A Tale of Two Nations
In 2004, The Civil Rights Project of Harvard University released an alarming report entitled Brown at 50: King’s Dream or Plessy’s Nightmare? The report examines the US public school system’s return to segregation as a of the 1991 Dowell decision authorizing a return to neighborhood schools and thus the end of compulsory integrated bussing. Not surprising, instead of a growing trend toward school integration, the report found marked increases in segregation and isolation among black students across the nation. A year later Jonathan Kozol released his report from the trenches of inner-city schools he titled The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. Kozol gives voice to the students and teachers included in the vast statistics of Harvard University’s bleak report. In the same year Paul Street released a similarly named account of American public schools entitled Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in Post-Civil Rights America where he claims early on that “Brown’s promise of educational equality for children of color remains as unfulfilled as is its pledge of integration.” (Street 2005, Pg. 12) With so many reports and books that compare upfront a system of segregation founded in South Africa to the present educational system in the United States – a country that prides itself on social equality – one has to wonder where the differences end and the similarities begin.
South Africa & The United States, Circa 1966
Robert Kennedy’s visit to South Africa is significant for a number of reasons and worthy of a study all its own. Kennedy’s speech began, “I come here this evening because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which was once the importer of slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.”
After Kennedy delivered that initial opening to the University of Cape Town, murmurs rippled through the crowd and finally erupted in applause. Perhaps the all-white members of the University were questioning whether the comparison was flattering. While the US was dealing with the inherent problems of integrating previously segregated schools thanks to the work of Brown Vs. The Board 12 years earlier, South Africa was busy passing another relocation order under the Group Areas Act. The act particular to the year 1966 specifically targeted Cape Town, where Kennedy was speaking. Another round of black Africans were to be relocated as had been occurring since The Group Areas Act had passed in 1950. Apartheid had been in place for only 2 years.
The similarities between South Africa’s system of Apartheid and the United States’ “separate but equal” Jim Crow laws are certainly remarkable. Both sets of laws, although enacted at different points in history, were put in place as thinly-veiled systems of power of oppression that maintained the privilege of whites, yet both South Africa and The United States believed that apartheid laws were for the good of everyone. The South African government in 1950 believed Blacks would be happier ruling tiny assigned “homelands” (Figure 1) in the North East rather than bothering with Afrikaan government-controlled lands while white-controlled Cape enjoyed the fruits of Black laborers and doing God’s will (Apartheid was religiously justified by the Dutch Reform Church, Sebastian). The United States, after the abolition of slavery, denied African American’s the same rights that the rest of America enjoyed because they were deemed culturally and genetically unable to participate in the same way (Bell, 2004) “separate but equal” became the solution to dually uphold the fourteenth amendment while maintaining the same privilege whites enjoyed during slavery.
In both nations, Blacks were the key to economic welfare even after an end to institutionalized slavery where they participated in the Reconstruction (Bell, 2004). The passing of Jim Crow and Apartheid laws were designed to maintain Blacks in terminal positions of manual labor where whites were the main benefactors while removing them from newfound positions of power. Thus, at the heart of oppression in these countries was the denial of Blacks to equal schooling. The Plessy Vs. Ferguson ruling set the legal precedence for “Separate but Equal” schools in The United States that were, for the most part, glorified trade schools designed to add to the manual labor force (Bell, 2004). Similarly, Parliament emphasized the need to only educate Blacks to the level of laborer. “What is the use of teaching a Bantu child mathematics,” asked Minister of native Affairs Hendrik Verwoerd, “when it cannot use it in practice?” (Fiske, 2004) In either country, schooling was used as a device of the insiders – the white elite establishment – to maintain power over the outsiders – the oppressed Black population without whom the white could not maintain its way of life.
This paper, using the guidelines of Loury’s definition of colorblindness as outlined in The Anatomy of Racial Inequality, examines how colorblindness works as frame that continues to spur racial inequality without overtly intending to promote racism in post-apartheid South Africa and America. Focusing on the most visibly affected institutions in these two nations – public schooling – this paper attempts to uncover the mostly unnoticed but insidious nature of colorblindness as a frame for perceived racial equality. What emerges is a tale of two post-apartheid nations that continue to maintain white insiders while consciously or unconsciously reinforcing black outsider status to perpetuate an unequal society.
History of Apartheid Education
In order to paint an accurate picture of the situation created during apartheid education policy, it is necessary to examine its history. Due to space constraints, these recounts are by no means complete.
South Africa
South Africa is a country colonized by the Dutch in the 17th century. They were sent to Africa the Dutch East India Company in order to grow fresh food that could restock trading ships rounding the Cape on its way to. By the 19th century, the British ventured down and brought an industrial revolution of sorts with them and tried to take over. They campaigned against slavery, enforced labor laws, and lobbied for a free press. This infuriated the Dutch settlers who had now developed their own Afrikaner identity – a culture with its own pidgin Dutch/German language and a disliking of authority – and prompted them to move into the interior of South Africa. The British, alarmed at the exodus, imprisoned the Afrikaners in camps that were so unsanitary, thousands upon thousands died as a result. The tragedy remains a part of history that Afrikaners remember fondly and take pride in their identity.
1870 gave way to wildly successful diamond and gold mines and by 1911 census reports claimed over a million white inhabitants. South Africa gained independence in 1910 and joined the rest of the British colonies. However, unlike the other colonies, the whites of South Africa never packed up and left and saw no need to decolonize like Kenya and Rhodesia in the 1960s. Instead the whites stayed on living among Black Africans, but never living with them. Eventually, the fear of racial mixing proved too great for the white government to sit idly by and in 1948, with the election of the National Party, the first set of apartheid laws were passed banning interracial marriages. More legislation eventually pushed Blacks into their own “homelands” in the desolate Northeast while the rest of South Africa was claimed as a home to whites.
An Africa without Africans was envisioned by the Dutch Reformed Church, a major presence in white South Africa, and produced biblical support for segregation. South African media promoted the isolation of their tiny developed country while demonizing the rest of Africa as primitive and dangerous. Afrikaners could not exist without black labor so it was impossible to completely banish blacks to distant “homelands.” By the 1980s, thousands of blacks were arriving in white townships every day setting up makeshift villages on the outskirts of white pristine cities. Eventually the economic needs of South Africa had outgrown the white population, and a growing middle class of blacks began taking over. In 1990, the white population accounted for less than half country’s total spending power (Mallaby, 1992).
“The National party government understood the importance of state education as a vehicle for dealing with the ‘native problem.’“ (Fiske 2004) Between 1949 and 51, a W.W.M. Eiselen, sometimes referred to as the architect of apartheid education, put together a commission to examine the state of education in South Africa. The commission articulated a vision of education “as a vital social service concerned not only with the intellectual, moral and emotional development of the individual but also with the socio-economic development of the Bantu as a people.” (Fiske 2004) In 1953, the Bantu education act was passed which gave churches and missionary groups the choice of surrendering schools to the government, of which they controlled two-thirds of schooling for blacks, or going forth with gradually diminished state subsidies. The African National congress (ANC) protested these transfers to no avail. Under government control, education for black Africans was poor in quality and designed to assure whites a steady supply of cheap labor (Fiske 2004).
United States
The US Supreme Court’s 1896 decision in Plessy Vs. Ferguson brought the language “separate but equal” into America’s vocabulary and seemed to transcend time and the space of the Atlantic ocean to ring true in the ears of South Africa’s National Party. As was the case in South Africa, a culture of fear overcame the insider white elite and they reacted not through legislation but through violence and the passing of local Jim Crow laws. The fourteenth amendment along with the ending of the civil war and founding principals of the United States Constitution would not allow the same kind of wide sweeping bigoted legislation that fanned the flames of Apartheid in South Africa. Plessy, enraged by the indignities of racial inequality 30 years after the end of institutionalized slavery and acting on behalf of a New Orleans civil rights group, attempted to ride a train car intended for whites. He was arrested and convicted of Violating Louisiana law. During his trial, Plessy argued that segregation by default placed blacks in a position of inferiority but lost. “Separate but equal” (or really, unequal as we all know) schooling ruled America until Brown Vs. The Board of Education in1954.
After Apartheid
South Africa’s election of Nelson Mandela in 1994 as a result of the unbanning of the ANC and Mandela’s release from prison stunned the world. The ANC-led Government of national Unity headed by Mandela was a constitutionally defined multiparty assembly consisting of seven political parties that won seats in South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994 (Fiske 2004) The transfer of power from the old government to the new was a negotiation rather than radical upheaval; the ramifications for education were thus gradual and evolutionary. Overhauling the system began with a colorblind system of equality that initially launched reform on the South African school system. Under apartheid the schools were segregated and controlled by the government. Thus, the new government thought it best to transfer school power over to the schools themselves by passing the 1996 South African Schools Act (SASA).
By transferring power over to individual schools, the operation of the school was in the hands of the school itself – a move seen as a logical solution because schools had long been used as instruments of oppression. Blacks were distrustful of the system and recognized them as tools of apartheid. While a colorblind system this seemed like a logical solution at first, it had many flaws. During the height of apartheid white schools received as much as 10 times per child of what black children received. After years of inequality, black schools could hardly pick themselves up and compete with privileged white schools.
SASA provides for private and state schools run by an elected school governing body. Students can apply to any school they wish. If the school is able to oversee its own finances, then they are allowed to determine admissions policies and fee allocations provided they “admit learners and serve their educational requirements without unfairly discriminating in any way.” (Fiske 2004) Virtually all schools elect to handle expenses and charge additional fees while many supplement these by other fund-raising activities. “The 1998 Norms and Standards exempt parents whose annual income is less than ten times the annual school fee per student, and partially exempt those whose income is between ten and thirty times the annual fee. Ironically, this means that relatively affluent parents may qualify for partial exemption if their children attend schools with very high fees.” (Lemon 2005) The schools themselves receive no compensation for exempted students, thus it is in their interest to minimize the enrolment of non- or partial payers. Former white schools in affluent areas can charge high fees that enable them to maintain superior facilities and purchase extra teachers to maintain low student: teacher ratios. (Lemon 2005)
White students who were unwilling to continue heavily desegregated joined the great white flight into more prestigious suburbs or expensive schools. (Lemon 2005) In response, many formerly successful white schools had to shut down due to low enrollment. Rather than work to integrate schools, these colorblind policies simply imposed de facto segregation upon New South Africa. This transition mirrors closely to mandated integration following Brown Vs. The Board of Education, a ruling that simply stated integration needed to occur with “all deliberate speed.” These ambiguous directions caused years of civil unrest acted out in schools across the South. Eventually a district case from North Carolina came through the courts in 1971 that forced the courts to come up with a solution to promote school integration. Mandatory bussing was enforced in order to “racially balance” schools. However, in response, white children began attending private school or relocating to the suburbs to flee their newly integrated schools.
Analysis
This comparison of school desegregation into integration between two nations highlights interesting lessons about the frames of racism. In America, as in South Africa, there are clear insiders (white) and clear outsiders (black); nowhere is that more apparent than in these country’s respective schools.
Loury, in his book The Anatomy of Racial Inequality, analyzes the causes and uses of race-blindness or color blindness in the United States. “Race-blindness is a procedural standard. It deals with prerogatives of the individual. It emphasizes autonomy and impartiality. And it does not depend on history – either for its rationale or for its implementation. Advocacy of “blindness” in this sense, as a touchstone of moral public action in matters of race, is a natural consequences of a commitment to liberal individualism.” He then goes on to brilliantly contend “My view is that one cannot think sensibly about social justice issues in a racially divided society if one does not attend to the race-mediated patterns of social intercourse that characterize interpersonal relations in that society. Once the reality of these racially biased interactive patterns is taken into account, race-blindness begins to look much less attractive as a moral position…”(Loury 2002, pp 112-13) Loury claims that while on the surface, colorblindness seems like the right thing to do. However, in doing so, the plight and history of the racially oppressed is discarded.
Colorblindness has been a very successful frame in America and South Africa’s attempt to transition into a desegregated society. Last year an article by Melanie Walker appeared in Race, Ethnicity, and Education. In the article she interviews college kids around South Africa and asks them their thoughts on apartheid. Walker claims the vast majority of white students are “irritated” with such dwellings on the past and wonder why everyone can’t just “move on” even though it was just over a decade ago that apartheid was institutionalized rule. (Walker 2005) Loury theorizes that this type of attitude championed by colorblindness perpetuates racial inequality. “Observers have difficulty identifying with the plight of a people whom they mistakenly assume simply to be ‘reaping what they have sown.’” (Loury 2002, Pg. 52) Essentially, these South African insiders believe now that apartheid ceases to be an issue, it is time for blacks to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and stop complaining about past transgressions. Additionally, Loury argues that colorblindness evolves out of an inability to confront social injustice through guilt. Ignore the problem and it will go away. To each his own.
Ten years of proclaimed freedom hardly seems like enough time to overcome centuries of oppression; but what about 50 years? According to the Harvard Civil Rights Project Report released in 2003, the majority of America believes that school segregation is no longer an issue. This finding is in direct conflict with the reality of the US public schools census data reporting “segregation levels not seen in 30 years.” (Orfield & Chungmei 2003) Why is it that Martin Luther King Jr. can see “nothing in the world more dangerous than Negro cities ringed by white suburbs,” (King 1967) but white middle class America is impervious to these inequities? Our present society is so segregated and the frame of colorblindness is so great, either race rarely needs to use it.
It is remarkable how so many in America watched with rapt attention as the chains of apartheid were removed and freedom was trumpeted by the heroic Nelson Mandela while we sit in ignorance of our own systemic race issues just as poisonous, if not more so, than the conditions of apartheid in South Africa. While the atrocities of apartheid were brought somewhat to light during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s two-year-long investigation and report (Wilson 2002), the United States remains unable to, at the least, publicly apologize for slavery let alone the following century of institutionalized racism followed by the hidden and unacknowledged racism that exists today. The inequity in education and opportunity are issues that Loury claims should not be framed by colorblindness when addressing them. “Race is important not only for technical reasons, or instrumentally – these being problems whose solutions might entail race-conscious action. Race also matters in American society, in regard to problems of this kind, because these disparities rest upon and in turn serve to reinforce powerful social meanings detrimental to blacks.” (Loury 2002, pg 123) Loury argues “while explicitly intending to harm blacks is never acceptable, policies of inequality are commonplace…” (Loury 2002, pp 133-34) In other words, now that racism is deemed socially unacceptable, it has taken on more accommodating forms such as doing away with affirmative action.
Similarly, the numbers of apartheid supporters plummeted greatly in 1994. Archbishop Desmond Tutu recounts in awe how suddenly he cannot find one person who ever supported apartheid. (Arnold 2000) Like the United States, the real tragedies of racism remain hidden under the false hope of equal education. Despite opening equal education to all, the majority blacks in South Africa, like the majority blacks in America, cannot afford to live or pay private fees to attend schools of their choosing.
Conclusion
In attempting to research and write this paper, I hoped to gain a better understanding of the workings of race relations. What initially sparked my interest is the relative lack of a need for apartheid or Jim Crow laws in present day society. The trends of self-imposed segregation so clearly mimicked one another across the Atlantic, I hoped to uncover some of the leftover wounds inherent in the histories of South Africa and The United States.
The biggest lesson I learned from writing this paper was clearer insight into my own assumptions and misgivings about the nature of racism. I truly believe Loury is spot on with his diagnosis of rampant colorblind framing lying at the heart of post-apartheid race relations. A continuing theme throughout my readings was the lack of acknowledgement of the sacrifices black Americans have made. Like Loury, I believe it is the lack of acknowledgment and not the actual reparations themselves that are at the heart of the Reparation Movement. While South Africa only aired bits and pieces of its shameful pass, the country seemed to understand that although there were many more stories, it was the admission that the government had been wrong that aided the country’s healing. Even The Dutch Reformed Church acknowledged that they had misunderstood God.
Finally, while examining insider/outsider status, I could not help but puzzle over the insider status perpetuated by such a small minority of Afrikaans in South Africa. After the April 1994 elections, one must wonder if Afrikaans are still considered insiders. By all accounts at my disposal, the inequities left by apartheid continue to hold whites in the position of insiders due to economic and established cultural influences of the last 300 years. Remarkably, South Africa continues to remain the last white controlled colony/country on the entire continent.
Bibliography
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