Impact of Racism in South Africa

The issue of racism and the social and political confrontations that flow from it in South Africa can be looked at in connection with theory that describes society as structured around antagonism over unequal access to power on the part of various social segments. The term division of labor has been applied by (for example) Marx, Durkheim, and Simmel. Marx uses the term to refer to the great structural disconnect and inequality between classes, Durkheim uses the term to refer to the complex of associations and activities that go to make up society as a whole (mechanical solidarity) or groups within a society (organic solidarity), and Simmel uses the term to refer to vast differences in agenda among competing groups of society. In each case, the element of conflict is addressed. Marx uses division of labor as an expression of conflicts created when labor serves interest of private property, the core of all social and economic problems, a "contradiction between the interest of the separate individual family and the communal interest of all individua

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ressed. Louw's interpretation is consistent with Marx's in that he describes the racist legacy in South Africa as a function of capitalism under British rule that was further entrenched and programmatically institutionalized under the long-term regime of the White Afrikaner New Party after 1948: "A complex socio-economic pecking order emerged in which white English-speakers were at the top, blacks were at the bottom, while white Afrikaners, coloreds and Indians were ranged across the middle levels. . . . [And] as a language (system of signs), apartheid was also always dialectically intertwined with an objective economic dynamic. Apartheid has always had a material base." An important part of this was the NP's creation of so-called black "homelands." Such actions during apartheid carried implications for post-apartheid South Africa. As Louw explains: Eventually there were 14 ethnically-based bureaucracies (often with overlapping jurisdictions). Culture and ethnic-based sign systems were codified and then naturalized within the country's educative and media machinery. Many South Africans, white and black, internalized this apartheid discourse. Hence, separate black tribal nationalisms began to emerge parallel to Afrikaner nationali
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Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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