How Racist attitudes in South Africa changed over time Essay examples

In Society, there has been one common way through which an individual can differentiate himself and that is race/color. Consequently, once a person's color is determined, it seems a class structure is established, a structure that not only describes the individual's social, political, but also their economic standards. Throughout most of nineteenth century literature that we have read it's apparent, the class structure consisted of whites and blacks. Much of the literary works of the time stressed that to be black meant being despised and discriminated against by the white population. Moreover, the literature such as Our Nig portrayed whites as domineering and superior as they essentially controlled many black

What we as a community cannot overemphasize is the fact that we cannot barely undo the legacy of a distinctive system such as apartheid overnight. It is our duty to continuously strive towards nationhood, transformation, reconciliation and as South Africans. Nevertheless, nation states are political constructs and thus have to be continuously molded through social engineering. It is hazardous to our democracy for anyone in this community to hold or possess the view that racism is a given. Since time immemorial all the justifications advanced by apologists of this prejudice have been proven untrue. Despite this, some people in our community are still prone to racism and this is the problem which we should address.

The cause for this shift in social policy cannot be accurately traced through the events of the 17th century, but several clues to this alteration in slave treatment can be found. It is often presumed that racism led to the inevitable slavery acts in the 18th century, but this rationale is rather unfounded based on the idea that many African-Americans were in fact free and maintained their own farms in Virginia. The cause of slavery is much more subtle than a prejudice view of racial differences.

The close contact between white masters and slaves in the Cape created immensely oppressive conditions as slaves were unable to develop their own slave culture to escape the lack of freedom and individuality that have been taken from them. Therefore, slavery swiftly developed in to a system for regulation and monitoring of slaves for social control by white owners. This form of social control is greatly viewed as the beginning of soft-paternalism in the Cape Colony.

Slaves were valued more for work and not their personality and to keep them happy, slaves were granted rights such as owning their own property and the ability to cultivate it, they also had the ability to marry other African women, and they are were not segregated by the white endentured servants, in fact it was very common for white servants and slaves to bond and form relationships at taverns ( The downward Spiral). As a result of the demand of Tabaco in the Chesapeake bay, more slaves were brought into the New World. After the 1640s people began to be distinguished by the color of their skin rather than their social status, causing a lot of hostility towards the people of dark color and severing the bonds and relationships between servants and slaves. Life for any free slave was hard, especially for a freed woman. Most of the time, women would sacrifice their freedom and become a servant and bind their children to be servants in order to survive.

After 1820, almost one third of the white families owned slaves, another third were propertyless farmers and the rest were laborers. Free black population increased in North and South after Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama became states. Jefferson called slavery a ‘misfortune’ or ‘a necessary evil’ but southern apologists believed it was ‘good’ because it provided an elegant lifestyle for white elite and provided protection for genetically inferior Africans. It is no surprise that Alexander Stephen said, “ as a race, African is inferior to the white men”. Because today also people

Race is about differences and as times change so do differences “We are always different, negotiating different kinds of differences.” In Establishing differences between ethnicities the idea of the black slave gets regurgitated frequently, by likening minorities with ‘blackness’, which trivializes them in order to make them subservient. For example, during colonial times the English sought to establish the Irish as an inferior minority therefore, propaganda was produced which animalised the Irish, making them ape-like to represent them as moving towards ‘Blackness’. Likening them to ‘blackness’ made them seem less ‘white’ and therefore less ‘human’. Charles Kingsley said

Slavery, in which lower class people are treated as property legally but by force, has been a serious issue in human history for thousands of years regardless of culture differences. During the antebellum period, North America abolished slavery of the black, whereas the south violently opposed to abolition no matter how inhuman it is since the south was on foreign trade and slaves provided the labor needed to support the economy. According to different information sources, society treated black people as the salve. For instance, white people have higher social status than the black due to black people are the slavery before the civil war. This attitude expressed towards people of color has changed because black

Race — as a social construct, a pseudo-biological concept, and an identifying demographic — has undeniably been ubiquitous in the history of human otherness. In particular, the ascribing of racial identities to a group, or “racialization”, has played a vital role in the conception and development of minority groups. This phenomenon continues to shape ideas about race and ethnicity, albeit in less dramatic ways than in the antebellum South. Nevertheless, people blinded by privilege claim that they are “colorblind” or that society has moved into a “post-racial” paradigm. It is, therefore, especially relevant to examine processes of racialization that have defined and maintained the social concept of race throughout history. A prominent historical instance of racialization that influenced modern-day race identity is the objectification and commoditization of black people in Southern slave markets of the antebellum era. As a consequence of the chattel principle, which defined a slave’s existence as property of a slaveholder, Black Americans’ identities were permanently altered by those who used their positions of power to subjugate and dehumanize them, either deliberately or tacitly. Specifically through association between race and physical or mental ability, and false medicalization of issues in slave populations, slave traders, slaveholders, and others who endorsed chattel slavery perpetuated the racialization of black slaves.

Antebellum is defined at Dictionary.com as "Belonging to the period before a war, especially the American Civil War."1 In the Antebellum period in the South, many people owned slaves.

In African Slave Labor, "Their darker skin colors also made them more easily identifiable as slaves, not free men; as “black” came to be synonymous with “slave,” racism was born."(Page 3)," the passage explains how skin color was now a hierarchy in that slaves were from Africa with a dark skin tone, this was associated with slavery. In the association, the lighter tones of skin were observed as superior, racism was the outcome.

First, in “Cry, the Beloved Country”, racism is seen in many different ways, but one example is through political power. The white community is the leading group in South Africa’s government, so they have the ability to write laws and marginalize the black community. Because of this, blacks are treated unfairly, forced to follow unjust laws, and targeted by police. This all started when the white men colonized the country and took over without regards to the black’s way of life. “It suited the white man to break the tribe, [Msimangu] continues gravely. But it has not suited him

Race relations are becoming increasingly important in our civilization. Despite this increasing importance, the question, 'Is our society racist?' is commonly debated. After investigating this subject, it is evident to me that American society is racist.

South Africa really began to suffer when apartheid was written into the law. Apartheid was first introduced in the 1948 election that the Afrikaner National Party won. The plan was to take the already existing segregation and expand it (Wright, 60). Apartheid was a system that segregated South Africa’s population racially and considered non-whites inferior (“History of South Africa in the apartheid era”). Apartheid was designed to make it

Many of the contemporary issues in South Africa can easily be associated with the apartheid laws which devastated the country. The people of South Africa struggle day by day to reverse “the most cruel, yet well-crafted,” horrific tactic “of social engineering.” The concept behind apartheid emerged in 1948 when the nationalist party took over government, and the all-white government enforced “racial segregation under a system of legislation” . The central issues stem from 50 years of apartheid include poverty, income inequality, land ownership rates and many other long term affects that still plague the brunt of the South African population while the small white minority still enjoy much of the wealth, most of the land and opportunities