Hell and back
show some decency"
**
52. vatricegeorge
"I wish these documentaries would stop
insisting that this woman is white it’s ridiculous. It’s sad because her and
her little brother are obviously mixed race. This story is just as bad as the film White Lies. Apartheid is evil in
hat should definitely be the focus not pretending she’s white."
**
53. Thembi Nxesi
"I have an uncle who looks white, I was
sure he. Is born of a white man, but no both her parents were black. I learnt
that in the ancentral line our grandfather married a white woman whom he met
when their ship was wrecked. The uncle is basically white, white with blue
eyes. His name iis Xhosa."
**
54. Kiwi Dutch
"A large proportion of 'white'
South-African Afrikaners have 'black' DNA in their 'make-up', since the early
'white' settlers sometimes married 'black' women as there were not enough
'white' ones in those early days."
**
55. Noritta Morseu-Diop
"I wonder what her DNA will show, her
parents must have some black ancestry way back and she is a throwback"
**
54. Liz Scott
"I lived there in 1973 and there were
orphanages for mixed raced children born to all white parents. Known as
Throwbacks. Meaning, there were black relatives going back generations."
**
55. Observe self
"My twin pale green eyes red hair people call her white girl
and shame her out of her blackness saying we can be twins and that's from our
fellow black people"
**
56. RVE9
"I know this was the case with the famous
Afrikaans singer Randall Wicomb and his family. His brother who was
considerably darker wrote about how he was hidden in the closet when guests
came over."
**
57. F C
"If you go to spain or Italy you'll find many women who look
like Sandra who are not black. Ignorance kills but this is ignorance by choice,
something the government does very
frequently. We saw it in Nazi
Germany, south Africa , Rwanda, the US.
It has nothing to do with race but willing segregation and inequality."
**
58. Shirley Beal
"This is so sad I was on a bus one day with my daughter and
one of the sisters spoke loud enough behind me so I can hear her speaking to
her friend.she said so I guess a black man ain't good enough for her she need a
white man. I just ignored her. I had my daughter in front of me in one of the
little baby sacks so her face was facing the ladies. Then the other one said
she's a cute little thing for a white baby. My baby didn't have much hair, but
it was blonde and had I not been woke when she came out of me..... even I would
have believed that the hospital had made a mistake. But I knew I was faithful
to my husband and the only thing I can explain is what I learned in biology about Gene
sequences. When I look at my father and his siblings even why my grandmother look the way she looked I
understood why because of the atrocities that happened to my grandmother at the
hand of her slave master my daughter reach way back into the gene pool. Because
her dad was the same color I was which is a little bit lighter than a Snicker
bar. After a year her hair turned from blonde to red. Her skin thank God took
on a more mocha color instead of that horrible pale ghostly look around the age
of 18 months but a hair continue to stay auburn. growing up the only time it
would get Fiery red is when we go near a
beach and sunny area but after a few months it would turn back to the color of
Auburn. My mother told me before I was born that my older brother with the same
way he was born at home and definitely looks like a white baby but after seven
months his color started rapidly changing because today as I speak he's darker
then dark chocolate Hershey bar. Thank God, because to have beautiful melanin
in your skin to protect it from the sun is a gift from God."
-snip-
The photograph accompanying this comment is that of a Black woman.
**
59. Beverly Payne
"That has happened in my Family my mom had relatives looking
white born in her family. But when some Family members were born with white
looking skin, they went on to pass themselves as white and moved away from
their ancestors to pass as white literally moving across country and them
marrying themselves into white Families."
**
60. Sharon Aita
"Coming from a mixed background, having experienced being
forcibly removed not once, but twice whilst growing up, watching this brought
back painful memories. A very good girlfriend who went to high school with me,
was reclassified white back then and just walked past our house on that
particular day, totally ignored me because of apartheid. It was weird! We never spoke again as they moved from that
Group Area, where all races lived peacefully alongside each other, to a strictly
white area and she changed schools. I was too naive to fully understand what
happened, no one spoke about it. Then there's a British cousin who married a
white woman who refused to bear him children just in case one of them would pop
out the wrong colour! Can you believe this? True story. I never met my three
British cousins, only heard from a relative. My greatgrandfather was a
Dutchman, served with the Dutch East India Company. He married my paternal
greatgrandmother, prisoner of war on St. Helena. My grandfather married a St.
Helenan woman who passed as white but His family kicked him out and disowned
him completely. Apartheid. My father reclassified to Mixed race. So convoluted and yes, a complexed family
dynamic. No one can deny Genetics. Best to leave this topic alone.... History
can be very unforgiving. What about....'We are all one' ? I had to figure it
out....me, who was classified ' Other'......sounds Alien eh 👽...I
was alienated from that family....What a gemors....My Father in Heaven knows
each hair on my head...I forgive them 🙏🙏🙏"
**
61. Rendani Ndou
"My grandfather was coloured, married my
pitch black grand mother, so my father looked 100% black, and a black woman who
happens to be my mother. One my six siblings the youngest of us all, and two of
my kids are coloureds, it's funny how genes work."
**
62. Sandra Morrison
"Reading many of the 1.6k comments and
posting a few of my own. I will say this, Sandra's story is really no
difference from the African American experience. Many black families come from
similar back grounds of separation, lies and deceit, mixed heritage, feelings
of abandonment and identity crisis. So any African American here on this forum,
why are you surprised? I got plenty of stories in my family. Met an older black
lady who is struggling with identity crisis which I would have thought at her
age she would have peace and closure with. I'm dark skin, never had any hangups
with my complexion only didn't like my extremely soft, fine hair. I was teased
because I was dark but I was strong willed too and didn't let it get to me. It
was light skinned blacks that gave me the hardest time in my youth but I never
had issues with it, they did and guess what! I'm still recognizable at 53 LOL.
So why are some African Americans surprised at how Sandra feels about herself?
Let not us be in denial over racial and colorism issues OK."
**
63. Rut Brea
"The doctor is right, we are part of the human race around the
world. Even in the Bible is stated about
Esau and Jacob, different race, one was
a red head the other dark. In my family we had red heads, blond, and
brown hair and skin. We are all
mixed. Is in our genetics."
****
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