Reply to Tomlinson and Bisschop

The notion of the devolution of power from central to regional and local levels is gaining popularity across a wide front as a point of departure ‐ a rudimentary strategy ‐ to conceptualise ways in which South African society can be transformed. The South African government has contributed to this exercise by launching a process of establishing Regional Services Councils, new multi‐racial metropolitan and ‘areawide’ bodies outside South African ‘homelands’. This article identifies and analyses the stances of the most important opposition political actors operating legally on the South African stage to the establishment of these new bodies. These actors range from the right‐wing white parties ‐ the CP and the HNP‐to AZAPO and the UDF. Three general stances to this government‐initiated process are identified, and its chances for success are assessed.     

Being black and non-citizen in South Africa: Intersecting race,white privilege and afrophobic violence in contemporary South Africa

Post-apartheid South Africa is characterized by growing feelings of pain, anger and frustration amongst black communities triggered by pervasive social inequalities. This has given birth to a new form of political and social activism shaped by crude violence, vandalism, destruction, brutal killings of women and children as well as thuggery in different black communities. It has also led to an upsurge in violence particularly on Africans from other parts of the continent. In this article, I attempt to examine how racial politics and resilient white privilege intersect to trigger afrophobic violence in South Africa. I draw on existing literature on broad conceptions of race and xenophobia to make a set of assertions about racial valuations, the resilience of white supremacy and black on black violence. In the article, I argue that black South Africans' pain, anger and the performance of violence on African migrants are on one level a consequence of resilient structural racism and racial practices, which continue to marginalize, emasculate and dispossess blacks. These racial practices force black South Africans to look elsewhere to express their anger, pains and frustrations.     

Election 1994: Legitimation and multiple identities in the south African media

The 1994 election was a turning point in South African political discourse concerning identity politics and an important period for research on legitimation processes and political discourse. Until the election, the racial and ethnic conflicts were the main issue in political discourse, causing violent riots and tension. But as the new political order was envisaged and the election was confirmed, the need for legitimation of collective identities and identity politics changed. In the political discourse leading up to the 1994 election, issues and conflicts on race and collective identity were silenced by media, thereby contributing to a kind of collective amnesia to reconcile the political conflicts of the past. Both the African National Congress (ANC) and the National Party (NP) used evaluative campaign research to develop their main strategies. While the ANC tried to downplay the role of cultural diversity in South Africa, the NP found it effective to stress minority rights and defence for ethnicity in its communication campaigns. Other smaller parties also chose this strategy. Since the 1994 election, a rhetoric of unity across multicultural cleavages has emerged.     

Multicultural education: A new approach for a new South African dispensation

In a new South African dispensation, the reconstruction of a national education system necessitates fundamental change to existing educational policies and practices. Seen as a cultural kaleidoscope or ethnic mosaic of peoples, modern South African society can be characterised as being multicultural. It stands to reason, therefore, that multicultural education for a new multicultural South Africa has become a logical, outcomes-based necessity. The extent to which multicultural education will succeed depends largely on the knowledge, attitudes, views and conduct of the teacher as initiator, facilitator and manager of the educational and learning practice. Most teachers in this country have been trained in a monocultural context and are therefore not adequately prepared for implementing multicultural education. All educators in South Africa who are seriously concerned with the formal education of children will have to become equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to initiate and facilitate optimal learning in a multicultural context. What is needed is an innovative and studious predisposition, cultural reappraisal, and the acceptance of co-ownership in building a new democratic dispensation for South Africa. Teachers within multicultural school contexts need to bring about this conceptual paradigm shift in the hearts and minds of young people.     

The nightmares of the heteronormative

Abstract

Race and sexuality have always intersected in African‐American racial formation. In this article, I argue that this intersection has inspired certain epistemological, political, economic and cultural formations. In terms of epistemology, American sociology and African‐American literature have historically addressed the connections between race and sexuality. Both were interested in the ways that African‐American racial formation transgressed ideal heterosexual and patriarchal boundaries. As far as cultural formations were concerned, such transgressions materially and symbolically aligned African‐American racial formation with homosexuality. Attending to the political and economic effect of this alignment, I maintain that it helped to articulate African‐American racial difference and worked to exclude African‐Americans from the privileges of state and capital. Thus, the article argues that African‐American racial subordination can best be understood as it converges with heteronormative and patriarchal modes of regulation and exclusion. After showing how the most prominent sociology during the 1940s (Gunnar Myrdal's American Dilemma: The Negro and American Democracy) marked African‐Americans as pathologically heterosexual, I go on to read James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain to determine how the alignment between blackness and homosexuality suggests alternative and oppositional epistemological, cultural and political practices.     

Introduction

Empirical studies of occupational structure in South Africa have tended to be unsatisfactory, detailed work on small sectors of the economy coexisting with across‐the‐board studies too crudely aggregated to allow for a precise assessment of a changing situation. This study presents the results of an analysis by ‘race’ into 14 occupational groups of South African employment outside agriculture, domestic service and the informal sector over the period 1969 to 1977. It argues that over the period there has been a definite increase in the share of owner I manager and, more particularly, petty bourgeois occupations, with a corresponding decline in the proportion of unskilled workers. It also suggests that changes in the ‘racial’ division of labour are more complex than has sometimes been supposed.     

Racial Identity,School Racial Climate,and School Intrinsic Motivation Among African American Youth: The Importance of Person–Context Congruence

Researchers have been concerned with whether strong racial identification promotes or inhibits achievement motivation among African American youth, but current literatures have paid little attention to the role of youths' contexts. In this study, we outline a racial identity–context congruence framework that predicts positive benefits of a strong, positive racial identity when the context is congruent with youths' beliefs. To test this framework, we examined school racial climate as a moderator in the relationships of three racial identity variables (centrality, private regard, and public regard) with intrinsic motivation for attending school in a sample of 11th graders. Overall, results support the congruence perspective and also demonstrate how feelings of belonging at school mediate the relationship between racial identity–racial climate congruence and school intrinsic motivation.     

ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS AND SCHOOL SEGREGATION IN HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, FLORIDA, 1987–1999

This article draws upon the political economy and urban ecology of race perspectives to examine trends in school segregation for schools located various distances from environmental hazards. We study trends in segregation among eighty-four public grade schools between the years of 1987 and 1999 in the Hillsborough County (Florida) School District. After controlling for the percentage of students eligible for free lunch, we find that grade schools nearer to environmental hazards became disproportionately black and Hispanic while grade schools situated farther from hazards became disproportionately white. These results are consistent with a political economy of race perspective. We argue that the observed relationship between public school racial and ethnic composition and environmental hazards is likely the result of long-term historical processes that shaped geographic patterns of racial segregation.     

The transnational lives and third space subjectivities of British Nigerian girls

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in 2012 on British Nigerian young women who have gone to boarding school in Nigeria and returned to attend university in the UK, I use the concept of third space as a heuristic device for understanding their transnational subjectivities and practices. I argue that, for some, this third space is a transgressive one in which they can craft alternative subjectivities and narratives about African culture and political economy. Applying insights from decolonial theory, I seek to build on the transgressive nature of this third space. In positioning themselves variously as Londoners, Nigerians, dual and post‐nationals, they express key features of contemporary transnational European subjectivities. Yet, parental expectations that they marry Nigerians and members of the Nigerian diaspora serve to reproduce the racial distinctions and nationalist rhetoric of colonial modernity that their third space subjectivities contest.     

The Color of Neoliberalism: The “Modern Southern Businessman” and Postwar Alabama’s Challenge to Racial Desegregation1

Prior research on the origins and diffusion of the neoliberal project have emphasized the role of elite economists, yet no explanations have been provided as to why neoliberal reforms were attractive to the broader U.S. population. To fill this gap in the literature, this article focuses on the voluntary sector struggles against desegregation and corporate taxation in postwar Alabama. I examine the emergence of a language of privatization that degraded all things public as “black” and inferior and all things private as “white” and superior, which provided the pretext to attract national white support for the neoliberal turn. Empirically, the article focuses on the construction of the modern southern businessman that emerged from struggles to economically modernize the South, and the construction of a publicly financed private school system that emerged from the struggles to fight school desegregation. These two struggles fused under the George Wallace political umbrella, whose regional and national political career diffused the racial language from its origins in 1950s Alabama to the national level in the 1960s and early 1970s.     

Interpersonal Relationships in Multiracial Schools in a South African Context

Using a qualitative approach, I investigated the problems experienced by the different systems in a South African school that became racially integrated, and the ways in which the problems were addressed. Focus group interviews with ninth- and eleventh-grade pupils, teachers, white and black parents, as well as written information supplied by pupils and teachers were used to assess the changing situation. To determine how some of the problems in the school could successfully be resolved, group therapy was implemented with a group of pupils and with teachers. A needs analysis and problem solution session with White and Black parents was also implemented. It is concluded that school psychologists and school management have an important role to play in facilitating positive changes in the new political and sociocultural environment.     

Church and Sect or Church and Ascetic Protestantism: Ernst Troeltsch's Problem

Abstract

For approximately one decade after the 1954 Brown v. Topeka decision, there were few governmental pressures censuring school systems which maintained racial segregation. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and a variety of encompassing federal court decisions in the late 1960s challenged and overturned the dual school system in the South and many segregationist practices in the North.

Quantitative data concerning the within-district racial segregation of teachers and students in 143 school systems are examined. The governmental activities integrated teaching staffs and greatly reduced the segregation of black students from white. Changes were more substantial within the South and, by 1972, racial segregation was less within southern school systems than those in other regions.

Because of the residential segregation of the races, schools in many central cities have a different racial composition than those in neighboring suburbs. If the only integration is within a specific school district, present demographic trends may produce a resegregation of students in many metropolises.     

The Importance of Racial Socialization: School‐Based Racial Discrimination and Racial Identity Among African American Adolescent Boys and Girls

This study examined various parental racial socialization messages as mediators between school‐based racial discrimination and racial identity formation over 4 years for African American boys (N = 639) and African American girls (N = 711). Findings indicated that school‐based racial discrimination was associated with racial identity beliefs. For African American boys, behavioral racial socialization messages mediated the relation between school‐based racial discrimination and racial centrality over time. Mediation also resulted for African American girls, but for a different set of race‐related messages (negative messages and racial barriers) and racial identity beliefs. The developmental significance of the findings and implications for future research are discussed.     

Talent,the Staying Power of Racism,and Transformation: Trans-Atlantic Observations

Abstract

This paper argues that the transformation of universities will not happen until the central issue of racial discrimination is consciously addressed at Predominantly White Universities (PWUs) in South Africa. The paper makes a concerted effort to address issues that reveal why Black faculty members in North American and South African academies have had to struggle to make their presence felt as far back as the beginning of the twentieth century. It does this by looking initially at the history of intelligence testing the early pioneering South African Black faculty members, and by comparing the current contemporary scenes of both societies insofar as what African American and Black South African faculty members undergo. The paper concludes by positing that only in the event of a strong anti-racist agenda will genuine transformation of the PWUs be possible without alienating Black talent.     

Opportunities to Play the Game: The Effect of Individual and School Attributes on Participation in Sports

Historically, African Americans and white girls have not had the same access to playing sports as white boys have had. Changes in laws led to racial integration of sports teams and equal athletic opportunities for girls. Yet, racial and gender gaps in playing sports persist, and intersections between race and gender, as well as different contexts of participation, may contribute to the gaps. This article uses structural resource and racial competition theories to examine the interactions among race, gender, and school environment to determine whether racial gaps persist for boys and girls and whether individual and school-level factors account for gender-specific racial gaps in sports participation. We combine data on every ninth-grade student in North Carolina public schools with data from school yearbooks and find that racial gaps in playing sports differ by gender, and that school factors—including opportunities schools provide to play sports—have unique influences on racial gaps for boys and girls.     

Manuel Castells and the New South Africa

The revisionist literature of the 1970s approached social stratification in South Africa with the insistence that proper ‘weighting’ of the race and class factors should occur. Arguing that class and not racial consciousness was the key determinant of social structure in pre‐industrial South Africa, it concluded that eighteenth century Cape society in certain areas of the colony was characterised by greater fluidity than the caste system of the American South or industrialised South Africa. George Fredrickson's comparative analysis of American and South African history rejects the first mentioned approach but agrees with the conclusion. This article argues that Fredrickson erred by characterising Cape society as being largely based on class and a permeable colour line. The extent to which Cape Town or frontier society can be categorised as such was limited, while the agrarian Western Cape, in terms of manumission rates and the incidence of mixed marriages, was one of the most rigid caste societies in the world. The article concludes by observing that only by studying how political and class relationships reinforced each other can the full complexity of eighteenth century Cape society be revealed.     

Style and Language Use among Youth of the New Immigration: Formations of Race,Ethnicity, Gender,and Class in Everyday Practice

In this article I consider “style” as a linguistic and cultural concept that can demonstrate how identities performed through language use are linked to topics of central concern in studies of immigrant youth, including racial and ethnic formation, generational cohorts, acculturation, assimilation, and gender. I draw on anthropological and sociolinguistic approaches to style not generally considered in migration studies and present ethnographic data of two cliques of Desi (South Asian American) teens in a Northern California high school. I argue that analyses of youth style can substantially complicate assimilation frameworks by highlighting the ways in which young peoples' linguistic practices may not fit neatly into commonly used analytical categories of “immigrant” and “American.” Focusing on how political economy and local histories inform power and difference that shape migration experiences for youth, the article moves beyond routinely examined areas of heritage language retention and loss to analyze the significance of youth performances of heritage languages as well as English.     

A multi-level analysis of school racial composition and ecological correlates of academic success

Current policy and practice interventions have failed to address disparities in academic success by race/ethnicity or socio-economic status. In addition, as policy interventions to prevent racially segregated schools have stalled, progress toward reducing these achievement gaps has also slowed. This exploratory study employs multi-level modeling to examine how risk and protective factors in students' schools, homes, peer groups, and neighborhoods relate to behavior and academic performance. We examine whether these relationships depend on the racial composition of the school and, in particular, the concentration of African American students in schools. The findings indicate that protective school, home, peer group, and neighborhood environments characterized by social support and safety are associated with positive academic outcomes and behavior. Students attending more segregated schools in which the majority of students are African American report worse behavioral and academic outcomes than students in other schools, even when controlling for other important dimensions of the school environment, school climate, school safety, and poverty. In addition, school racial composition shapes how key protective factors relate to grades.     

Emergent migration policy in a democratic South Africa

This article sets recent debates on migration policy in South Africa against broader historical realities that have shaped patterns of population movement on the subcontinent since the end of the nineteenth century. During the course of the last century, most forms of population movement were the result of disjointed regional economic development which can be traced to two epochal events at the end of the nineteenth century: the creation of the modern African state system and the discovery of mineral wealth in Southern Africa. Although regulation of migrant labour was a fundamental feature of the colonial period, it was only after 1950, when independent states began to define specific migration priorities, that states began to restrict significantly the flow of transnational labour. From this point notions such as internally displaced person, refugee and illegal immigrant become increasingly appropriate to the study of regional migration.
Particular attention is given to current debate on the definition of refugee which forms part of a broader international debate. A number of South African writers have argued that, given the structural imbalances contained in the regional economy, the term "refugee" should be redefined to include economic migrants. This position is not shared by the South African Government, and an analysis of current policy and legislation demonstrates a growing tendency to restrict the influx of undocumented migrants. This is due, in part, to the recent political transition and the institutional compromises that it produced as well as the growth of negative sentiment towards illegal immigrants at both mass and elite levels, as demonstrated by two recent research findings. The article concludes with a summation of recent trends in South African migration policy and an evaluation of the ambiguous position that South Africa occupies within Southern Africa.     

Strategies for work–family balance in a South African context

ABSTRACT

Finding and maintaining work–family balance has become an increasingly difficult challenge for South African families due to various factors, including economic, political, social and cultural changes that can impact negatively on family well-being. While pathways and strategies for work–family balance have been identified in other contexts, there is little available research on the topic in a South African context. Considering the knowledge that South African social workers have in this regard as a result of their training, qualifications and role in the South African context, South African social workers were selected as participants. The aim of this study was therefore to explore and describe, from the perspective of a group of South African social workers, strategies for work–family balance that can potentially contribute to family well-being in a South African context. A narrative inquiry research design was implemented. Thirteen female social workers between the ages of 23 and 46 who work in different social work contexts across South Africa were recruited by means of purposive and snowball/network sampling. Data were collected by means of written narratives and analysed by thematic analysis. The findings identify the following strategies: Setting clear boundaries, open communication in work and family domains, strengthening personal and professional support systems, planning, time management and prioritising, self-care, reasonable work environment and continuous personal and family assessment. While the findings share similarities with work–family balance strategies identified in other contexts, this study’s significance lies in the fact that it identifies strategies specifically for the South African context and that it does so from the perspective of South African social workers.