Whiteness and non-racialism: White students' discourses of transformation at UCT

Abstract

In post-apartheid South Africa, a gap exists between higher education transformation policies and practice. In this study, I investigated two related factors, namely the understanding and use of non-racialism and the roles of white students in racial transformation. This research was conducted within a framework provided by Critical Race Theory and whiteness studies, which views "race" as socially constructed but structurally salient in systems that privilege whiteness by rendering it invisible to white groups. This qualitative study aimed to investigate the ways in which white students talk about transformation and "race" at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and what role these discourses play in opposing or facilitating transformation. Four focus groups were conducted with 27 white UCT students from different programmes of study. Data analysis was guided by Willig's (2008) framework for Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. Three discursive sets of Rational Control, Defensive Rainbowism and Conscious Allyship were identified according to how broader discourses drawn on by participants in constructing "race" and transformation positioned white students differently in practice and subjectivity. The study indicated that there are differences in participants' willingness for transformation and their involvement therein that can be traced back to the ways in which they understand and experience aspects of life in post-apartheid South Africa. These findings contribute to critical whiteness literature by suggesting that white students' consciousness of white privilege is related to their acceptance of meaningful higher education transformation roles.

South African Higher Education 30 Years into Democracy (1994–2024): Challenges, Opportunities, and Future Prospects

“…Despite their history, they needed to reflect and accommodate the glaring demands for transformation. This process has also not been easy over the past 30 years of democratic rule because these institutions are known to act slowly on transformation if they embrace it (Urson and Kessi, 2018). The need to transform these institutions peaked in the 2015-2016 period when nationwide protests highlighted student grievances on institutional transformation; these coincided with calls for reasonable tuition fees deemed exclusionary for people experiencing poverty (Hlatshwayo, 2020).…”