Sandra Laing: Documentary Analysis

There are many parallels as well as differences between the racial mixing of the US, South Africa, and Australia that we've seen and discussed in class. In the United States, Jim Crow laws and segregation kept white people and black people from living in the same public sphere as each other, similar to Apartheid in South Africa. In the Sandra Laing documentary we see that, while US segregation operated on identifiability--or whether an individual looked a certain race-- Laing's parents are white and by law she is also white. However, Laing's "race" changed multiple times over the course of her life, as laws changed, demonstrating one major difference between American segregation and South African Apartheid: Laing's race depended on the race
of her parents and not her appearance. In the United States, anti-mecegination laws, which we saw in the Loving documentary, sought to keep races from mixing and having biracial children. This stands in stark contrast to the policies of Australia seen in the Rabbit-Proof Fence movie, where it was believed that racial mixing would, in effect, breed out the aboriginal people after so many generations.