South Africa and Racism #
I feel a certain amount of shame that South Africa’s race relations sound only a little worse than those in the United States. You’d think that our 25 (or, depending on how you count, 125) year head start would count for something. (I know that’s reductive, but it doesn’t change the feeling.)
Though the poor and unemployed remain disproportionately black, an emerging black middle class is slowly blurring racial and social lines. Once-segregated schools and universities now include students of all colours. Even at the formerly all-white University of the Free State, where the racist video was shot and where tuition was once in Afrikaans (the language of the early Dutch settlers), most students are now black. A rising majority of South Africans think that race relations are improving.
Yet South Africa is far from colour-blind. People of different races often eat in the same restaurants—but at different tables. Peaceful coexistence, which South Africa generally enjoys, does not mean integration. People in rural areas are even less likely to mix than those in large cities such as Johannesburg.