By Robert Jenson (Z Space)
Apartheid is dead in South Africa, but a new version of white supremacy lives on.
“During apartheid the racism of white people was up front, and we knew what we were dealing with. Now white people smile at us, but for most black people the unemployment and grinding poverty and dehumanizing conditions of everyday life haven’t changed,” a black South African told me. “So, what kind of commitment to justice is under that smile?”
This community activist in Cape Town said that, ironically, the end of South’s Africa’s apartheid system of harsh racist segregation and exploitation has in some ways made it more difficult to agitate for social justice today. As he offered me his views on the complex politics of his country, Nkwame Cedile, a field worker for People’s Health Movement, expressed a frustration that I heard often in my two weeks in the country: Yes, the brutality of apartheid ended in 1994 with free elections, but the white-supremacist ideas that had animated apartheid and the racialized distribution of wealth it was designed to justify didn’t magically evaporate.
That shouldn’t be surprising — how could centuries of white supremacy simply disappear in 15 years? What did surprise me during my lecture tour was not the racial tension but how much discussions about race in South Africa sounded just like conversations in the United States. There was something eerily familiar to me, a lifelong white U.S. citizen, about those discussions. I have heard comments from black people in the United States like Cedile’s, but I’ve also heard white Americans articulate views on race that were sometimes exactly like white South Africans’. I learned that even with all the differences in the two countries there are equally important similarities, and as a result the sense of entitlement that so many white people hold onto produces similar dodges and denials.
Those similarities: South Africa and the United States were the two longstanding settler states that maintained legal apartheid long after the post-World War II decolonization process. The crucial term is “settler state,” marking a process by which an invading population exterminates or displaces and exploits the indigenous population to acquire its land and resources, with formal slavery playing a key role at some point in the country’s history. Both strategies were justified with overtly racist doctrines about white supremacy, and both required the white population to discard basic moral and religious principles, leading to a pathological psychology of superiority. Both of those settler strategies have left us with racialized disparities in wealth and well-being long after the formal apartheid is over.
The main difference: The United States struggles with its problem with a white majority, while South Africa has a black majority. But what I found fascinating his how little difference that made in terms of the psychological pathology of so many white people. So, as is typically the case, my trip to South Africa taught me not only about racism in South Africa but also in the United States, which reminded me that perhaps we travel to observe others so that we can learn about ourselves.
From a two-week trip I wouldn’t claim deep insights or knowledge about South Africa. My contact in the country, outside of informal chats with people on the street, was limited primarily to university professors and students, or left/progressive activists in Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Durban. I didn’t have a chance to get behind the gates in the wealthy neighborhoods or talk to elite business people, and my travels in the black townships were limited in time and scope. But with those limits, some clear patterns emerged about the moderate/liberal/left white people I engaged with.
[A footnote on racial terms: In South Africa people sometimes talk about race in terms of white and black, with “black” in that context meaning all people who aren’t of European descent. More specifically, the black population is made up of black Africans (such as the Zulu and Xhosa), Indians (descended from various waves of immigration from India), and coloured (mixed-race). Most whites tend to identify as of primarily English or Dutch/Afrikaner background. Many people in South Africa try to avoid apartheid-era terminology but still sometimes use these four traditional racial categories, in part because they are the basis for measuring economic progress in relation to various forms of affirmative action.]
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