Decolonising while white: confronting race in a South African classroom

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I explore whether and how white people can make a meaningful contribution to decolonising university curricula. Drawing on my experiences as a white academic teaching at a South African university, I argue that identity matters when talking about decoloniality and that whites need to think carefully about the effects of their whiteness on their attempts to contribute to decolonial scholarship. I also suggest that white contributions to attempts to decolonise university curricula involve a kind of ambivalence that needs to be recognised and worked with, rather than denied and obscured. Without such recognition, white participation in decolonial struggles may ultimately do more to alleviate the guilt of white academics than it does to dismantle the hierarchies that decolonial struggles ostensibly oppose.

KEYWORDS:

• Decolonising the curriculum
• race
• whiteness
• pedagogy of the body

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I struggled to decide which pronouns to use in this piece when referring to white people. As I am white, it makes sense for me to use ‘we’, ‘our’ and ‘us’ in reference to white people. However, doing so might make the article read like a discussion between ‘us white people’ and that is not my intention. For this reason, I use ‘they’, ‘their’ and ‘them’ when referring only to white people and reserve ‘we’, ‘our’ and ‘us’ for general comments that are aimed at all possible readers of this text.

2 For evidence of the continued dominance of non-African authors in African Studies, see Basedau (2020) and Briggs and Weathers (2016). For discussion of the implications of this continued dominance of non-African authors, see Adomako Ampofo (2016), Hountondji (2009) and Olukoshi (2006).

3 Some might say that my place of birth means that I can legitimately claim the identity ‘African’ and therefore that my contribution to scholarly writing on Africa can be considered to be an African contribution. For a range of reasons which I have laid out elsewhere (Matthews 2011, 2015), I do not think I can so easily assume the identity ‘African’.

4 I am fortunate to work in a department and a faculty in which I feel generally supported by my colleagues and students. I would like to recognise and express gratitude for this support.

5 Derek Hook (2011) has some helpful thoughts about this kind of problem – see especially his comments on ‘guilt superiority’.