I told him I was Lennox Njokweni': honor and racial etiquette in Southern Rhodesia

Abstract

This article focuses on a single episode of racial interaction in 1931 in order to highlight competing notions of honor and respectability in a shared colonial society. This story elucidates how Africans and whites unraveled and rebuilt ?racial etiquette?, the tacit code that guided individual encounters between blacks and whites and that were so vital to the expression of colonial power. In moments of transition, such as the early 1930s in Southern Rhodesia, the minutiae of racial etiquette were confusing, and this allowed for some dialogue between Africans and whites about what constituted proper behavior. As this story makes clear, Africans were as much a part of composing racial etiquette as whites, despite ? indeed, because of ? the latter's political power.