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Eurafrican Invisibility in Zambia’s Census as an Echo of Colonial Whiteness: The Case for a British Apology
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Eurafrican Invisibility in Zambia’s Census as an Echo of Colonial Whiteness: The Case for a British Apology

Juliette Bridgette Milner-Thornton
Genealogy (Basel), Vol.9(1), pp.1-28
17/01/2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy9010006
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Abstract

autoethnography anti-black immigration policies British Empire census terminology cultural genocide echoes of colonial whiteness ethnicity Eurafricans/Coloureds identity mixedness race racial trauma colonial and postcolonial Zambia
In this article, I argue that Eurafricans’ invisibility in Zambia’s national census, history, and social framework is an echo of colonial whiteness stemming from the destructive legacy of illegitimacy perpetuated by British officials in Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zambia) during the colonial era (1924–64), which continues to the present day. This is evidenced by the absence of Eurafricans in the Zambia national censuses. This contribution calls for the British government to apologise to the Eurafrican community for the legacy of illegitimacy and intergenerational racial trauma it bestowed on the community. Zambia’s tribal ‘ethnic’ and ‘linguistics’ census classification options prevent a comprehensive understanding of Zambia’s multi-racial history and the development of a hybrid space that embraces a ‘mixed-race’ Eurafrican (of European and African heritage) Zambian identity. Through an autoethnographic account of my Eurafrican uncle Aaron Milner, I reflect on Zambian Eurafricans’ historical racial positioning as ‘inferior interlopers’, which has contributed to their obscurity in Zambia’s national history and census. However, my reflection goes beyond Milner’s story in Zambia. It is my entryway to highlight how race and colonial whiteness interconnected and underpinned racial ideology in the wider British Empire, and to draw attention to its echoes in various contemporary sociopolitical contexts, including census terminology in Australia and Zambia and Western nations’ anti-Black immigration policies.

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