John Powell
a Second Look
A post-apartheid South Africa cannot effectively reach equality of educational opportunity, the right to choose a trade, occupation or profession, or the right to have access to adequate housing without affirmative action.
A mere statement of structural equality without the support of effective affirmative remedies would not result in better opportunity structures for blacks, because although de jure discrimination is no longer present, discrimination’s lingering effects continue to persist.
In both South Africa and the United States, the performance gap between blacks and the lack of access to adequate education is due to ”second generation” discrimination, which has resegregated black children within both the segregated and desegregated school system. As Iris Young writes: ”One misses the mundane and systematic character of oppression if one assumes that particular oppressors can and should always be identified and blamed.”
The new South African Constitution’s guarantee of equal opportunity, including equal education, is a significant one. But, standing alone, it is little more than a symbolic gesture. Ideology alone, however ideal, would not have any transformative effect in the lives of blacks and other disfavoured children, as the post-Brown vs the US Board of Education has shown. The government must genuinely want to implement programmes that bring about equal educational opportunity and must be willing to pay the price for enforcement of its policies.
Affirmative action cannot be neutral; it is a response to a system that is not neutral. South African’s affirmative action policies are being implemented with an idea of equality. But for affirmative action to redress past and present discrimination it must be more than equal. Affirmative action must be thought of in terms of equity.
Affirmative action does not stand in place of other educational reforms; rather, it is a necessary part of societal reform. In higher education, affirmative action primarily addresses admissions policies. Once minority students enter a university they must compete like every one else on an equal footing, regardless of their educational background.
The reforms many conservatives are proposing will not work in the face of the glaring disparities among races in both South Africa and the US. The fact that affirmative action has not effectively worked in its present form might reflect the US reluctance to accept a policy that is not completely merit-based.
But affirmative action is discriminatory. It is discriminatory but necessary to end oppression of minorities.
Colour blindness cannot work in place of affirmative action. Brazil illustrates the limits of colour blindness. Similar to the US and South Africa, Brazil was involved in the slave trade.
Post-slavery Brazil inherited chronic social hierarchies and racial segregation and prejudice. But, unlike the US and South Africa, Brazil adopted a policy of ”colour blindness”, choosing not to create official racial domination but rather projecting an image of an inclusive, colour-blind state and racial democracy.
While post-Civil War laws regarding the status of African-Americans and apartheid-era laws regarding the status of black South Africans bear striking similarities in their legal classification, Brazil did not have governmental policies that recognised racial classifications.
Even though informal racial discrimination is evident in everyday life, Brazil, with its fixation on unity and stability, seemingly chose inclusion of all rather than white hegemony. Brazil appeared to lack formal segregation and to avoid the animosity and social redress that would result from a direct conflict with its racial minorities.
However, the social order of the whites at the top and blacks at the bottom was never shaken, and because Brazil supposedly has no colour problem, nothing has been done to change the social pattern of gross racial inequities.
To establish an image of racial paradise, present and past discrimination are denied. Interestingly enough, until quite recently, black Brazilians also believed in this idea of racial harmony, and like many officials, they explain their lack of access to wealth and education in terms of class rather than race.
The US could learn from Brazil. A colour-blind society in a nation infested by racial animosity only perpetuates and reinforces racial divisions along economic and social lines. Regarding the government implementation of racially neutral education policy, both the US and South Africa can learn from Brazil. Racially neutral policies in the face of centuries of discrimination can only exacerbate the divide between the races.
The education system becomes a test of a nation’s commitment to full participation of society. Education has the ability to constitute society in a racially non-hierarchical way. The promise of education is great; its failures can be equally great.
Because education is a highly important locus for personal development, and effective education cannot occur without social justice at the forefront, we should ask what the result would be if justice were to be inserted into education. Can the ideas students have about race be changed if education is just?
The answer is clear from research on school desegregation: students who are educated in an integrated environment are more likely to live in integrated environments as adults. This evidence shows that individual preferences are not preordained, but rather that schools are a site of formation of the self, and they shape the choices made later on in life. That this is true of the self, the site of education, and perceptions on race has great significance for a new model of education and justice.
The US and South Africa share many similarities. Both countries have had a history of slavery. Both countries have also had laws and policies that have created, and in many ways maintained, the subordination of the black population.
Both countries have ended de jure discrimination, the US in 1954 with Brown v Board of Education and South Africa more recently with the accession to power of Nelson Mandela in 1994 and the creation of the new Constitution in 1996. Yet, the end of legal discrimination has not resolved the systematic segregation and discrimination of blacks that has resulted from centuries of racial intolerance. Racial discrimination has greatly and adversely affected blacks and other racial minorities, but it has not left whites unscathed.
Chiefly, the education systems in both countries have suffered from racial segregation. There have been endemic problems within the public education system in both countries that have affected everyone. The lack of ”quality” education in public schools has created a state of crisis for all children.
John Powell is a professor in the University of Minnesota law school. This is an edited version of his keynote address to the Saamtrek conference on values, education and democracy, convened by the Department of Education in Cape Town this week