How Sandra Laing’s “Black” Appearance Became An Embarrassment For Her White, South African Family

Journalist Judith Stone has penned When She Was White, The True Story Of A Family Divided By Race, a biography about the life of Sandra Laing. Sandra, now in her 50s, was once a young South African girl born to ostensibly white parents who, because of her dark skin and tight curls, was classified as “colored” in a country founded on apartheid.

Sandra’s parents, Abraham and Sannie Laing, Afrikaners via Germany and the Netherlands, supported the country’s Nationalist Party and adhered to the notion that whiteness represented purity and that to be black was to be subhuman. When Sandra was first born, the couple refused to acknowledge their daughter’s appearance. Reminisces Sandra:

“My father told me I was white. He thought of me as his white little girl.”

Eventually, Sandra was enrolled in school, where children bullied and taunted her because of her hair and complexion. At ten years old, Sandra was escorted from her classroom and asked not to return. Her classmates, their parents and Sandra’s teachers had banded to together to have her expelled from the all-white school on the grounds that she was of mixed race.

Sandra’s mother, distraught, bought her daughter a bottle of hair relaxer that caused patches of Sandra’s hair to fall out. Rumors swirled that Sannie had had an affair with a black man and the Laing family was eventually shunned from their church and social circle. Under the country’s “Immorality Acts,” it was considered illegal — and, obviously, immoral — to so much as kiss a member of another race. Sannie’s husband was mortified by the suggestion that his wife might have had an affair. Even more mortifying was the thought that he or his wife might carry “colored blood.” Abraham is quoting as saying that:

“If her appearance is due to some “coloured blood” in either of us, then it must be very far back among our forebears, and neither of us is aware of it.”

After a disastrous marriage, the death of a child, domestic violence, abandonment, financial woes and a misdiagnosis of cancer, Sandra eventually reconciled with her elderly mother, despite the protests of her siblings. When Sannie died, Sandra was not told until a month after the fact. A decision, Sandra believes, designed to keep her away from the funeral.

Sandra’ story immediately made us think about how similar attitudes towards race are not uncommon among Latinos. The notion of racial purity (read: whiteness) and the terror and shame associated with having African (or Native American, in the case of many Latinos) ancestry are cultural attitudes that are still very much prevalent, if more suppressed, today.

Despite whether Sandra’s mother had, at some point, engaged in an affair with a black man or whether the Laings had African ancestors tucked away somewhere in their Dutch and German lineage, Sandra was still a whole, complete child who was made to feel ashamed and like a burden and embarrassment to her family. The Daily Mail refers to her as “white girl who was born black.” That it is so important to have Sandra classified as one thing or another is irrelevant. And it’s in trying to do away the opinion that this matters that will eventually help people to realize, “Oh. We are ruining a child’s laugh because we learned to do it in a history book.”

Whether Sandra was her father’s “little white girl” or her school’s sole “little black girl” are both labels that are nebulous and based on cultural perceptions of race. Sandra was always ever one thing: A little child who was made to feel bad about herself.

The tragic story of how a white girl being born black tore a family apart [Daily Mail]