Learning to be "Color-Blind": History Education in Post-Apartheid South Africa

• In Event: 050 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Paper Session. The Mechanisms of Color-Blind Racism

Abstract

Scholars document the emergence of apparently race-neutral discourses that serve to entrench racial stratification following the elimination of de jure segregation. These discourses deny the existence both of present-day racism and of the contemporary effects of histories of racial oppression. Researchers posit that individuals are socialized into these views. However, little empirical attention has been paid to the processes through which such learning occurs. Focusing on the South African case study, I draw on five months of daily observations in seventeen ninth-grade history classrooms, content analysis of class notes, and 170 in-depth interviews with teachers and students to document how students are taught not to attend to the effects of apartheid on their society. Teachers told both sides of the story by focusing on white victims and resisters on the one hand, and black perpetrators on the other. In so doing, they decoupled the racialized coding of victims and perpetrators, and sidelined discussions of beneficiaries, hindering students’ claims about the contemporary effects of apartheid. The study adds to the literature by outlining the micro-interactional contexts in which individuals are taught about the irrelevance of the past. Implications for literatures on race, education, collective memory, and transition to democracy are discussed.

Author

• Chana Teeger, University of Johannesburg