The limitations of 'inter-racial contact': stories from young South Africa

摘要

This paper argues that, while the demise of apartheid has led to many situations in which South Africans now come into closer contact with one another, this increased 'contact' does not amount to greater racial integration. Contact occurs within a context of unequal power relations in which 'whiteness' continues to be privileged over 'blackness'. The result is that white people tend to benefit more from contact with the racial 'other' than black people, who often experience this contact as reinforcing their expectations of continued white dominance and privilege. While contact may undermine blatantly racist practices and overt racial conflict, racialized patterns of reasoning continue to exist, often unnoticed and unchallenged. These include the assumption that race is an incontrovertible fact of experience, the privileging of whiteness, the assumption that there exist different (biological) races which evince different forms of social behaviour and that these are essential properties of people rather than being historically or socially contingent.