The Possibilities of Researching Non-Racialism: Reflections on Racialism in South Africa

Abstract

Using as a starting point the research conducted by the Gauteng City-Region Observatory for the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation in 2011 to explore the status of non-racialism in South Africa, we conclude that in nearly all of the focus groups the participants and moderators find it impossible to define the notion of non-racialism—at least, not in a way that distinguishes it from non-racism, multi-racialism or ‘good/better race relations’. We initiate the discussion of non-racialism by highlighting the ubiquity of the term, despite there being only rare indications of its actual meaning. One of the obstacles to imagining and giving meaning to non-racialism is the binding together of essentialist notions of culture and race to form unbridgeable divides between constructed groups. The prevalence of multi-racial notions of society, resonating closely with ideas of multiculturalism, means the task of critically discussing non-racialism still lies ahead, but demands that existing practices be critically analysed.

Notes

‘The Higgs boson is a hypothetical massive elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. Its existence is postulated to resolve inconsistencies in theoretical physics, and experiments attempting to find the particle are currently being performed using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)’ in Switzerland (Wikipedia, 2011, emphases added).

It is ironic that the politically loaded expression of commitment to non-racialism post-1994 should not generate the same symbolic oppositional call against continued race classification.

‘Finally, what do you think [Moderator: use race group in your group] whites/Africans/ Indians/ coloureds should be doing to build a non-racial society? And what should [Moderator: now use other races not in your group] do to build a non-racial society?’ (AKF – GRCO Focus Group Transcription Pack, 2011, p. 5). Note how these instructions rely not only on the classification, before and during the focus group, but also that such classification and the use of races as points of reference carry unreflective similarity.

This argument was well illustrated in a SABC television programme, ‘X-pressions’ (October 1, 2000), on ‘cross-racial’ adoption, where a similar ‘loss’ approach was strongly argued by journalist Mathatha Tsedu.

For discussion of ‘tolerance’ as ‘conditionally allowing what is unwanted or deviant’, see Brown (2006).

For example, see John Sharp's (1981) article that illustrates how mainstream South African social anthropologists' perspectives on cultural and difference did not diverge far from the more conservative notion of ‘bounded cultures’ practised in the subject of Volkekunde at Afrikaans University under apartheid.

Interestingly, one extract from the transcripts illustrates both the restrictive force of essentialised cultural belonging and the possibility of escaping this through racial reclassification: ‘… we can't say we are the same as women because our cultures are not the same. We as Black women do not do the same as Indian and White women do, unless Black women see themselves as Whites. I see myself as a Black woman’ (AKF – GRCO Focus Group Transcripts, 2011, p. 232).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Orli Bass

Senior Project Officer, Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity, University of KwaZulu-Natal. Email: [email protected]

Kira Erwin

Post-Doctoral Fellow, Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity, University of KwaZulu-Natal. Email: [email protected] Administrator, Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity, University of KwaZulu-Natal. Email: [email protected]

Amanda Kinners

Administrator, Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity, University of KwaZulu-Natal. Email: [email protected]

Gerhard Maré

Director, Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity, University of KwaZulu-Natal.