A recent column for the Daily Maverick:
You get the impression that South Africans don’t know what to do about race. It keeps popping up in the most unlikely places, and at the most inconvenient of times, and rarely does it bring good tidings.
For a very brief time, they tried to pretend that race didn’t exist or that like Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s “rainbow nation”, it was an illusion. The fashion of the day was to speak of a “non-racial” society. But the old habits were too powerful even for Tutu’s rainbow, and before its colours had begun to fade, race had once again emerged as a powerful social force, one that could bring joy or tears, unite or divide.
On the eve of the 2010 Fifa World Cup, TNS Research Surveys has thrown the cat among the pigeons with the release of a survey that singles out the racial identity of its participants. It seems odd that a survey for so important an event as the literally “once-in-a-lifetime” Fifa World Cup in South Africa should use so crude an instrument as race to measure who is excited or not about the soccer competition.
I had to chuckle when I read the summary of the survey, for here before me was what I thought was a reincarnation of apartheid South Africa with its fanatical obsession with race. Let me quote from the statement: “The survey revealed that 45% of whites are excited about the World Cup, compared with 86% of blacks, 69% of coloureds and 77% of Asians,” said TNS Research Surveys director Neil Higgs. (To be fair to Higgs and his company, it is the differences in the responses of the race groups that they highlight, and they do deal with other factors such as employment and safety etc., but within a racial rubric.)
You would have thought that those who want race swept under the carpet would have railed against Higgs and his company, and accused him of playing the race card, but not a word of protest. So here we are, more than 15 years since we became a democracy and first tried to banish race to the dustbin of our history. But it is still with us; ever more powerful, always lurking on the periphery of our consciousness and peppering our conversations when we think no one can hear us. Is it time that we accepted race as a fact of life, stopped our mad pretence that it doesn’t exist and acknowledged its power.
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December 21st, 2009 @14:16 #
A thought-provoking piece, Victor. There was a time when the regulars would have sunk their teeth into this topic and shaken it vigorously. Sadly, things have been a little quite in the debating room of late.
Returning to the topic: it does seem odd that racial classification should serve as the basis for a survey of this kind. And it is, indeed, even stranger that this has met with so little protest. Perhaps the New South Africa has slipped quietly in adolescence after 15 years, with focus shifting to more personal needs and experiences, away from one's family and its relationship to other families. All adolescents reach a point in their development where they "couldn't give a shit", because they are too self-absorbed. Fortunately, this is a passing phase.
December 21st, 2009 @14:30 #
Richard, I think you hit the nail on the head with the word "self-absorbed". But I think exhaustion has something to do with the dilemma Victor lays out as well. I am almost too tired to write "but what about gender?" -- which of course would have a significant impact on this kind of study. Can I be provocative and say that I suspect that race is sometimes used as a definitional category when people are unwilling to look at class?
December 21st, 2009 @14:49 #
That is rather provocative, Helen, but worth chewing on. Which would be worse: that things are as you suggest; or that surveyors have just forgotten about class?
December 21st, 2009 @15:16 #
In Holland, surveys of this kind are usually opt for variables such as: disposable income, age and gender. This allows for more value-free analyses of behaviour/preferences/opinions in various categories. In fact, such analyses are probably far more interesting and surprising.
December 21st, 2009 @15:28 #
What about LSM (Living Standards Measure)categories? I must admit I got stuck on the 45%, is that even a pass?
December 21st, 2009 @15:46 #
Had to look up the LSM, Annette. (http://www.saarf.co.za/LSM/lsms.htm) Could it be a coincidence that this form of classification originated in South Africa? Or is it a local version of measures used elsewhere? I could look all of this up, of course, but it I'm intrigued that the SA marketing/advertising industry has come up with its very own means of classification.
December 21st, 2009 @16:32 #
@Ben, a bit of both, I suspect. Lumping complex tangles of class/race/ethnic/political identity (with gender and sexuality already ignored) all into one simplistic category and tagging that race alone might have something to do with the current nationalist versus communist brouhaha...