“Coloured” Hybridity, Local Diaspora, and Querying Race in Acts 8:26–40

Abstract

This chapter begins from a pressing social reality in South Africa, where “Coloured” identity is the site of ongoing public and political contestation, shaped by competing claims about Indigeneity, Blackness, and belonging. Against this backdrop, it offers a contextually grounded reading of Acts 8:26–40 by placing the Ethiopian eunuch in dialogue with “Coloured” South African experience. While scholarship on the eunuch has foregrounded ambiguity and intersectionality, such scholarship often remains abstract. This chapter draws on the work of June Bam and Patric Mellet and reads their writings about the complexities of identity alongside Acts 8, using “Colouredness” as an analytic lens. The analysis uses two key concepts, hybridity and local diaspora, to examine how race and identity are constructed from these histories. Together, these lenses trace identities formed through unequal convergences and estrangement within one's own social world, foregrounding how race is produced and negotiated across both contemporary and ancient contexts.