They wanted to be just like us

This is just an article of interest that I found on the Wikipedia site that I thought may be of interest to you with June 16 upon us.

Since June 1976, Hector’s surname has been spelled Peterson by the press but the family insists that the correct spelling is Pieterson. The Pieterson family was originally the Pitso family but decided to adopt
the Pieterson name to try to pass as “Coloured” (the apartheid-era name for people of mixed race), as Coloured people enjoyed somewhat better privileges under apartheid than blacks did.
With June 16 coming lets be proud of who we are

In the South African, Namibian, Zambian and Zimbabwean context, the term Coloured (also known as Bruinmense, Kleurlinge or Bruin Afrikaners in Afrikaans) refers to a heterogeneous group of people who posess some degree of sub-Saharan ancestry, but not enough to be considered Black under South African law. They are technically mixed race and often possess substantial ancestry from Europe, Indonesia, South India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Madagascar, Mozambique, Mauritius, St. Helena and Southern Africa.

Besides the extensive combining of these diverse heritages in the Western Cape – in which a distinctive Cape Coloured and affiliated Cape Malay culture developed – in other parts of southern Africa, their development has usually been the result of the meeting of two distinct groups. Thus, in KwaZulu-Natal, most coloureds come from British and Zulu heritage, while Zimbabwean coloureds come from Shona or Ndebele mixing with British and Afrikaner settlers. Griqua, on the other hand are descendants of Khoisan and Afrikaner trekboers. Despite these major differences, the fact that they draw parentage from more than one “naturalised” racial group means that they are “coloured” in the Southern African context.

This is not to say that they necessarily identify themselves as such – with some preferring to call themselves “black” or “Khoisan” or just “South African” – but the history of racial segregation and labelling has placed all such “mixed race” people in a certain relationship together by virtue of the fact that the imperial and apartheid governments categorized them as Coloureds and because, for the most part, other groups continue to view them through such a lens.

During the apartheid era, in order to keep divisions and maintain a race-focused society, the term Coloured was used to describe one of the four main racial groups identified by law: Blacks, Whites, Coloureds and
Indians. (All four terms were capitalised in apartheid era law) Coloured people constitute a majority of the population in Western Cape and Northern Cape provinces. Most speak Afrikaans, while about ten percent of Coloureds speak English as their mother tongue, mostly in the Eastern Cape and Natal. However, virtually all Cape Town coloureds are bilingual, comfortably codeswitching between “Kaapse taal” (a creolized
dialect of Afrikaans spoken mostly in the Cape Flats), “suiwer Afrikaans” (formal Afrikaans, as taught at school), and English.