The Race for Education

Class, White Tone, and Desegregated Schooling in South Africa

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4910797
AutoresM Hunter (0000-0001-8486-7602)
Ano2016
Volume29
Fascículo3
Páginas319-358
Data de publicação2016-09-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Historical Sociology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0952-1909 • E-ISSN: 1467-6443
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/johs.12097
OpenAlexW1930463621
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas11
Referências citadas15

In the early 1990s, privileged "white" South African public schools began to admit "black" pupils. Drawing on interviews, ethnography, and archival sources related to formerly-white schools in Durban, this article addresses two main questions: first, why did white parents so enthusiastically vote for schooling desegregation when apartheid was still in place?; and second, why, over time, did intense competition emerge between schools, and become so focused on improving sports results? In addressing these questions this study takes an historical-geographical approach, paying particular attention to two areas of Durban: the middle-class central Berea area and the more working-class areas in Durban's south. This story begins in the 1950s, a period of major schooling expansion and urban segregation, tracing how a hierarchy of white schools developed in relation to the city's uneven geographies of race and class. It is this schooling hierarchy and the way it became contested in the 1990s that is key to understanding the schools' shift from "cooperative desegregation" to "aggressive competition." More broadly, the article argues that education provides a window into key post-apartheid tensions - namely between the deracialization of privilege, the continued dividend of whiteness, and efforts to redistribute resources to the poor. Finally, in an age of mass education, it argues that the actions of schools play an important role in shaping raced and classed divisions in society

Competition (biology · Desegregation · Hierarchy · Political science · Privilege (computing · Race (biology · Racial hierarchy · Sociology · White (mutation · Critical Race Theory in Education · School Choice and Performance · South African History and Culture · Gender Studies · Law · Public Administration