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Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Apartheid

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Apartheid (/əˈpɑːrt(h)t/, especially South African English/əˈpɑːrt(h)t/, Afrikaans: [aˈpartɦɛit]; transl. "separateness", lit. "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 until the early 1990s. Apartheid was characterized by an authoritarian political culture based on baasskap (or white supremacy), which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation's minority white population. According to this system of social stratification, white citizens had the highest status, followed by Asians and Coloureds, then black Africans. The economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day.

Broadly speaking, apartheid was delineated into petty apartheid, which entailed the segregation of public facilities and social events, and grand apartheid, which dictated housing and employment opportunities by race. The first apartheid law was the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1949, followed closely by the Immorality Amendment Act of 1950, which made it illegal for most South African citizens to marry or pursue sexual relationships across racial lines. The Population Registration Act, 1950 classified all South Africans into one of four racial groups based on appearance, known ancestry, socioeconomic status, and cultural lifestyle: "Black", "White", "Coloureds", and "Indian", the last two of which included several sub-classifications. Places of residence were determined by racial classification. Between 1960 and 1983, 3.5 million black Africans were removed from their homes and forced into segregated neighbourhoods as a result of apartheid legislation, in some of the largest mass evictions in modern history. Most of these targeted removals were intended to restrict the black population to ten designated "tribal homelands", also known as bantustans, four of which became nominally independent states. The government announced that relocated persons would lose their South African citizenship as they were absorbed into the bantustans.

Apartheid sparked significant international and domestic opposition, resulting in some of the most influential global social movements of the twentieth century. It was the target of frequent condemnation in the United Nations and brought about an extensive arms and trade embargo on South Africa. During the 1970s and 1980s, internal resistance to apartheid became increasingly militant, prompting brutal crackdowns by the National Party government and protracted sectarian violence that left thousands dead or in detention. Some reforms of the apartheid system were undertaken, including allowing for Indian and Coloured political representation in parliament, but these measures failed to appease most activist groups.

Between 1987 and 1993, the National Party entered into bilateral negotiations with the African National Congress (ANC), the leading anti-apartheid political movement, for ending segregation and introducing majority rule. In 1990, prominent ANC figures such as Nelson Mandela were released from prison. Apartheid legislation was repealed on 17 June 1991, pending multiracial elections held under a universal suffrage set for April 1994.

Etymology

Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning "separateness", or "the state of being apart", literally "apart-hood" (from the Afrikaans suffix -heid). Its first recorded use was in 1929.

Precursors

Under the 1806 Cape Articles of Capitulation the new British colonial rulers were required to respect previous legislation enacted under Roman Dutch law and this led to a separation of the law in South Africa from English Common Law and a high degree of legislative autonomy. The governors and assemblies that governed the legal process in the various colonies of South Africa were launched on a different and independent legislative path from the rest of the British Empire.

In the days of slavery, slaves required passes to travel away from their masters. In 1797 the Landdrost and Heemraden of Swellendam and Graaff-Reinet extended pass laws beyond slaves and ordained that all Khoikhoi (designated as Hottentots) moving about the country for any purpose should carry passes. This was confirmed by the British Colonial government in 1809 by the Hottentot Proclamation, which decreed that if a Khoikhoi were to move they would need a pass from their master or a local official. Ordinance No. 49 of 1828 decreed that prospective black immigrants were to be granted passes for the sole purpose of seeking work. These passes were to be issued for Coloureds and Khoikhoi, but not for other Africans, who were still forced to carry passes.

The United Kingdom's Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (3 & 4 Will. IV c. 73) abolished slavery throughout the British Empire and overrode the Cape Articles of Capitulation. To comply with the act the South African legislation was expanded to include Ordinance 1 in 1835, which effectively changed the status of slaves to indentured labourers. This was followed by Ordinance 3 in 1848, which introduced an indenture system for Xhosa that was little different from slavery. The various South African colonies passed legislation throughout the rest of the nineteenth century to limit the freedom of unskilled workers, to increase the restrictions on indentured workers and to regulate the relations between the races.

In the Cape Colony, which previously had a liberal and multi-racial constitution and a system of franchise open to men of all races, the Franchise and Ballot Act of 1892 raised the property franchise qualification and added an educational element, disenfranchising a disproportionate number of the Cape's non-white voters, and the Glen Grey Act of 1894 instigated by the government of Prime Minister Cecil John Rhodes limited the amount of land Africans could hold. Similarly, in Natal, the Natal Legislative Assembly Bill of 1894 deprived Indians of the right to vote.

In 1896 the South African Republic brought in two pass laws requiring Africans to carry a badge. Only those employed by a master were permitted to remain on the Rand and those entering a "labour district" needed a special pass.

In 1905 the General Pass Regulations Act denied blacks the vote and limited them to fixed areas, and in 1906 the Asiatic Registration Act of the Transvaal Colony required all Indians to register and carry passes. The latter was repealed by the British government but re-enacted again in 1908.

In 1910, the Union of South Africa was created as a self-governing dominion, which continued the legislative program: the South Africa Act (1910) enfranchised white people, giving them complete political control over all other racial groups while removing the right of black people to sit in parliament, the Native Land Act (1913) prevented blacks, except those in the Cape, from buying land outside "reserves", the Natives in Urban Areas Bill (1918) was designed to force black people into "locations", the Urban Areas Act (1923) introduced residential segregation and provided cheap labour for industry led by white people, the Colour Bar Act (1926) prevented black mine workers from practicing skilled trades, the Native Administration Act (1927) made the British Crown, rather than paramount chiefs, the supreme head over all African affairs, the Native Land and Trust Act (1936) complemented the 1913 Native Land Act and, in the same year, the Representation of Natives Act removed previous black voters from the Cape voters' roll and allowed them to elect three whites to Parliament. One of the first pieces of segregating legislation enacted by Jan Smuts' United Party government was the Asiatic Land Tenure Bill (1946), which banned land sales to Indians and Indian descendent South Africans.

The United Party government began to move away from the rigid enforcement of segregationist laws during World War II. Amid fears integration would eventually lead to racial assimilation, the National Party established the Sauer Commission to investigate the effects of the United Party's policies. The commission concluded that integration would bring about a "loss of personality" for all racial groups.

Institution

Election of 1948

Daniel François Malan, the first apartheid-era prime minister (1948–1954)

South Africa had allowed social custom and law to govern the consideration of multiracial affairs and of the allocation, in racial terms, of access to economic, social, and political status. Most white South Africans, regardless of their own differences, accepted the prevailing pattern. Nevertheless, by 1948 it remained apparent that there were gaps in the social structure, whether legislated or otherwise, concerning the rights and opportunities of nonwhites. The rapid economic development of World War II attracted black migrant workers in large numbers to chief industrial centres, where they compensated for the wartime shortage of white labour. However, this escalated rate of black urbanisation went unrecognised by the South African government, which failed to accommodate the influx with parallel expansion in housing or social services. Overcrowding, increasing crime rates, and disillusionment resulted; urban blacks came to support a new generation of leaders influenced by the principles of self-determination and popular freedoms enshrined in such statements as the Atlantic Charter. Whites reacted negatively to the changes, allowing the Herenigde Nasionale Party (or simply the National Party) to convince a large segment of the voting bloc that the impotence of the United Party in curtailing the evolving position of nonwhites indicated that the organisation had fallen under the influence of Western liberals. Many Afrikaners, white South Africans chiefly of Dutch descent but with early infusions of Germans and French Huguenots who were soon assimilated, also resented what they perceived as disempowerment by an underpaid black workforce and the superior economic power and prosperity of white English speakers. In addition, Jan Smuts, as a strong advocate of the United Nations, lost domestic support when South Africa was criticised for its colour bar and the continued mandate of South West Africa by other UN member states.

Afrikaner nationalists proclaimed that they offered the voters a new policy to ensure continued white domination. This policy was initially expounded from a theory drafted by Hendrik Verwoerd and was presented to the National Party by the Sauer Commission. It called for a systematic effort to organise the relations, rights, and privileges of the races as officially defined through a series of parliamentary acts and administrative decrees. Segregation had thus been pursued only in major matters, such as separate schools, and local society rather than law had been depended upon to enforce most separation; it should now be extended to everything. The party gave this policy a name – apartheid (apartness). Apartheid was to be the basic ideological and practical foundation of Afrikaner politics for the next quarter of a century.

The National Party's election platform stressed that apartheid would preserve a market for white employment in which nonwhites could not compete. On the issues of black urbanisation, the regulation of nonwhite labour, influx control, social security, farm tariffs, and nonwhite taxation the United Party's policy remained contradictory and confused. Its traditional bases of support not only took mutually exclusive positions, but found themselves increasingly at odds with each other. Smuts' reluctance to consider South African foreign policy against the mounting tensions of the Cold War also stirred up discontent, while the nationalists promised to purge the state and public service of communist sympathisers.

First to desert the United Party were Afrikaner farmers, who wished to see a change in influx control due to problems with squatters, as well as higher prices for their maize and other produce in the face of the mineowners' demand for cheap food policies. Always identified with the affluent and capitalist, the party also failed to appeal to its working class constituents. Populist rhetoric allowed the National Party to sweep eight constituencies in the mining and industrial centres of the Witwatersrand and five more in Pretoria. Barring the predominantly English-speaking landowner electorate of the Natal, the United Party was defeated in almost every rural district. Its urban losses in the nation's most populous province, the Transvaal, proved equally devastating. As the voting system was disproportionately weighted in favour of rural constituencies and the Transvaal in particular, the 1948 election catapulted the Herenigde Nasionale Party from a small minority party to a commanding position with an eight-vote parliamentary lead. Daniel François Malan became the first nationalist prime minister, with the aim of implementing the apartheid philosophy and silencing liberal opposition.

When the National Party came to power in 1948, there were factional differences in the party about the implementation of systemic racial segregation. The "baasskap" (white domination or supremacist) faction, which was the dominant faction in the NP, and state institutions, favoured systematic segregation, but also favoured the participation of black Africans in the economy with black labour controlled to advance the economic gains of Afrikaners. A second faction were the "purists", who believed in "vertical segregation", in which blacks and whites would be entirely separated, with blacks living in native reserves, with separate political and economic structures, which, they believed, would entail severe short-term pain, but would also lead to independence of white South Africa from black labour in the long-term. A third faction, which included Hendrik Verwoerd, sympathised with the purists, but allowed for the use of black labour, while implementing the purist goal of vertical separation. Verwoerd would refer to this policy as a policy of "good neighbourliness" as a means of justifying such segregation.

Hendrik Verwoerd, minister of native affairs (1950–1958) and prime minister (1958–1966), earned the nickname 'Architect of Apartheid' from his large role in creating legislation.

NP leaders argued that South Africa did not comprise a single nation, but was made up of four distinct racial groups: white, black, Coloured and Indian. Such groups were split into 13 nations or racial federations. White people encompassed the English and Afrikaans language groups; the black populace was divided into ten such groups.

The state passed laws that paved the way for "grand apartheid", which was centred on separating races on a large scale, by compelling people to live in separate places defined by race. This strategy was in part adopted from "left-over" British rule that separated different racial groups after they took control of the Boer republics in the Anglo-Boer war. This created the black-only "townships" or "locations", where blacks were relocated to their own towns. As the NP government's minister of native affairs from 1950, Hendrik Verwoerd had a significant role in crafting such laws, which led to him being regarded as the 'Architect of Apartheid'. In addition, "petty apartheid" laws were passed. The principal apartheid laws were as follows.

The first grand apartheid law was the Population Registration Act of 1950, which formalised racial classification and introduced an identity card for all persons over the age of 18, specifying their racial group. Official teams or boards were established to come to a conclusion on those people whose race was unclear. This caused difficulty, especially for Coloured people, separating their families when members were allocated different races.

The second pillar of grand apartheid was the Group Areas Act of 1950. Until then, most settlements had people of different races living side by side. This Act put an end to diverse areas and determined where one lived according to race. Each race was allotted its own area, which was used in later years as a basis of forced removal. The Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act of 1951 allowed the government to demolish black shanty town slums and forced white employers to pay for the construction of housing for those black workers who were permitted to reside in cities otherwise reserved for whites.

The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 prohibited marriage between persons of different races, and the Immorality Act of 1950 made sexual relations with a person of a different race a criminal offence.

Under the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act of 1953, municipal grounds could be reserved for a particular race, creating, among other things, separate beaches, buses, hospitals, schools and universities. Signboards such as "whites only" applied to public areas, even including park benches. Black South Africans were provided with services greatly inferior to those of whites, and, to a lesser extent, to those of Indian and Coloured people.

Further laws had the aim of suppressing resistance, especially armed resistance, to apartheid. The Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 banned any party subscribing to Communism. The act defined Communism and its aims so sweepingly that anyone who opposed government policy risked being labelled as a Communist. Since the law specifically stated that Communism aimed to disrupt racial harmony, it was frequently used to gag opposition to apartheid. Disorderly gatherings were banned, as were certain organisations that were deemed threatening to the government.

The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 created separate government structures for blacks and whites and was the first piece of legislation to support the government's plan of separate development in the bantustans. The Promotion of Black Self-Government Act of 1959 entrenched the NP policy of nominally independent "homelands" for blacks. So-called "self–governing Bantu units" were proposed, which would have devolved administrative powers, with the promise later of autonomy and self-government. It also abolished the seats of white representatives of black South Africans and removed from the rolls the few blacks still qualified to vote. The Bantu Investment Corporation Act of 1959 set up a mechanism to transfer capital to the homelands to create employment there. Legislation of 1967 allowed the government to stop industrial development in "white" cities and redirect such development to the "homelands". The Black Homeland Citizenship Act of 1970 marked a new phase in the Bantustan strategy. It changed the status of blacks to citizens of one of the ten autonomous territories. The aim was to ensure a demographic majority of white people within South Africa by having all ten Bantustans achieve full independence.

Interracial contact in sport was frowned upon, but there were no segregatory sports laws.

The government tightened pass laws compelling blacks to carry identity documents, to prevent the immigration of blacks from other countries. To reside in a city, blacks had to be in employment there. Until 1956 women were for the most part excluded from these pass requirements, as attempts to introduce pass laws for women were met with fierce resistance.

Disenfranchisement of Coloured voters

Cape Coloured children in Bonteheuwel
 
Annual per capita personal income by race group in South Africa relative to white levels.

In 1950, D. F. Malan announced the NP's intention to create a Coloured Affairs Department. J.G. Strijdom, Malan's successor as Prime Minister, moved to strip voting rights from black and Coloured residents of the Cape Province. The previous government had introduced the Separate Representation of Voters Bill into Parliament in 1951, turning it to be an Act on 18 June 1951; however, four voters, G Harris, W D Franklin, W D Collins and Edgar Deane, challenged its validity in court with support from the United Party. The Cape Supreme Court upheld the act, but reversed by the Appeal Court, finding the act invalid because a two-thirds majority in a joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament was needed to change the entrenched clauses of the Constitution. The government then introduced the High Court of Parliament Bill (1952), which gave Parliament the power to overrule decisions of the court. The Cape Supreme Court and the Appeal Court declared this invalid too.

In 1955 the Strijdom government increased the number of judges in the Appeal Court from five to 11, and appointed pro-Nationalist judges to fill the new places. In the same year they introduced the Senate Act, which increased the Senate from 49 seats to 89. Adjustments were made such that the NP controlled 77 of these seats. The parliament met in a joint sitting and passed the Separate Representation of Voters Act in 1956, which transferred Coloured voters from the common voters' roll in the Cape to a new Coloured voters' roll. Immediately after the vote, the Senate was restored to its original size. The Senate Act was contested in the Supreme Court, but the recently enlarged Appeal Court, packed with government-supporting judges, upheld the act, and also the Act to remove Coloured voters.

The 1956 law allowed Coloureds to elect four people to Parliament, but a 1969 law abolished those seats and stripped Coloureds of their right to vote. Since Asians had never been allowed to vote, this resulted in whites being the sole enfranchised group.

A 2016 study in the Journal of Politics suggests that disenfranchisement in South Africa had a significant negative impact on basic service delivery to the disenfranchised.

Division among whites

Before South Africa became a republic in 1961, politics among white South Africans was typified by the division between the mainly Afrikaner pro-republic conservative and the largely English anti-republican liberal sentiments, with the legacy of the Boer War still a factor for some people. Once South Africa became a republic, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd called for improved relations and greater accord between people of British descent and the Afrikaners. He claimed that the only difference was between those in favour of apartheid and those against it. The ethnic division would no longer be between Afrikaans and English speakers, but between blacks and whites.

Most Afrikaners supported the notion of unanimity of white people to ensure their safety. White voters of British descent were divided. Many had opposed a republic, leading to a majority "no" vote in Natal. Later, some of them recognised the perceived need for white unity, convinced by the growing trend of decolonisation elsewhere in Africa, which concerned them. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's "Wind of Change" speech left the British faction feeling that the United Kingdom had abandoned them. The more conservative English speakers supported Verwoerd; others were troubled by the severing of ties with the UK and remained loyal to the Crown. They were displeased by having to choose between British and South African nationalities. Although Verwoerd tried to bond these different blocs, the subsequent voting illustrated only a minor swell of support, indicating that a great many English speakers remained apathetic and that Verwoerd had not succeeded in uniting the white population.

Homeland system

Map of the 20 bantustans in South Africa and South West Africa.

Under the homeland system, the government attempted to divide South Africa and South West Africa into a number of separate states, each of which was supposed to develop into a separate nation-state for a different ethnic group.

Territorial separation was hardly a new institution. There were, for example, the "reserves" created under the British government in the nineteenth century. Under apartheid, 13 percent of the land was reserved for black homelands, a small amount relative to its total population, and generally in economically unproductive areas of the country. The Tomlinson Commission of 1954 justified apartheid and the homeland system, but stated that additional land ought to be given to the homelands, a recommendation that was not carried out.

When Verwoerd became Prime Minister in 1958, the policy of "separate development" came into being, with the homeland structure as one of its cornerstones. Verwoerd came to believe in the granting of independence to these homelands. The government justified its plans on the ostensible basis that "(the) government's policy is, therefore, not a policy of discrimination on the grounds of race or colour, but a policy of differentiation on the ground of nationhood, of different nations, granting to each self-determination within the borders of their homelands – hence this policy of separate development". Under the homelands system, blacks would no longer be citizens of South Africa, becoming citizens of the independent homelands who worked in South Africa as foreign migrant labourers on temporary work permits. In 1958 the Promotion of Black Self-Government Act was passed, and border industries and the Bantu Investment Corporation were established to promote economic development and the provision of employment in or near the homelands. Many black South Africans who had never resided in their identified homeland were forcibly removed from the cities to the homelands.

The vision of a South Africa divided into multiple ethnostates appealed to the reform-minded Afrikaner intelligentsia, and it provided a more coherent philosophical and moral framework for the National Party's policies, while also providing a veneer of intellectual respectability to the controversial policy of so-called baasskap.

Rural area in Ciskei, one of the four nominally independent homelands.

In total, 20 homelands were allocated to ethnic groups, ten in South Africa proper and ten in South West Africa. Of these 20 homelands, 19 were classified as black, while one, Basterland, was set aside for a sub-group of Coloureds known as Basters, who are closely related to Afrikaners. Four of the homelands were declared independent by the South African government: Transkei in 1976, Bophuthatswana in 1977, Venda in 1979, and Ciskei in 1981 (known as the TBVC states). Once a homeland was granted its nominal independence, its designated citizens had their South African citizenship revoked and replaced with citizenship in their homeland. These people were then issued passports instead of passbooks. Citizens of the nominally autonomous homelands also had their South African citizenship circumscribed, meaning they were no longer legally considered South African. The South African government attempted to draw an equivalence between their view of black citizens of the homelands and the problems which other countries faced through entry of illegal immigrants.

International recognition of the Bantustans

Bantustans within the borders of South Africa and South West Africa were classified by degree of nominal self-rule: 6 were "non-self-governing", 10 were "self-governing", and 4 were "independent". In theory, self-governing Bantustans had control over many aspects of their internal functioning but were not yet sovereign nations. Independent Bantustans (Transkei, Bophutatswana, Venda and Ciskei; also known as the TBVC states) were intended to be fully sovereign. In reality, they had no significant economic infrastructure and with few exceptions encompassed swaths of disconnected territory. This meant all the Bantustans were little more than puppet states controlled by South Africa.

Throughout the existence of the independent Bantustans, South Africa remained the only country to recognise their independence. Nevertheless, internal organisations of many countries, as well as the South African government, lobbied for their recognition. For example, upon the foundation of Transkei, the Swiss-South African Association encouraged the Swiss government to recognise the new state. In 1976, leading up to a United States House of Representatives resolution urging the President to not recognise Transkei, the South African government intensely lobbied lawmakers to oppose the bill. Each TBVC state extended recognition to the other independent Bantustans while South Africa showed its commitment to the notion of TBVC sovereignty by building embassies in the TBVC capitals.

Forced removals

During the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, the government implemented a policy of "resettlement", to force people to move to their designated "group areas". Millions of people were forced to relocate. These removals included people relocated due to slum clearance programmes, labour tenants on white-owned farms, the inhabitants of the so-called "black spots" (black-owned land surrounded by white farms), the families of workers living in townships close to the homelands, and "surplus people" from urban areas, including thousands of people from the Western Cape (which was declared a "Coloured Labour Preference Area") who were moved to the Transkei and Ciskei homelands. The best-publicised forced removals of the 1950s occurred in Johannesburg, when 60,000 people were moved to the new township of Soweto (an abbreviation for South Western Townships).

Until 1955, Sophiatown had been one of the few urban areas where black people were allowed to own land, and was slowly developing into a multiracial slum. As industry in Johannesburg grew, Sophiatown became the home of a rapidly expanding black workforce, as it was convenient and close to town. It had the only swimming pool for black children in Johannesburg. As one of the oldest black settlements in Johannesburg, it held an almost symbolic importance for the 50,000 black people it contained. Despite a vigorous ANC protest campaign and worldwide publicity, the removal of Sophiatown began on 9 February 1955 under the Western Areas Removal Scheme. In the early hours, heavily armed police forced residents out of their homes and loaded their belongings onto government trucks. The residents were taken to a large tract of land 19 kilometres (12 mi) from the city centre, known as Meadowlands, which the government had purchased in 1953. Meadowlands became part of a new planned black city called Soweto. Sophiatown was destroyed by bulldozers, and a new white suburb named Triomf (Triumph) was built in its place. This pattern of forced removal and destruction was to repeat itself over the next few years, and was not limited to black South Africans alone. Forced removals from areas like Cato Manor (Mkhumbane) in Durban, and District Six in Cape Town, where 55,000 Coloured and Indian people were forced to move to new townships on the Cape Flats, were carried out under the Group Areas Act of 1950. Nearly 600,000 Coloured, Indian and Chinese people were moved under the Group Areas Act. Some 40,000 whites were also forced to move when land was transferred from "white South Africa" into the black homelands. In South-West Africa, the apartheid plan that instituted Bantustans was as a result of the so-called Odendaal Plan, a set of proposals from the Odendaal Commission of 1962–1964.

Society during apartheid

The NP passed a string of legislation that became known as petty apartheid. The first of these was the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act 55 of 1949, prohibiting marriage between whites and people of other races. The Immorality Amendment Act 21 of 1950 (as amended in 1957 by Act 23) forbade "unlawful racial intercourse" and "any immoral or indecent act" between a white and a black, Indian or Coloured person.

Black people were not allowed to run businesses or professional practices in areas designated as "white South Africa" unless they had a permit – such being granted only exceptionally. They were required to move to the black "homelands" and set up businesses and practices there. Trains, hospitals and ambulances were segregated. Because of the smaller numbers of white patients and the fact that white doctors preferred to work in white hospitals, conditions in white hospitals were much better than those in often overcrowded and understaffed, significantly underfunded black hospitals. Residential areas were segregated and blacks were allowed to live in white areas only if employed as a servant and even then only in servants’ quarters. Black people were excluded from working in white areas, unless they had a pass, nicknamed the dompas, also spelt dompass or dom pass. The most likely origin of this name is from the Afrikaans "verdomde pas" (meaning accursed pass), although some commentators ascribe it to the Afrikaans words meaning "dumb pass". Only black people with "Section 10" rights (those who had migrated to the cities before World War II) were excluded from this provision. A pass was issued only to a black person with approved work. Spouses and children had to be left behind in black homelands. A pass was issued for one magisterial district (usually one town) confining the holder to that area only. Being without a valid pass made a person subject to arrest and trial for being an illegal migrant. This was often followed by deportation to the person's homeland and prosecution of the employer for employing an illegal migrant. Police vans patrolled white areas to round up blacks without passes. Black people were not allowed to employ whites in white South Africa.

Although trade unions for black and Coloured workers had existed since the early 20th century, it was not until the 1980s reforms that a mass black trade union movement developed. Trade unions under apartheid were racially segregated, with 54 unions being white only, 38 for Indian and Coloured and 19 for black people. The Industrial Conciliation Act (1956) legislated against the creation of multi-racial trade unions and attempted to split existing multi-racial unions into separate branches or organisations along racial lines.

Each black homeland controlled its own education, health and police systems. Blacks were not allowed to buy hard liquor. They were able to buy only state-produced poor quality beer (although this law was relaxed later). Public beaches, swimming pools, some pedestrian bridges, drive-in cinema parking spaces, graveyards, parks, and public toilets were segregated. Cinemas and theatres in white areas were not allowed to admit blacks. There were practically no cinemas in black areas. Most restaurants and hotels in white areas were not allowed to admit blacks except as staff. Blacks were prohibited from attending white churches under the Churches Native Laws Amendment Act of 1957, but this was never rigidly enforced, and churches were one of the few places races could mix without the interference of the law. Blacks earning 360 rand a year or more had to pay taxes while the white threshold was more than twice as high, at 750 rand a year. On the other hand, the taxation rate for whites was considerably higher than that for blacks.

Blacks could never acquire land in white areas. In the homelands, much of the land belonged to a "tribe", where the local chieftain would decide how the land had to be used. This resulted in whites owning almost all the industrial and agricultural lands and much of the prized residential land. Most blacks were stripped of their South African citizenship when the "homelands" became "independent", and they were no longer able to apply for South African passports. Eligibility requirements for a passport had been difficult for blacks to meet, the government contending that a passport was a privilege, not a right, and the government did not grant many passports to blacks. Apartheid pervaded culture as well as the law, and was entrenched by most of the mainstream media.

The population was classified into four groups: African, White, Indian and Coloured (capitalised to denote their legal definitions in South African law). The Coloured group included people regarded as being of mixed descent, including of Bantu, Khoisan, European and Malay ancestry. Many were descended from people brought to South Africa from other parts of the world, such as India, Sri Lanka, Madagascar and China as slaves and indentured workers.

The Population Registration Act, (Act 30 of 1950), defined South Africans as belonging to one of three races: White, Black or Coloured. People of Indian ancestry were considered Coloured under this act. Appearance, social acceptance and descent were used to determine the qualification of an individual into one of the three categories. A white person was described by the act as one whose parents were both white and possessed the "habits, speech, education, deportment and demeanour" of a white person. Blacks were defined by the act as belonging to an African race or tribe. Lastly, Coloureds were those who could not be classified as black or white.

The apartheid bureaucracy devised complex (and often arbitrary) criteria at the time that the Population Registration Act was implemented to determine who was Coloured. Minor officials would administer tests to determine if someone should be categorised either Coloured or White, or if another person should be categorised either Coloured or Black. The tests included the pencil test, in which a pencil was shoved into the subjects’ curly hair and the subjects made to shake their head. If the pencil stuck they were deemed to be Black; if dislodged they were pronounced Coloured. Other tests involved examining the shapes of jaw lines and buttocks and pinching people to see what language they would say "Ouch" in. As a result of these tests, different members of the same family found themselves in different race groups. Further tests determined membership of the various sub-racial groups of the Coloureds.

Discriminated against by apartheid, Coloureds were as a matter of state policy forced to live in separate townships, as defined in the Group Areas Act (1950), in some cases leaving homes their families had occupied for generations, and received an inferior education, though better than that provided to Africans. They played an important role in the anti-apartheid movement: for example the African Political Organization established in 1902 had an exclusively Coloured membership.

Voting rights were denied to Coloureds in the same way that they were denied to Blacks from 1950 to 1983. However, in 1977 the NP caucus approved proposals to bring Coloureds and Indians into central government. In 1982, final constitutional proposals produced a referendum among Whites, and the Tricameral Parliament was approved. The Constitution was reformed the following year to allow the Coloured and Asian minorities participation in separate Houses in a Tricameral Parliament, and Botha became the first Executive State President. The idea was that the Coloured minority could be granted voting rights, but the Black majority were to become citizens of independent homelands. These separate arrangements continued until the abolition of apartheid. The Tricameral reforms led to the formation of the (anti-apartheid) United Democratic Front as a vehicle to try to prevent the co-option of Coloureds and Indians into an alliance with Whites. The battles between the UDF and the NP government from 1983 to 1989 were to become the most intense period of struggle between left-wing and right-wing South Africans.

Education

Education was segregated by the 1953 Bantu Education Act, which crafted a separate system of education for black South African students and was designed to prepare black people for lives as a labouring class. In 1959 separate universities were created for black, Coloured and Indian people. Existing universities were not permitted to enroll new black students. The Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974 required the use of Afrikaans and English on an equal basis in high schools outside the homelands.

In the 1970s, the state spent ten times more per child on the education of white children than on black children within the Bantu Education system (the education system in black schools within white South Africa). Higher education was provided in separate universities and colleges after 1959. Eight black universities were created in the homelands. Fort Hare University in the Ciskei (now Eastern Cape) was to register only Xhosa-speaking students. Sotho, Tswana, Pedi and Venda speakers were placed at the newly founded University College of the North at Turfloop, while the University College of Zululand was launched to serve Zulu students. Coloureds and Indians were to have their own establishments in the Cape and Natal respectively.

Each black homeland controlled its own education, health and police systems.

By 1948, before formal Apartheid, 10 universities existed in South Africa: four were Afrikaans, four for English, one for Blacks and a Correspondence University open to all ethnic groups. By 1981, under apartheid government, 11 new universities were built: seven for Blacks, one for Coloreds, one for Indians, one for Afrikaans and one dual-language medium Afrikaans and English.

Women under apartheid

Colonialism and apartheid had a major impact on Black and Coloured women, since they suffered both racial and gender discrimination. Judith Nolde argues that in general, South African women were "deprive[d] [...] of their human rights as individuals" under the apartheid system. Jobs were often hard to find. Many Black and Coloured women worked as agricultural or domestic workers, but wages were extremely low, if existent. Children suffered from diseases caused by malnutrition and sanitation problems, and mortality rates were therefore high. The controlled movement of black and Coloured workers within the country through the Natives Urban Areas Act of 1923 and the pass laws separated family members from one another, because men could prove their employment in urban centres while most women were merely dependents; consequently, they risked being deported to rural areas. Even in rural areas there were legal hurdles for women to own land, and outside the cities jobs were scarce.

Sport under apartheid

By the 1930s, association football mirrored the balkanised society of South Africa; football was divided into numerous institutions based on race: the (White) South African Football Association, the South African Indian Football Association (SAIFA), the South African African Football Association (SAAFA) and its rival the South African Bantu Football Association, and the South African Coloured Football Association (SACFA). Lack of funds to provide proper equipment would be noticeable in regards to black amateur football matches; this revealed the unequal lives black South Africans were subject to, in contrast to Whites, who were much better off financially. Apartheid's social engineering made it more difficult to compete across racial lines. Thus, in an effort to centralise finances, the federations merged in 1951, creating the South African Soccer Federation (SASF), which brought Black, Indian, and Coloured national associations into one body that opposed apartheid. This was generally opposed more and more by the growing apartheid government, and – with urban segregation being reinforced with ongoing racist policies – it was harder to play football along these racial lines. In 1956, the Pretoria regime – the administrative capital of South Africa – passed the first apartheid sports policy; by doing so, it emphasised the White-led government's opposition to inter-racialism.

While football was plagued by racism, it also played a role in protesting apartheid and its policies. With the international bans from FIFA and other major sporting events, South Africa would be in the spotlight internationally. In a 1977 survey, white South Africans ranked the lack of international sport as one of the three most damaging consequences of apartheid. By the mid-1950s, Black South Africans would also use media to challenge the "racialisation" of sports in South Africa; anti-apartheid forces had begun to pinpoint sport as the "weakness" of white national morale. Black journalists for the Johannesburg Drum magazine were the first to give the issue public exposure, with an intrepid special issue in 1955 that asked, "Why shouldn't our blacks be allowed in the SA team?" As time progressed, international standing with South Africa would continue to be strained. In the 1980s, as the oppressive system was slowly collapsing the ANC and National Party started negotiations on the end of apartheid, football associations also discussed the formation of a single, non-racial controlling body. This unity process accelerated in the late 1980s and led to the creation, in December 1991, of an incorporated South African Football Association. On 3 July 1992, FIFA finally welcomed South Africa back into international football.

Sport has long been an important part of life in South Africa, and the boycotting of games by international teams had a profound effect on the white population, perhaps more so than the trade embargoes did. After the re-acceptance of South Africa's sports teams by the international community, sport played a major unifying role between the country's diverse ethnic groups. Mandela's open support of the predominantly white rugby fraternity during the 1995 Rugby World Cup was considered instrumental in bringing together South African sports fans of all races.

Professional boxing

Activities in the sport of professional boxing were also affected, as there were 44 recorded professional boxing fights for national titles as deemed "for Whites only" between 1955 and 1979, and 397 fights as deemed "for non-Whites" between 1901 and 1978.

The first fight for a national "White" title was held on April 9, 1955, between Flyweights Jerry Jooste and Tiny Corbett at the City Hall in Johannesburg; it was won by Jooste by a twelve rounds points decision. The last one was between national "White" Light-Heavyweight champion Gerrie Bodenstein and challenger Mervin Smit on February 5, 1979, at the Joekies Ice Rink in Welkom, Free State. it was won by the champion by a fifth-round technical knockout.

The first "non Whites" South African national championship bout on record apparently (the date appears as "uncertain" on the records) took place on May 1, 1901, between Andrew Jephtha and Johnny Arendse for the vacant Lightweight belt, Jephtha winning by knockout in round nineteen of a twenty rounds-scheduled match, in Cape Town.

The last "non White" title bout took place on December 18, 1978, between Sipho Mange and Chris Kid Dlamini; Mange-Dlamini was the culminating fight of a boxing program that included several other "non White" championship contests. Mange won the vacant non-White Super Bantamweight title by outpointing Dlamini over twelve rounds at the Goodwood Showgrounds in Cape Town.

Asians during apartheid

Defining its Asian population, a minority that did not appear to belong to any of the initial three designated non-white groups, was a constant dilemma for the apartheid government.

The classification of "honorary white" (a term which would be ambiguously used throughout apartheid) was granted to immigrants from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan – countries with which South Africa maintained diplomatic and economic relations – and to their descendants.

Indian South Africans during apartheid were classified many ranges of categories from "Asian" to "black" to "Coloured" and even the mono-ethnic category of "Indian", but never as white, having been considered "nonwhite" throughout South Africa's history. The group faced severe discrimination during the apartheid regime and were subject to numerous racialist policies.

In 2005, a retrospect study was done by Josephine C. Naidoo and Devi Moodley Rajab, where they interviewed a series of Indian South Africans about their experience living through apartheid; their study highlighted education, the workplace, and general day to day living. One participant who was a doctor said that it was considered the norm for Non-White and White doctors to mingle while working at the hospital but when there was any down time or breaks, they were to go back to their segregated quarters. Not only was there severe segregation for doctors, non-white, more specifically Indians, were paid three to four times less than their white counterparts. Many described being treated as a “third class citizen” due to the humiliation of the standard of treatment for non-white employees across many professions. Many Indians described a sense of justified superiority from whites due to the apartheid laws that, in the minds of White South Africans, legitimised those feelings. Another finding of this study was the psychological damage done to Indians living in South Africa during apartheid. One of the biggest long-term effects on Indians was the distrust of white South Africans. There was a strong degree of alienation that left a strong psychological feeling of inferiority.

Chinese South Africans – who were descendants of migrant workers who came to work in the gold mines around Johannesburg in the late 19th century – were initially either classified as "Coloured" or "Other Asian" and were subject to numerous forms of discrimination and restriction. It was not until 1984 that South African Chinese, increased to about 10,000, were given the same official rights as the Japanese, to be treated as whites in terms of the Group Areas Act, although they still faced discrimination and did not receive all the benefits/rights of their newly obtained honorary white status such as voting.

Indonesians arrived at the Cape of Good Hope as slaves until the abolishment of slavery during the 19th century. They were predominantly Muslim, were allowed religious freedom and formed their own ethnic group/community known as Cape Malays. They were classified as part of the Coloured racial group. This was the same for South Africans of Malaysian descent who were also classified as part of the Coloured race and thus considered "not-white". South Africans of Filipino descent were classified as "black" due to historical outlook on Filipinos by White South Africans, and many of them lived in Bantustans.

The Lebanese population were somewhat of an anomaly during the apartheid era. Lebanese immigration to South Africa was chiefly Christian, and the group was originally classified as non-white; however, a court case in 1913 ruled that because Lebanese and Syrians originated from the Canaan region (the birthplace of Christianity and Judaism), they could not be discriminated against by race laws which targeted non-believers, and thus, were classified as white. The Lebanese community maintained their white status after the Population Registration Act came into effect; however, further immigration from the Middle East was restricted.

Conservatism

Alongside apartheid, the National Party implemented a programme of social conservatism. Pornography and gambling were banned. Cinemas, shops selling alcohol and most other businesses were forbidden from opening on Sundays. Abortion, homosexuality and sex education were also restricted; abortion was legal only in cases of rape or if the mother's life was threatened.

Television was not introduced until 1976 because the government viewed English programming as a threat to the Afrikaans language. Television was run on apartheid lines – TV1 broadcast in Afrikaans and English (geared to a White audience), TV2 in Zulu and Xhosa, TV3 in Sotho, Tswana and Pedi (both geared to a Black audience), and TV4 mostly showed programmes for an urban Black audience.

Internal resistance

Painting of the Sharpeville Massacre which occurred on 21 March 1960

Apartheid sparked significant internal resistance. The government responded to a series of popular uprisings and protests with police brutality, which in turn increased local support for the armed resistance struggle. Internal resistance to the apartheid system in South Africa came from several sectors of society and saw the creation of organisations dedicated variously to peaceful protests, passive resistance and armed insurrection.

In 1949, the youth wing of the African National Congress (ANC) took control of the organisation and started advocating a radical black nationalist programme. The new young leaders proposed that white authority could only be overthrown through mass campaigns. In 1950 that philosophy saw the launch of the Programme of Action, a series of strikes, boycotts and civil disobedience actions that led to occasional violent clashes with the authorities.

In 1959, a group of disenchanted ANC members formed the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), which organised a demonstration against pass books on 21 March 1960. One of those protests was held in the township of Sharpeville, where 69 people were killed by police in the Sharpeville massacre.

In the wake of Sharpeville, the government declared a state of emergency. More than 18,000 people were arrested, including leaders of the ANC and PAC, and both organisations were banned. The resistance went underground, with some leaders in exile abroad and others engaged in campaigns of domestic sabotage and terrorism.

In May 1961, before the declaration of South Africa as a Republic, an assembly representing the banned ANC called for negotiations between the members of the different ethnic groupings, threatening demonstrations and strikes during the inauguration of the Republic if their calls were ignored.

When the government overlooked them, the strikers (among the main organisers was a 42-year-old, Thembu-origin Nelson Mandela) carried out their threats. The government countered swiftly by giving police the authority to arrest people for up to twelve days and detaining many strike leaders amid numerous cases of police brutality. Defeated, the protesters called off their strike. The ANC then chose to launch an armed struggle through a newly formed military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), which would perform acts of sabotage on tactical state structures. Its first sabotage plans were carried out on 16 December 1961, the anniversary of the Battle of Blood River.

In the 1970s, the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) was created by tertiary students influenced by the Black Power movement in the US. BCM endorsed black pride and African customs and did much to alter the feelings of inadequacy instilled among black people by the apartheid system. The leader of the movement, Steve Biko, was taken into custody on 18 August 1977 and was beaten to death in detention.

In 1976, secondary students in Soweto took to the streets in the Soweto uprising to protest against the imposition of Afrikaans as the only language of instruction. On 16 June, police opened fire on students protesting peacefully. According to official reports 23 people were killed, but the number of people who died is usually given as 176, with estimates of up to 700. In the following years several student organisations were formed to protest against apartheid, and these organisations were central to urban school boycotts in 1980 and 1983 and rural boycotts in 1985 and 1986.

List of attacks attributed to MK and compiled by the Committee for South African War Resistance (COSAWR) between 1980 and 1983.

In parallel with student protests, labour unions started protest action in 1973 and 1974. After 1976 unions and workers are considered to have played an important role in the struggle against apartheid, filling the gap left by the banning of political parties. In 1979 black trade unions were legalised and could engage in collective bargaining, although strikes were still illegal. Economist Thomas Sowell wrote that basic supply and demand led to violations of Apartheid "on a massive scale" throughout the nation, simply because there were not enough white South African business owners to meet the demand for various goods and services. Large portions of the garment industry and construction of new homes, for example, were effectively owned and operated by blacks, who either worked surreptitiously or who circumvented the law with a white person as a nominal, figurehead manager.

In 1983, anti-apartheid leaders determined to resist the tricameral parliament assembled to form the United Democratic Front (UDF) in order to coordinate anti-apartheid activism inside South Africa. The first presidents of the UDF were Archie Gumede, Oscar Mpetha and Albertina Sisulu; patrons were Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Dr Allan Boesak, Helen Joseph, and Nelson Mandela. Basing its platform on abolishing apartheid and creating a nonracial democratic South Africa, the UDF provided a legal way for domestic human rights groups and individuals of all races to organise demonstrations and campaign against apartheid inside the country. Churches and church groups also emerged as pivotal points of resistance. Church leaders were not immune to prosecution, and certain faith-based organisations were banned, but the clergy generally had more freedom to criticise the government than militant groups did. The UDF, coupled with the protection of the church, accordingly permitted a major role for Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who served both as a prominent domestic voice and international spokesperson denouncing apartheid and urging the creation of a shared nonracial state.

Although the majority of whites supported apartheid, some 20 percent did not. Parliamentary opposition was galvanised by Helen Suzman, Colin Eglin and Harry Schwarz, who formed the Progressive Federal Party. Extra-parliamentary resistance was largely centred in the South African Communist Party and women's organisation the Black Sash. Women were also notable in their involvement in trade union organisations and banned political parties. The public intellectuals too, such as Nadine Gordimer the eminent author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1991), vehemently opposed the Apartheid regime and accordingly bolstered the movement against it.

International relations during apartheid 

Commonwealth

South Africa's policies were subject to international scrutiny in 1960, when UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan criticised them during his Wind of Change speech in Cape Town. Weeks later, tensions came to a head in the Sharpeville Massacre, resulting in more international condemnation. Soon afterwards, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd announced a referendum on whether the country should become a republic. Verwoerd lowered the voting age for Whites to eighteen years of age and included Whites in South West Africa on the roll. The referendum on 5 October that year asked Whites; "Are you in favour of a Republic for the Union?", and 52 percent voted "Yes".

As a consequence of this change of status, South Africa needed to reapply for continued membership of the Commonwealth, with which it had privileged trade links. India had become a republic within the Commonwealth in 1950, but it became clear that African and Asian member states would oppose South Africa due to its apartheid policies. As a result, South Africa withdrew from the Commonwealth on 31 May 1961, the day that the Republic came into existence.

United Nations

We stand here today to salute the United Nations Organisation and its Member States, both singly and collectively, for joining forces with the masses of our people in a common struggle that has brought about our emancipation and pushed back the frontiers of racism.

— Nelson Mandela, address to the United Nations as South African President, 3 October 1994

The apartheid system as an issue was first formally brought to the United Nations attention, in order to advocate for the Indians residing in South Africa. On June 22 of 1946, the Indian government requested that the discriminatory treatment of Indians living in South Africa be included on the agenda of the first General Assembly session. In 1952, apartheid was again discussed in the aftermath of the Defiance Campaign, and the UN set up a task team to keep watch on the progress of apartheid and the racial state of affairs in South Africa. Although South Africa's racial policies were a cause for concern, most countries in the UN concurred that this was a domestic affair, which fell outside the UN's jurisdiction.

In April 1960, the UN's conservative stance on apartheid changed following the Sharpeville massacre, and the Security Council for the first time agreed on concerted action against the apartheid regime. Resolution 134 called upon the nation of South Africa to abandon its policies implementing racial discrimination. The newly founded United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid, scripted and passed Resolution 181 on August 7, 1963, which called upon all states to cease the sale and shipment of all ammunition and military vehicles to South Africa. This clause was finally declared mandatory on 4 November 1977, depriving South Africa of military aid. From 1964 onwards, the US and the UK discontinued their arms trade with South Africa. The Security Council also condemned the Soweto massacre in Resolution 392. In 1977, the voluntary UN arms embargo became mandatory with the passing of Resolution 418. In addition to isolating South Africa militarily, the United Nations General Assembly, encouraged the boycotting of oil sales to South Africa. Other actions taken by the United Nations General Assembly include the request for all nations and organisations, “to suspend cultural, educational, sporting and other exchanges with the racist regime and with organisations or institutions in South Africa which practice apartheid”. Illustrating that over a long period of time, the United Nations was working towards isolating the state of South Africa, by putting pressure on the Apartheid regime.

After much debate, by the late-1980s, the United States, the United Kingdom, and 23 other nations had passed laws placing various trade sanctions on South Africa. A disinvestment from South Africa movement in many countries was similarly widespread, with individual cities and provinces around the world implementing various laws and local regulations forbidding registered corporations under their jurisdiction from doing business with South African firms, factories, or banks.

Catholic Church

Pope John Paul II was an outspoken opponent of apartheid. In 1985, while visiting the Netherlands, he gave an impassioned speech at the International Court of Justice condemning apartheid, proclaiming that "no system of apartheid or separate development will ever be acceptable as a model for the relations between peoples or races." In September 1988, he made a pilgrimage to countries bordering South Africa, while demonstratively avoiding South Africa itself. During his visit to Zimbabwe, he called for economic sanctions against the South African government.

Organisation for African Unity

The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was created in 1963. Its primary objectives were to eradicate colonialism and improve social, political and economic situations in Africa. It censured apartheid and demanded sanctions against South Africa. African states agreed to aid the liberation movements in their fight against apartheid. In 1969, fourteen nations from Central and East Africa gathered in Lusaka, Zambia, and formulated the Lusaka Manifesto, which was signed on 13 April by all of the countries in attendance except Malawi. This manifesto was later taken on by both the OAU and the United Nations.

The Lusaka Manifesto summarized the political situations of self-governing African countries, condemning racism and inequity, and calling for Black majority rule in all African nations. It did not rebuff South Africa entirely, though, adopting an appeasing manner towards the apartheid government, and even recognizing its autonomy. Although African leaders supported the emancipation of Black South Africans, they preferred this to be attained through peaceful means.

South Africa's negative response to the Lusaka Manifesto and rejection of a change to its policies brought about another OAU announcement in October 1971. The Mogadishu Declaration stated that South Africa's rebuffing of negotiations meant that its Black people could only be freed through military means, and that no African state should converse with the apartheid government.

Outward-looking policy

In 1966, B. J. Vorster became Prime Minister. He was not prepared to dismantle apartheid, but he did try to redress South Africa's isolation and to revitalise the country's global reputation, even those with Black majority rule in Africa. This he called his "Outward-Looking" policy.

Vorster's willingness to talk to African leaders stood in contrast to Verwoerd's refusal to engage with leaders such as Abubakar Tafawa Balewa of Nigeria in 1962 and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia in 1964. In 1966, he met the heads of the neighbouring states of Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana. In 1967, he offered technological and financial aid to any African state prepared to receive it, asserting that no political strings were attached, aware that many African states needed financial aid despite their opposition to South Africa's racial policies. Many were also tied to South Africa economically because of their migrant labour population working down the South African mines. Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland remained outspoken critics of apartheid, but were dependent on South African economic assistance.

Malawi was the first non-neighbouring country to accept South African aid. In 1967, the two states set out their political and economic relations. In 1969, Malawi was the only country at the assembly which did not sign the Lusaka Manifesto condemning South Africa' apartheid policy. In 1970, Malawian president Hastings Banda made his first and most successful official stopover in South Africa.

Associations with Mozambique followed suit and were sustained after that country won its sovereignty in 1975. Angola was also granted South African loans. Other countries which formed relationships with South Africa were Liberia, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mauritius, Gabon, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and the Central African Republic. Although these states condemned apartheid (more than ever after South Africa's denunciation of the Lusaka Manifesto), South Africa's economic and military dominance meant that they remained dependent on South Africa to varying degrees.

Sports and culture

Beginning

South Africa's isolation in sport began in the mid-1950s and increased throughout the 1960s. Apartheid forbade multiracial sport, which meant that overseas teams, by virtue of them having players of different races, could not play in South Africa. In 1956, the International Table Tennis Federation severed its ties with the all-White South African Table Tennis Union, preferring the non-racial South African Table Tennis Board. The apartheid government responded by confiscating the passports of the Board's players so that they were unable to attend international games.

Isolation

Verwoerd years

In 1959, the non-racial South African Sports Association (SASA) was formed to secure the rights of all players on the global field. After meeting with no success in its endeavours to attain credit by collaborating with White establishments, SASA approached the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1962, calling for South Africa's expulsion from the Olympic Games. The IOC sent South Africa a caution to the effect that, if there were no changes, they would be barred from competing at the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo. The changes were initiated, and in January 1963, the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (SANROC) was set up. The Anti-Apartheid Movement persisted in its campaign for South Africa's exclusion, and the IOC acceded in barring the country from the 1964 Olympic Games. South Africa selected a multi-racial team for the next Olympic Games, and the IOC opted for incorporation in the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games. Because of protests from AAMs and African nations, however, the IOC was forced to retract the invitation.

Foreign complaints about South Africa's bigoted sports brought more isolation. Racially selected New Zealand sports teams toured South Africa, until the 1970 All Blacks rugby tour allowed Maori to enter the country under the status of "honorary Whites". Huge and widespread protests occurred in New Zealand in 1981 against the Springbok tour – the government spent $8,000,000 protecting games using the army and police force. A planned All Black tour to South Africa in 1985 remobilised the New Zealand protesters and it was cancelled. A "rebel tour" – not government sanctioned – went ahead in 1986, but after that sporting ties were cut, and New Zealand made a decision not to convey an authorised rugby team to South Africa until the end of apartheid.

Vorster years

On 6 September 1966, Verwoerd was fatally stabbed at Parliament House by parliamentary messenger Dimitri Tsafendas. John Vorster took office shortly after, and announced that South Africa would no longer dictate to the international community what their teams should look like. Although this reopened the gate for international sporting meets, it did not signal the end of South Africa's racist sporting policies. In 1968, Vorster went against his policy by refusing to permit Basil D'Oliveira, a Coloured South African-born cricketer, to join the English cricket team on its tour to South Africa. Vorster said that the side had been chosen only to prove a point, and not on merit. D'Oliveira was eventually included in the team as the first substitute, but the tour was cancelled. Protests against certain tours brought about the cancellation of a number of other visits, including that of an England rugby team touring South Africa in 1969/70.

The first of the "White Bans" occurred in 1971 when the Chairman of the Australian Cricketing Association – Sir Don Bradman – flew to South Africa to meet Vorster. Vorster had expected Bradman to allow the tour of the Australian cricket team to go ahead, but things became heated after Bradman asked why Black sportsmen were not allowed to play cricket. Vorster stated that Blacks were intellectually inferior and had no finesse for the game. Bradman – thinking this ignorant and repugnant – asked Vorster if he had heard of a man named Garry Sobers. On his return to Australia, Bradman released a short statement: "We will not play them until they choose a team on a non-racist basis." Bradman's views were in stark contrast to those of Australian tennis great Margaret Court, who had won the grand slam the previous year and commented about apartheid that "South Africans have this thing better organised than any other country, particularly America" and that she would "go back there any time."

In South Africa, Vorster vented his anger publicly against Bradman, while the African National Congress rejoiced. This was the first time a predominantly White nation had taken the side of multiracial sport, producing an unsettling resonance that more "White" boycotts were coming. Almost twenty years later, on his release from prison, Nelson Mandela asked a visiting Australian statesman if Donald Bradman, his childhood hero, was still alive (Bradman lived until 2001).

In 1971, Vorster altered his policies even further by distinguishing multiracial from multinational sport. Multiracial sport, between teams with players of different races, remained outlawed; multinational sport, however, was now acceptable: international sides would not be subject to South Africa's racial stipulations.

In 1978, Nigeria boycotted the Commonwealth Games because New Zealand's sporting contacts with the South African government were not considered to be in accordance with the 1977 Gleneagles Agreement. Nigeria also led the 32-nation boycott of the 1986 Commonwealth Games because of UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's ambivalent attitude towards sporting links with South Africa, significantly affecting the quality and profitability of the Games and thus thrusting apartheid into the international spotlight.

Cultural boycott

In the 1960s, the Anti-Apartheid Movements began to campaign for cultural boycotts of apartheid South Africa. Artists were requested not to present or let their works be hosted in South Africa. In 1963, 45 British writers put their signatures to an affirmation approving of the boycott, and, in 1964, American actor Marlon Brando called for a similar affirmation for films. In 1965, the Writers' Guild of Great Britain called for a proscription on the sending of films to South Africa. Over sixty American artists signed a statement against apartheid and against professional links with the state. The presentation of some South African plays in the United Kingdom and the United States was also vetoed. After the arrival of television in South Africa in 1975, the British Actors Union, Equity, boycotted the service, and no British programme concerning its associates could be sold to South Africa. Similarly, when home video grew popular in the 1980s, the Australian arm of CBS/Fox Video (now 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment) placed stickers on their VHS and Betamax cassettes which labeled exporting such cassettes to South Africa as "an infringement of copyright". Sporting and cultural boycotts did not have the same impact as economic sanctions, but they did much to lift consciousness amongst normal South Africans of the global condemnation of apartheid.

Western influence

London "Boycott Apartheid" bus, 1989

While international opposition to apartheid grew, the Nordic countries – and Sweden in particular – provided both moral and financial support for the ANC. On 21 February 1986 – a week before he was murdered – Sweden's Prime Minister Olof Palme made the keynote address to the Swedish People's Parliament Against Apartheid held in Stockholm. In addressing the hundreds of anti-apartheid sympathisers as well as leaders and officials from the ANC and the Anti-Apartheid Movement such as Oliver Tambo, Palme declared: "Apartheid cannot be reformed; it has to be eliminated."

Other Western countries adopted a more ambivalent position. In Switzerland, the Swiss-South African Association lobbied on behalf of the South African government. The Nixon administration implemented a policy known as the Tar Baby Option, pursuant to which the US maintained close relations with the white supremacist South African government. The Reagan administration evaded international sanctions and provided diplomatic support in international forums for the South African government. The United States also increased trade with the white supremacist South Africa regime, while describing the ANC as "a terrorist organisation." Like the Reagan Administration, the government of Margaret Thatcher termed this policy "constructive engagement" with the apartheid government, vetoing the imposition of UN economic sanctions. U.S. government justification for supporting the Apartheid regime publicly given as a belief in "free trade" and the perception of the right-wing South African government as a bastion against Marxist forces in Southern Africa, for example, by the military intervention by the South African government in the Mozambican Civil War in support of right-wing insurgents fighting to topple the government. The U.S. and the U.K. declared the ANC a terrorist organisation, and in 1987 Thatcher's spokesman, Bernard Ingham, famously said that anyone who believed that the ANC would ever form the government of South Africa was "living in cloud cuckoo land". The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative lobbying organisation, actively campaigned against divesting from South Africa throughout the 1980s.

By the late-1980s, with no sign of a political resolution in South Africa, Western patience began to run out. By 1989, a bipartisan Republican/Democratic initiative in the US favoured economic sanctions (realised as the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986), the release of Nelson Mandela and a negotiated settlement involving the ANC. Thatcher too began to take a similar line, but insisted on the suspension of the ANC's armed struggle.

The UK's significant economic involvement in South Africa may have provided some leverage with the South African government, with both the UK and the US applying pressure and pushing for negotiations. However, neither the UK nor the US was willing to apply economic pressure upon their multinational interests in South Africa, such as the mining company Anglo American. Although a high-profile compensation claim against these companies was thrown out of court in 2004, the US Supreme Court in May 2008 upheld an appeal court ruling allowing another lawsuit that seeks damages of more than US$400 billion from major international companies which are accused of aiding South Africa's apartheid system.

Impact of the Cold War

"Total Onslaught"

Apartheid-era propaganda leaflet issued to South African military personnel in the 1980s. The pamphlet decries "Russian colonialism and oppression".

During the 1950s, South African military strategy was decisively shaped by fears of communist espionage and a conventional Soviet threat to the strategic Cape trade route between the south Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The apartheid government supported the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), as well as its policy of regional containment against Soviet-backed regimes and insurgencies worldwide. By the late-1960s, the rise of Soviet client states on the African continent, as well as Soviet aid for militant anti-apartheid movements, was considered one of the primary external threats to the apartheid system. South African officials frequently accused domestic opposition groups of being communist proxies. For its part, the Soviet Union viewed South Africa as a bastion of neocolonialism and a regional Western ally, which helped fuel its support for various anti-apartheid causes.

From 1973 onwards, much of South Africa's white population increasingly looked upon their country as a bastion of the free world besieged militarily, politically, and culturally by Communism and radical black nationalism. The apartheid government perceived itself as being locked in a proxy struggle with the Warsaw Pact and by implication, armed wings of black nationalist forces such as Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), which often received Soviet arms and training. This was described as "Total Onslaught".

Israeli arms sales

Soviet support for militant anti-apartheid movements worked in the government's favour, as its claim to be reacting in opposition to aggressive communist expansion gained greater plausibility, and helped it justify its own domestic militarisation methods, known as "Total Strategy". Total Strategy involved building up a formidable conventional military and counter-intelligence capability. It was formulated on counter-revolutionary tactics as espoused by noted French tactician André Beaufre. Considerable effort was devoted towards circumventing international arms sanctions, and the government even went so far as to develop nuclear weapons, allegedly with covert assistance from Israel. In 2010, The Guardian released South African government documents that revealed an Israeli offer to sell the apartheid regime nuclear weapons. Israel denied these allegations and claimed that the documents were minutes from a meeting which did not indicate any concrete offer for a sale of nuclear weapons. Shimon Peres said that The Guardian's article was based on "selective interpretation...and not on concrete facts."

As a result of "Total Strategy", South African society became increasingly militarised. Many domestic civil organisations were modelled upon military structures, and military virtues such as discipline, patriotism, and loyalty were highly regarded. In 1968, national service for White South African men lasted nine months at minimum, and they could be called up for reserve duty into their late-middle age if necessary. The length of national service was gradually extended to twelve months in 1972 and twenty-four months in 1978. At state schools, white male students were organised into military-style formations and drilled as cadets or as participants in a civil defence or "Youth Preparedness" curriculum. Compulsory military education and in some cases, paramilitary training was introduced for all older white male students at state schools in three South African provinces. These programmes presided over the construction of bomb shelters at schools and drills aimed at simulating mock insurgent raids.

From the late-1970s to the late-1980s, defence budgets in South Africa were raised exponentially. In 1975, Israeli defense minister Shimon Peres signed a security pact with South African defence minister P.W. Botha that led to $200 million in arms deals. In 1988, Israeli arm sales to South Africa totaled over $1.4 billion. Covert operations focused on espionage and domestic counter-subversion became common, the number of special forces units swelled, and the South African Defence Force (SADF) had amassed enough sophisticated conventional weaponry to pose a serious threat to the "front-line states", a regional alliance of neighbouring countries opposed to apartheid.

Foreign military operations

South African paratroops on a raid in Angola, 1980s

Total Strategy was advanced in the context of MK, PLAN, and Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA) guerrilla raids into South Africa or against South African targets in South West Africa; frequent South African reprisal attacks on these movements' external bases in Angola, Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and elsewhere, often involving collateral damage to foreign infrastructure and civilian populations; and periodic complaints brought before the international community about South African violations of its neighbours' sovereignty.

The apartheid government made judicious use of extraterritorial operations to eliminate its military and political opponents, arguing that neighbouring states, including their civilian populations, which hosted, tolerated on their soil, or otherwise sheltered anti-apartheid insurgent groups could not evade responsibility for provoking retaliatory strikes. While it did focus on militarising the borders and sealing up its domestic territory against insurgent raids, it also relied heavily on an aggressive preemptive and counter-strike strategy, which fulfilled a preventive and deterrent purpose. The reprisals which occurred beyond South Africa's borders involved not only hostile states, but neutral and sympathetic governments as well, often forcing them to react against their will and interests.

External South African military operations were aimed at eliminating the training facilities, safehouses, infrastructure, equipment, and manpower of the insurgents. However, their secondary objective was to dissuade neighbouring states from offering sanctuary to MK, PLAN, APLA, and similar organisations. This was accomplished by deterring the supportive foreign population from cooperating with infiltration and thus undermining the insurgents' external sanctuary areas. It would also send a clear message to the host government that collaborating with insurgent forces involved potentially high costs.

The scale and intensity of foreign operations varied, and ranged from small special forces units carrying out raids on locations across the border which served as bases for insurgent infiltration to major conventional offensives involving armour, artillery, and aircraft. Actions such as Operation Protea in 1981 and Operation Askari in 1983 involved both full scale conventional warfare and a counter-insurgency reprisal operation. The insurgent bases were usually situated near military installations of the host government, so that SADF retaliatory strikes hit those facilities as well and attracted international attention and condemnation of what was perceived as aggression against the armed forces of another sovereign state. This would inevitably result in major engagements, in which the SADF's expeditionary units would have to contend with the firepower of the host government's forces. Intensive conventional warfare of this nature carried the risk of severe casualties among white soldiers, which had to be kept to a minimum for political reasons. There were also high economic and diplomatic costs associated with openly deploying large numbers of South African troops into another country. Furthermore, military involvement on that scale had the potential to evolve into wider conflict situations, in which South Africa became entangled. For example, South Africa's activities in Angola, initially limited to containing PLAN, later escalated to direct involvement in the Angolan Civil War.

As it became clearer that full-scale conventional operations could not effectively fulfill the requirements of a regional counter-insurgency effort, South Africa turned to a number of alternative methods. Retributive artillery bombardments were the least sophisticated means of reprisal against insurgent attacks. Between 1978 and 1979 the SADF directed artillery fire against locations in Angola and Zambia from which insurgent rockets were suspected to have been launched. This precipitated several artillery duels with the Zambian Army. Special forces raids were launched to harass PLAN and MK by liquidating prominent members of those movements, destroying their offices and safehouses, and seizing valuable records stored at these sites. One example was the Gaborone Raid, carried out in 1985, during which a South African special forces team crossed the border into Botswana and demolished four suspected MK safe houses, severely damaging another four. Other types of special forces operations included the sabotage of economic infrastructure. The SADF sabotaged infrastructure being used for the insurgents' war effort; for example, port facilities in southern Angola's Moçâmedes District, where Soviet arms were frequently offloaded for PLAN, as well as the railway line which facilitated their transport to PLAN headquarters in Lubango, were common targets. Sabotage was also used as a pressure tactic when South Africa was negotiating with a host government to cease providing sanctuary to insurgent forces, as in the case of Operation Argon. Successful sabotage actions of high-profile economic targets undermined a country's ability to negotiate from a position of strength, and made it likelier to accede to South African demands rather than risk the expense of further destruction and war.

Also noteworthy were South African transnational espionage efforts, which included covert assassinations, kidnappings, and attempts to disrupt the overseas influence of anti-apartheid organisations. South African military intelligence agents were known to have abducted and killed anti-apartheid activists and others suspected of having ties to MK in London and Brussels.

State security

During the 1980s the government, led by P.W. Botha, became increasingly preoccupied with security. It set up a powerful state security apparatus to "protect" the state against an anticipated upsurge in political violence that the reforms were expected to trigger. The 1980s became a period of considerable political unrest, with the government becoming increasingly dominated by Botha's circle of generals and police chiefs (known as securocrats), who managed the various States of Emergencies.

Botha's years in power were marked also by numerous military interventions in the states bordering South Africa, as well as an extensive military and political campaign to eliminate SWAPO in Namibia. Within South Africa, meanwhile, vigorous police action and strict enforcement of security legislation resulted in hundreds of arrests and bans, and an effective end to the African National Congress' sabotage campaign.

The government punished political offenders brutally. 40,000 people annually were subjected to whipping as a form of punishment. The vast majority had committed political offences and were lashed ten times for their crime. If convicted of treason, a person could be hanged, and the government executed numerous political offenders in this way.

As the 1980s progressed, more and more anti-apartheid organisations were formed and affiliated with the UDF. Led by the Reverend Allan Boesak and Albertina Sisulu, the UDF called for the government to abandon its reforms and instead abolish the apartheid system and eliminate the homelands completely.

State of emergency

Serious political violence was a prominent feature from 1985 to 1989, as Black townships became the focus of the struggle between anti-apartheid organisations and the Botha government. Throughout the 1980s, township people resisted apartheid by acting against the local issues that faced their particular communities. The focus of much of this resistance was against the local authorities and their leaders, who were seen to be supporting the government. By 1985, it had become the ANC's aim to make Black townships "ungovernable" (a term later replaced by "people's power") by means of rent boycotts and other militant action. Numerous township councils were overthrown or collapsed, to be replaced by unofficial popular organisations, often led by militant youth. People's courts were set up, and residents accused of being government agents were dealt extreme and occasionally lethal punishments. Black town councillors and policemen, and sometimes their families, were attacked with petrol bombs, beaten, and murdered by necklacing, where a burning tyre was placed around the victim's neck, after they were restrained by wrapping their wrists with barbed wire. This signature act of torture and murder was embraced by the ANC and its leaders.

On 20 July 1985, Botha declared a State of Emergency in 36 magisterial districts. Areas affected were the Eastern Cape, and the PWV region ("Pretoria, Witwatersrand, Vereeniging"). Three months later, the Western Cape was included. An increasing number of organisations were banned or listed (restricted in some way); many individuals had restrictions such as house arrest imposed on them. During this state of emergency, about 2,436 people were detained under the Internal Security Act. This act gave police and the military sweeping powers. The government could implement curfews controlling the movement of people. The president could rule by decree without referring to the constitution or to parliament. It became a criminal offence to threaten someone verbally or possess documents that the government perceived to be threatening, to advise anyone to stay away from work or to oppose the government, and to disclose the name of anyone arrested under the State of Emergency until the government released that name, with up to ten years' imprisonment for these offences. Detention without trial became a common feature of the government's reaction to growing civil unrest and by 1988, 30,000 people had been detained. The media was censored, thousands were arrested and many were interrogated and tortured.

On 12 June 1986, four days before the tenth anniversary of the Soweto uprising, the state of emergency was extended to cover the whole country. The government amended the Public Security Act, including the right to declare "unrest" areas, allowing extraordinary measures to crush protests in these areas. Severe censorship of the press became a dominant tactic in the government's strategy and television cameras were banned from entering such areas. The state broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), provided propaganda in support of the government. Media opposition to the system increased, supported by the growth of a pro-ANC underground press within South Africa.

In 1987, the State of Emergency was extended for another two years. Meanwhile, about 200,000 members of the National Union of Mineworkers commenced the longest strike (three weeks) in South African history. The year 1988 saw the banning of the activities of the UDF and other anti-apartheid organisations.

Much of the violence in the late-1980s and early-1990s was directed at the government, but a substantial amount was between the residents themselves. Many died in violence between members of Inkatha and the UDF-ANC faction. It was later proven that the government manipulated the situation by supporting one side or the other whenever it suited them. Government agents assassinated opponents within South Africa and abroad; they undertook cross-border army and air-force attacks on suspected ANC and PAC bases. The ANC and the PAC in return detonated bombs at restaurants, shopping centres and government buildings such as magistrates courts. Between 1960 and 1994, according to statistics from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Inkatha Freedom Party was responsible for 4,500 deaths, South African security forces were responsible for 2,700 deaths and the ANC was responsible for 1,300 deaths.

The state of emergency continued until 1990 when it was lifted by State President F. W. de Klerk.

Final years of apartheid

Factors

Institutional racism

Apartheid developed from the racism of colonial factions and due to South Africa's "unique industrialisation". The policies of industrialisation led to the segregation of and classing of people, which was "specifically developed to nurture early industry such as mining". Cheap labour was the basis of the economy and this was taken from what the state classed as peasant groups and the migrants. Furthermore, Philip Bonner highlights the "contradictory economic effects" as the economy did not have a manufacturing sector, therefore promoting short term profitability but limiting labour productivity and the size of local markets. This also led to its collapse as "Clarkes emphasises the economy could not provide and compete with foreign rivals as they failed to master cheap labour and complex chemistry".

Economic contradictions

The contradictions in the traditionally capitalist economy of the apartheid state led to considerable debate about racial policy, and division and conflicts in the central state. To a large extent, the political ideology of apartheid had emerged from the colonisation of Africa by European powers which institutionalised racial discrimination and exercised a paternal philosophy of "civilising inferior natives." Some scholars have argued that this can be reflected in Afrikaner Calvinism, with its parallel traditions of racialism; for example, as early as 1933; the executive council of the Broederbond formulated a recommendation for mass segregation.

Western influence

Anti-apartheid protest at South Africa House in London, 1989

External Western influence, arising from European experiences in colonisation, may be seen as a factor which greatly influenced political attitudes and ideology. Late twentieth-century South Africa was cited as an "unreconstructed example of western civilisation twisted by racism".

In the 1960s, South Africa experienced economic growth second only to that of Japan. Trade with Western countries grew, and investment from the United States, France, and the United Kingdom poured in.

In 1974, resistance to apartheid was encouraged by Portuguese withdrawal from Mozambique and Angola, after the 1974 Carnation Revolution. South African troops withdrew from Angola early in 1976, failing to prevent the MPLA from gaining power there, and Black students in South Africa celebrated.

The Mahlabatini Declaration of Faith, signed by Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Harry Schwarz in 1974, enshrined the principles of peaceful transition of power and equality for all. Its purpose was to provide a blueprint for South Africa by consent and racial peace in a multi-racial society, stressing opportunity for all, consultation, the federal concept, and a Bill of Rights. It caused a split in the United Party that ultimately realigned oppositional politics in South Africa with the formation of the Progressive Federal Party in 1977. The Declaration was the first of several such joint agreements by acknowledged Black and White political leaders in South Africa.

In 1978, the National Party Defence Minister, Pieter Willem Botha, became Prime Minister. His white minority regime worried about Soviet aid to revolutionaries in South Africa at the same time that South African economic growth had slowed. The South African Government noted that it was spending too much money to maintain segregated homelands created for Blacks, and the homelands were proving to be uneconomical.

Nor was maintaining Blacks as third-class citizens working well. Black labour remained vital to the economy, and illegal Black labour unions were flourishing. Many Blacks remained too poor to contribute significantly to the economy through their purchasing power – although they composed more than 70% of the population. Botha's regime feared that an antidote was needed to prevent the Blacks' being attracted to Communism.

In July 1979, the Nigerian Government alleged that the Shell-BP Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC) was selling Nigerian oil to South Africa, though there was little evidence or commercial logic for such sales. The alleged sanctions-breaking was used to justify the seizure of some of BP's assets in Nigeria including their stake in SPDC, although it appears the real reasons were economic nationalism and domestic politics ahead of the Nigerian elections. Many South Africans attended schools in Nigeria, and Nelson Mandela acknowledged the role of Nigeria in the struggle against apartheid on several occasions.

In the 1980s, anti-apartheid movements in the United States and Europe were gaining support for boycotts against South Africa, for the withdrawal of US companies from South Africa, and for release of imprisoned Nelson Mandela. South Africa was sinking to the bottom of the international community. Investment in South Africa was ending and an active policy of disinvestment had begun.

Tricameral parliament

In the early-1980s, Botha's National Party government started to recognise the inevitability of the need to reform the apartheid system. Early reforms were driven by a combination of internal violence, international condemnation, changes within the National Party's constituency, and changing demographics – whites constituted only 16% of the total population, in comparison to 20% fifty years earlier.

In 1983, a new constitution was passed implementing what was called the Tricameral Parliament, giving Coloureds and Indians voting rights and parliamentary representation in separate houses – the House of Assembly (178 members) for Whites, the House of Representatives (85 members) for Coloureds and the House of Delegates (45 members) for Indians. Each House handled laws pertaining to its racial group's "own affairs", including health, education and other community issues. All laws relating to "general affairs" (matters such as defence, industry, taxation and Black affairs) were handled by a Cabinet made up of representatives from all three houses. However, the White chamber had a large majority on this Cabinet, ensuring that effective control of the country remained in the hands of the White minority. Blacks, although making up the majority of the population, were excluded from representation; they remained nominal citizens of their homelands. The first Tricameral elections were largely boycotted by Coloured and Indian voters, amid widespread rioting.

Reforms and contact with the ANC under Botha

Concerned over the popularity of Mandela, Botha denounced him as an arch-Marxist committed to violent revolution, but to appease Black opinion and nurture Mandela as a benevolent leader of Blacks, the government transferred him from the maximum security Robben Island to the lower security Pollsmoor Prison just outside Cape Town; where prison life was more comfortable for him. The government allowed Mandela more visitors, including visits and interviews by foreigners, to let the world know that he was being treated well.

Black homelands were declared nation-states and pass laws were abolished. Black labour unions were legitimised, the government recognised the right of Blacks to live in urban areas permanently and gave Blacks property rights there. Interest was expressed in rescinding the law against interracial marriage and also rescinding the law against sexual relations between different races, which was under ridicule abroad. The spending for Black schools increased, to one-seventh of what was spent per white child, up from on one-sixteenth in 1968. At the same time, attention was given to strengthening the effectiveness of the police apparatus.

In January 1985, Botha addressed the government's House of Assembly and stated that the government was willing to release Mandela on condition that Mandela pledge opposition to acts of violence to further political objectives. Mandela's reply was read in public by his daughter Zinzi – his first words distributed publicly since his sentence to prison 21 years earlier. Mandela described violence as the responsibility of the apartheid regime and said that with democracy there would be no need for violence. The crowd listening to the reading of his speech erupted in cheers and chants. This response helped to further elevate Mandela's status in the eyes of those, both internationally and domestically, who opposed apartheid.

Between 1986 and 1988, some petty apartheid laws were repealed, along with the pass laws. Botha told White South Africans to "adapt or die" and twice he wavered on the eve of what were billed as "rubicon" announcements of substantial reforms, although on both occasions he backed away from substantial changes. Ironically, these reforms served only to trigger intensified political violence through the remainder of the 1980s as more communities and political groups across the country joined the resistance movement. Botha's government stopped short of substantial reforms, such as lifting the ban on the ANC, PAC and SACP and other liberation organisations, releasing political prisoners, or repealing the foundation laws of grand apartheid. The government's stance was that they would not contemplate negotiating until those organisations "renounced violence".

By 1987, South Africa's economy was growing at one of the lowest rates in the world, and the ban on South African participation in international sporting events was frustrating many whites in South Africa. Examples of African states with Black leaders and White minorities existed in Kenya and Zimbabwe. Whispers of South Africa one day having a Black President sent more hardline whites into supporting right-wing political parties. Mandela was moved to a four-bedroom house of his own, with a swimming pool and shaded by fir trees, on a prison farm just outside of Cape Town. He had an unpublicised meeting with Botha. Botha impressed Mandela by walking forward, extending his hand and pouring Mandela's tea. The two had a friendly discussion, with Mandela comparing the African National Congress' rebellion with that of the Afrikaner rebellion and talking about everyone being brothers.

A number of clandestine meetings were held between the ANC-in-exile and various sectors of the internal struggle, such as women and educationalists. More overtly, a group of White intellectuals met the ANC in Senegal for talks known as the Dakar Conference.

Presidency of F. W. de Klerk

de Klerk and Mandela in Davos, 1992

Early in 1989, Botha suffered a stroke; he was prevailed upon to resign in February 1989. He was succeeded as president later that year by F. W. de Klerk. Despite his initial reputation as a conservative, de Klerk moved decisively towards negotiations to end the political stalemate in the country. Prior to his term in office, F. W. de Klerk had already experienced political success as a result of the power base he had built in the Transvaal. During this time, F. W. de Klerk served as chairman to the provincial National Party, which was in favour of the Apartheid regime. The transition of de Klerk's ideology regarding apartheid is seen clearly in his opening address to parliament on 2 February 1990. F. W. de Klerk announced that he would repeal discriminatory laws and lift the 30-year ban on leading anti-apartheid groups such as the African National Congress, the Pan Africanist Congress, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the United Democratic Front. The Land Act was brought to an end. F. W. de Klerk also made his first public commitment to release Nelson Mandela, to return to press freedom and to suspend the death penalty. Media restrictions were lifted and political prisoners not guilty of common law crimes were released.

On 11 February 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from Victor Verster Prison after more than 27 years behind bars.

Having been instructed by the UN Security Council to end its long-standing involvement in South West Africa/Namibia, and in the face of military stalemate in Southern Angola, and an escalation in the size and cost of the combat with the Cubans, the Angolans, and SWAPO forces and the growing cost of the border war, South Africa negotiated a change of control; Namibia became independent on 21 March 1990.

Negotiations

Apartheid was dismantled in a series of negotiations from 1990 to 1991, culminating in a transitional period which resulted in the country's 1994 general election, the first in South Africa held with universal suffrage.

In 1990, negotiations were earnestly begun, with two meetings between the government and the ANC. The purpose of the negotiations was to pave the way for talks towards a peaceful transition towards majority rule. These meetings were successful in laying down the preconditions for negotiations, despite the considerable tensions still abounding within the country. Apartheid legislation was abolished in 1991.

At the first meeting, the NP and ANC discussed the conditions for negotiations to begin. The meeting was held at Groote Schuur, the President's official residence. They released the Groote Schuur Minute, which said that before negotiations commenced political prisoners would be freed and all exiles allowed to return.

There were fears that the change of power would be violent. To avoid this, it was essential that a peaceful resolution between all parties be reached. In December 1991, the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) began negotiations on the formation of a multiracial transitional government and a new constitution extending political rights to all groups. CODESA adopted a Declaration of Intent and committed itself to an "undivided South Africa".

Reforms and negotiations to end apartheid led to a backlash among the right-wing White opposition, leading to the Conservative Party winning a number of by-elections against NP candidates. De Klerk responded by calling a Whites-only referendum in March 1992 to decide whether negotiations should continue. 68% voted in favour, and the victory instilled in de Klerk and the government a lot more confidence, giving the NP a stronger position in negotiations.

When negotiations resumed in May 1992, under the tag of CODESA II, stronger demands were made. The ANC and the government could not reach a compromise on how power should be shared during the transition to democracy. The NP wanted to retain a strong position in a transitional government, and the power to change decisions made by parliament.

Persistent violence added to the tension during the negotiations. This was due mostly to the intense rivalry between the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the ANC and the eruption of some traditional tribal and local rivalries between the Zulu and Xhosa historical tribal affinities, especially in the Southern Natal provinces. Although Mandela and Buthelezi met to settle their differences, they could not stem the violence. One of the worst cases of ANC-IFP violence was the Boipatong massacre of 17 June 1992, when 200 IFP militants attacked the Gauteng township of Boipatong, killing 45. Witnesses said that the men had arrived in police vehicles, supporting claims that elements within the police and army contributed to the ongoing violence. Subsequent judicial inquiries found the evidence of the witnesses to be unreliable or discredited, and that there was no evidence of National Party or police involvement in the massacre. When de Klerk visited the scene of the incident he was initially warmly welcomed, but he was suddenly confronted by a crowd of protesters brandishing stones and placards. The motorcade sped from the scene as police tried to hold back the crowd. Shots were fired by the police, and the PAC stated that three of its supporters had been gunned down. Nonetheless, the Boipatong massacre offered the ANC a pretext to engage in brinkmanship. Mandela argued that de Klerk, as head of state, was responsible for bringing an end to the bloodshed. He also accused the South African police of inciting the ANC-IFP violence. This formed the basis for ANC's withdrawal from the negotiations, and the CODESA forum broke down completely at this stage.

The Bisho massacre on 7 September 1992 brought matters to a head. The Ciskei Defence Force killed 29 people and injured 200 when they opened fire on ANC marchers demanding the reincorporation of the Ciskei homeland into South Africa. In the aftermath, Mandela and de Klerk agreed to meet to find ways to end the spiralling violence. This led to a resumption of negotiations.

Right-wing violence also added to the hostilities of this period. The assassination of Chris Hani on 10 April 1993 threatened to plunge the country into chaos. Hani, the popular General Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP), was assassinated in 1993 in Dawn Park in Johannesburg by Janusz Waluś, an anti-Communist Polish refugee who had close links to the White nationalist Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB). Hani enjoyed widespread support beyond his constituency in the SACP and ANC and had been recognised as a potential successor to Mandela; his death brought forth protests throughout the country and across the international community, but ultimately proved a turning point, after which the main parties pushed for a settlement with increased determination. On 25 June 1993, the AWB used an armoured vehicle to crash through the doors of the Kempton Park World Trade Centre where talks were still going ahead under the Negotiating Council, though this did not derail the process.

In addition to the continuing "black-on-black" violence, there were a number of attacks on white civilians by the PAC's military wing, the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA). The PAC was hoping to strengthen their standing by attracting the support of the angry, impatient youth. In the St James Church massacre on 25 July 1993, members of the APLA opened fire in a church in Cape Town, killing 11 members of the congregation and wounding 58.

In 1993, de Klerk and Mandela were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa".

Violence persisted right up to the 1994 general election. Lucas Mangope, leader of the Bophuthatswana homeland, declared that it would not take part in the elections. It had been decided that, once the temporary constitution had come into effect, the homelands would be incorporated into South Africa, but Mangope did not want this to happen. There were strong protests against his decision, leading to a coup d'état in Bophuthatswana on 10 March that deposed Mangope, despite the intervention of white right-wingers hoping to maintain him in power. Three AWB militants were killed during this intervention, and harrowing images were shown on national television and in newspapers across the world.

Two days before the election, a car bomb exploded in Johannesburg, killing nine people. The day before the elections, another one went off, injuring 13. At midnight on 26–27 April 1994 the old flag was lowered, and the old (now co-official) national anthem Die Stem ("The Call") was sung, followed by the raising of the new rainbow flag and singing of the other co-official anthem, Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika ("God Bless Africa").

1994 election

The new multicoloured flag of South Africa adopted in 1994 to mark the end of Apartheid

The election was held on 27 April 1994 and went off peacefully throughout the country as 20,000,000 South Africans cast their votes. There was some difficulty in organising the voting in rural areas, but people waited patiently for many hours to vote amidst a palpable feeling of goodwill. An extra day was added to give everyone the chance. International observers agreed that the elections were free and fair. The European Union's report on the election compiled at the end of May 1994, published two years after the election, criticised the Independent Electoral Commission's lack of preparedness for the polls, the shortages of voting materials at many voting stations, and the absence of effective safeguards against fraud in the counting process. In particular, it expressed disquiet that "no international observers had been allowed to be present at the crucial stage of the count when party representatives negotiated over disputed ballots." This meant that both the electorate and the world were "simply left to guess at the way the final result was achieved."

The ANC won 62.65% of the vote, less than the 66.7 percent that would have allowed it to rewrite the constitution. 252 of the 400 seats went to members of the African National Congress. The NP captured most of the White and Coloured votes and became the official opposition party. As well as deciding the national government, the election decided the provincial governments, and the ANC won in seven of the nine provinces, with the NP winning in the Western Cape and the IFP in KwaZulu-Natal. On 10 May 1994, Mandela was sworn in as the new President of South Africa. The Government of National Unity was established, its cabinet made up of 12 ANC representatives, six from the NP, and three from the IFP. Thabo Mbeki and de Klerk were made deputy presidents.

The anniversary of the elections, 27 April, is celebrated as a public holiday known as Freedom Day.

Contrition

The following individuals, who had previously supported apartheid, made public apologies:

  • F. W. de Klerk: "I apologise in my capacity as leader of the NP to the millions who suffered wrenching disruption of forced removals; who suffered the shame of being arrested for pass law offences; who over the decades suffered the indignities and humiliation of racial discrimination."
  • Marthinus van Schalkwyk: "The National Party brought development to a section of South Africa, but also brought suffering through a system grounded on injustice", in a statement shortly after the National Party voted to disband.
  • Adriaan Vlok washed the feet of apartheid victim Frank Chikane in an act of apology for the wrongs of the Apartheid regime.
  • Leon Wessels: "I am now more convinced than ever that apartheid was a terrible mistake that blighted our land. South Africans did not listen to the laughing and the crying of each other. I am sorry that I had been so hard of hearing for so long".

International legal, political, and social uses of the term

The South African experience has given rise to the term "apartheid" being used in a number of contexts other than the South African system of racial segregation. For example: The "crime of apartheid" is defined in international law, including in the 2007 law that created the International Criminal Court (ICC), which names it as a crime against humanity. Even before the creation of the ICC, the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid of the United Nations, which came into force in 1976, enshrined into law the "crime of apartheid."

The term apartheid has been adopted by Palestinian rights advocates and by leading Israeli and other human rights organizations, referring to occupation in the West Bank, legal treatment of illegal settlements and the West Bank barrier. Within the pre-1967 Israeli borders, Palestinian rights advocates have raised concern over "discriminatory" housing planning against Palestinian citizens of Israel, likening it to "racial segregation".

Social apartheid is segregation on the basis of class or economic status. For example, social apartheid in Brazil refers to the various aspects of economic inequality in Brazil. Social apartheid may fall into various categories. Economic and social discrimination because of gender is sometimes referred to as gender apartheid. Separation of people according to their religion, whether pursuant to official laws or pursuant to social expectations, is sometimes referred to as religious apartheid. The treatment of non-Muslims and women by the Saudi rulers has been called apartheid.

The concept in occupational therapy that individuals, groups and communities can be deprived of meaningful and purposeful activity through segregation due to social, political, economic factors and for social status reasons, such as race, disability, age, gender, sexuality, religious preference, political preference, or creed, or due to war conditions, is sometimes known as occupational apartheid.

A 2007 book by Harriet A. Washington on the history of medical experimentation on African Americans is entitled Medical Apartheid.

The disproportionate management and control of the world's economy and resources by countries and companies of the Global North has been referred to as global apartheid. A related phenomenon is technological apartheid, a term used to describe the denial of modern technologies to Third World or developing nations. The last two examples use the term "apartheid" less literally since they are centered on relations between countries, not on disparate treatment of social populations within a country or political jurisdiction.

Tuesday, July 13, 2021

White privilege

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the study of white privilege and its broader field of whiteness studies, both pioneered in the United States, academic perspectives such as critical race theory use the concept to analyze how racism and racialized societies affect the lives of white or white-skinned people. For example, American academic Peggy McIntosh described the advantages that whites in Western societies enjoy and non-whites do not experience as "an invisible package of unearned assets". White privilege denotes both obvious and less obvious passive advantages that white people may not recognize they have, which distinguishes it from overt bias or prejudice. These include cultural affirmations of one's own worth; presumed greater social status; and freedom to move, buy, work, play, and speak freely. The effects can be seen in professional, educational, and personal contexts. The concept of white privilege also implies the right to assume the universality of one's own experiences, marking others as different or exceptional while perceiving oneself as normal.

Some scholars say that the term uses the concept of "whiteness" as a proxy for class or other social privilege or as a distraction from deeper underlying problems of inequality. Others state that it is not that whiteness is a proxy but that many other social privileges are interconnected with it, requiring complex and careful analysis to identify how whiteness contributes to privilege. Other commentators propose alternative definitions of whiteness and exceptions to or limits of white identity, arguing that the concept of white privilege ignores important differences between white subpopulations and individuals and suggesting that the notion of whiteness cannot be inclusive of all white people. They note the problem of acknowledging the diversity of people of color and ethnicity within these groups.

Some commentators have observed that the "academic-sounding concept of white privilege" sometimes elicits defensiveness and misunderstanding among white people, in part due to how the concept of white privilege was rapidly brought into the mainstream spotlight through social media campaigns such as Black Lives Matter. As an academic concept that was only recently brought into the mainstream, the concept of white privilege is frequently misinterpreted by non-academics; some academics, having studied white privilege undisturbed for decades, have been surprised by the seemingly sudden hostility from right-wing critics since approximately 2014.

Definition

White privilege is a social phenomenon intertwined with race and racism. The American Anthropological Association states that, "The 'racial' worldview was invented to assign some groups to perpetual low status, while others were permitted access to privilege, power, and wealth." Although the definition of "white privilege" has been somewhat fluid, it is generally agreed to refer to the implicit or systemic advantages that people who are deemed white have relative to people who are not deemed white. Not having to experience suspicion and other adverse reactions to one's race is also often termed a type of white privilege.

The term is used in discussions focused on the mostly hidden benefits that white people possess in a society where racism is prevalent and whiteness is considered normal, rather than on the detriments to people who are the objects of racism. As such, most definitions and discussions of the concept use as a starting point McIntosh's metaphor of the "invisible backpack" that white people unconsciously "wear" in a society where racism is prevalent.

History

European colonialism

European colonialism, involving some of the earliest significant contacts of Europeans with indigenous peoples, was crucial in the foundation and development of white privilege. Academics, such as Charles V. Hamilton, have explored how modern-era European-organized slavery, beginning with Portugal in the 15th century and culminating in the British Empire and slavery in the United States, began a centuries-long progression of white privilege and non-white subjugation. Sociologist Bob Blauner has proposed that this era of European colonialism was the height, or most extreme version, of white privilege in history.

In British abolitionist and MP James Stephen's 1824 The Slavery of the British West Indies, while examining the racist colonial laws denying African slaves the ability to give evidence in West Indian jury trials; Stephen makes a clarifying distinction between masters, slaves, and "free persons not possessing the privilege of a white skin".

In historian William Miller Macmillan's 1929 The Frontier and the Kaffir Wars, 1792–1836, he describes the motivations of Afrikaner settlers to embark upon the Great Trek as an attempt to preserve their racial privilege over indigenous Khoisan people; "It was primarily land hunger and a determination to uphold white privilege that drove the Trekkers out of the colony in their hundreds". Cape Colony was administered by the British Empire. Their increasingly anti-slavery policies were seen as a threat by the Dutch-speaking settlers, who were afraid of losing their African and Asian slaves and their superior status as people of European descent. In 1932, Zaire Church News, a missionary publication in the Zaire area, confronted white privilege's impact from the European colonization of central and southern Africa, and its effects on black people's progress in the region:

In these respects the ambitions of profit-seeking Europeans, individually and especially corporately, may become prejudicial to the educational advance of the Congo people, just as white privilege and ambition have militated against Bantu progress on more than one occasion in South Africa.

Scholar João Ferreira Duarte, in his jointedly written Europe in Black and White, has examined colonialism in relation to white privilege, suggesting its legacy continues "to imprint the privilege of whiteness onto the new map of Europe", but also "sustain the political fortification of Europe as a hegemonic white space".

Early 20th-century

A nicer water fountain for whites next to one for colored people in North Carolina (exhibited in Levine Museum of the New South).

An address on Social Equities, from a 1910 National Council of the Congregational Churches of the United States publication, demonstrates some of the earliest terminology developing in the concept of white skin privilege:

What infinite cruelties and injustices have been practiced by men who believed that to have a white skin constituted special privilege and who reckoned along with the divine rights of kings the divine rights of the white! We are all glad to take up the white man's burden if that burden carries with it the privilege of asserting the white man's superiority, of exploiting the man of lesser breed, and making him know and keep his place.

In his 1935 Black Reconstruction in America, W. E. B. Du Bois introduced the concept of a "psychological wage" for white laborers. He wrote that this special status divided the labor movement by leading low-wage white workers to feel superior to low-wage black workers. Du Bois identified white supremacy as a global phenomenon affecting the social conditions across the world through colonialism. For instance, Du Bois wrote:

It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers specialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored the Negro except in crime and ridicule.

In a 1942 edition of Modern Review magazine, Ramananda Chatterjee accused Winston Churchill of hypocritical policy positions, in his support, as Chatterjee viewed it, of racial equality in the UK and US but not in British India; "Mr Churchill can support white privilege and monopoly in India whilst opposing privilege and monopoly on both sides of the Atlantic." In 1943, during World War II, sociologist Alfred McClung Lee's Race Riot, Detroit 1943 addressed the "Nazi-like guarantee of white privilege" in American society:

White Americans might well ask themselves: Why do whites need so many special advantages in their competition with Negroes? Similar tactics for the elimination of Jewish competition in Nazi Germany brought the shocked condemnation of the civilized world.

US civil rights movement

In the United States, inspired by the civil rights movement, Theodore W. Allen began a 40-year analysis of "white skin privilege", "white race" privilege, and "white" privilege in a call he drafted for a "John Brown Commemoration Committee" that urged "White Americans who want government of the people" and "by the people" to "begin by first repudiating their white skin privileges". The pamphlet "White Blindspot", containing one essay by Allen and one by historian Noel Ignatiev, was published in the late 1960s. It focused on the struggle against "white skin privilege" and significantly influenced the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and sectors of the New Left. By June 15, 1969, the New York Times reported that the National Office of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was calling "for an all-out fight against 'white skin privileges'". From 1974 to 1975, Allen extended his analysis to the colonial period, leading to the publication of "Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race" (1975), which ultimately grew into his two-volume The Invention of the White Race in 1994 and 1997.

In his work, Allen maintained several points: that the "white race" was invented as a ruling class social control formation in the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Anglo-American plantation colonies (principally Virginia and Maryland); that central to this process was the ruling-class plantation bourgeoisie conferring "white race" privileges on European-American working people; that these privileges were not only against the interests of African-Americans, they were also "poison", "ruinous", a baited hook, to the class interests of working people; that white supremacy, reinforced by the "white skin privilege", has been the main retardant of working-class consciousness in the US; and that struggle for radical social change should direct principal efforts at challenging white supremacy and "white skin privileges". Though Allen's work influenced Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and sectors of the "new left" and paved the way for "white privilege" and "race as social construct" study, and though he appreciated much of the work that followed, he also raised important questions about developments in those areas.

In newspapers and public discourse across the United States in the 1960s, the term "white privilege" was often used to describe white areas under conditions of residential segregation. These and other uses grew out of the era of legal discrimination against Black Americans, and reflected the idea that white status could continue despite formal equality. In the 1990s, the term came back into public discourse, such as in Robert Jensen's 1998 opinion piece in the Baltimore Sun, titled "White privilege shapes the U.S."

Study of the concept

The concept of white privilege also came to be used within radical circles for self-criticism by anti-racist whites. For instance, a 1975 article in Lesbian Tide criticized the American feminist movement for exhibiting "class privilege" and "white privilege". Weather Underground leader Bernardine Dohrn, in a 1977 Lesbian Tide article, wrote: "... by assuming that I was beyond white privilege or allying with male privilege because I understood it, I prepared and led the way for a totally opportunist direction which infected all of our work and betrayed revolutionary principles."

In the late 1980s, the term gained new popularity in academic circles and public discourse after Peggy McIntosh's 1987 essay "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack". In this essay, McIntosh described white privilege as "an invisible weightless knapsack of assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank checks", and also discussed the relationships between different social hierarchies in which experiencing oppression in one hierarchy did not negate unearned privilege experienced in another. In later years, the theory of intersectionality also gained prominence, with black feminists like Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw arguing that black women experienced a different type of oppression from male privilege distinct from that experienced by white women because of white privilege. The essay is still routinely cited as a key influence by later generations of academics and journalists.

In 2003, Ella Bell and Stella Nkomo noted that "most scholars of race relations embrace the use of [the concept] white privilege". The same year, sociologists in the American Mosaic Project at the University of Minnesota reported that in the United States there was a widespread belief that "prejudice and discrimination [in favor of whites] create a form of white privilege." According to their poll, this view was affirmed by 59% of white respondents, 83% of Blacks, and 84% of Hispanics.

21st-century popular culture

White privilege as a concept marked its transition from academia to more mainstream prominence through social media in the early 2010s, especially in 2014, a year in which Black Lives Matter formed into a major movement and the word "hashtag" itself was added to Merriam-Webster. Brandt and Kizer, in their article "From Street to Tweet" (2015), discuss the American public's perception of the concept of privilege in mainstream culture, including white privilege, as being influenced by social media.

Hua Hsu, a Vassar College professor of English, opened his The New Yorker review of the 2015 MTV film White People with the remark: "like the robot in a movie slowly discovering that it is, indeed, a robot, it feels as though we are living in the moment when white people, on a generational scale, have become self-aware". Noting that "white people have begun to understand themselves in the explicit terms of identity politics, long the province of those on the margins", Hsu ascribes this change in self-awareness to a generational change, "one of strange byproducts of the Obama era". Hsu writes that discourse on the nature of whiteness "isn't a new discussion, by any means, but it has never seemed quite so animated".

The film White People itself, produced and directed by Pulitzer Prize winner Jose Antonio Vargas, is a documentary that follows a variety of white teenagers who express their honest thoughts and feelings about their whiteness on-camera, as well as their opinions on white privilege. During one moment of the film, Vargas interviews a white community college student, Katy, who attributes her inability to land a college scholarship to reverse racism against white people, before Vargas points out that white students are "40 percent more likely to receive merit-based funding". In one review of the film, a Daily Beast writer interviews Ronnie Cho, the head of MTV Public Affairs, who acknowledges "young people as the engine behind social change and awareness", and therefore would be more likely to talk about white privilege, but also notes that at the same time, millennials (with some overlap with Generation Z) form "a generation that maybe were raised with noble aspirations to be color blind". Ronnie Cho then asserts these aspirations "may not be very helpful if we ignore difference. The color of our skin does matter, and impacts how the world interacts with us." Later in the same review, writer Amy Zimmerman notes that "white people often don't feel a pressing need to talk about race, because they don't experience it as racism and oppression, and therefore hardly experience it at all. Checking privilege is an act of self-policing for white Americans; comparatively, black Americans are routinely over-checked by the literal police."

In January 2016, hip-hop group Macklemore and Ryan Lewis released "White Privilege II", a single from their album This Unruly Mess I've Made, in which Macklemore raps about his struggle to find his place in the Black Lives Matter protest movement, conscious that his commercial success in hip hop is at least partially a product of white privilege, and his criticism of defensive responses to white privilege. He also says that other white performers have profited immensely from cultural appropriation of black culture, such as Iggy Azalea, though Forrest Wickman, writing for Slate, observes that the line supposedly accusing Azalea of "heisting the magic" is really a self-criticism: The Heist was Macklemore and Ryan Lewis' debut album. Wickman states that "White Privilege II" is not "a great song, but as a think piece it's not terrible" and praises Macklemore for "giving Black Lives Matter protesters (along with up-and-coming singer Jamila Woods) the last word." Spencer Kornhaber, a reviewer for The Atlantic, calls the song "brave" and "both a statement ... and a demonstration" and writes that Macklemore "spotlights the voices of actual black activists". He also criticizes the song for "forgoing metaphor or ambiguity or impressionism". More critically, Kris Ex of Pitchfork Media called the song a "mess", saying that it's "too much to work as hit and not enough to work as a piece of agitprop."

According to Fredrik deBoer, it is a popular trend for white people to willingly claim self-acknowledgement of their white privilege online. deBoer criticized this practice as promoting self-regard and not solving any actual inequalities. Michael J. Monahana argues that the rhetoric of privilege "obscures as much as it illuminates" and that we "would be better served by beginning with a more sophisticated understanding of racist oppression as systemic, and of individual agents as constitutively implicated in that system."

Applications in critical theory

Critical race theory

The concept of white privilege has been studied by theorists of whiteness studies seeking to examine the construction and moral implications of 'whiteness'. There is often overlap between critical whiteness and race theories, as demonstrated by focus on the legal and historical construction of white identity, and the use of narratives (whether legal discourse, testimony or fiction) as a tool for exposing systems of racial power. Fields such as history and cultural studies are primarily responsible for the formative scholarship of critical whiteness studies.

Critical race theorists such as Cheryl Harris and George Lipsitz have said that "whiteness" has historically been treated more as a form of property than as a racial characteristic: in other words, as an object which has intrinsic value that must be protected by social and legal institutions. Laws and mores concerning race (from apartheid and Jim Crow constructions that legally separate different races to social prejudices against interracial relationships or mixed communities) serve the purpose of retaining certain advantages and privileges for whites. Because of this, academic and societal ideas about race have tended to focus solely on the disadvantages suffered by racial minorities, overlooking the advantageous effects that accrue to whites.

Eric Arnesen, an American labor historian, reviewed papers from a whiteness studies perspective published in his field in the 1990s, and found that the concept of whiteness was used so broadly during that time period that it wasn't useful.

Whiteness unspoken

From another perspective, white privilege is a way of conceptualizing racial inequalities that focuses on advantages that white people accrue from their position in society as well as the disadvantages that non-white people experience. This same idea is brought to light by Peggy McIntosh, who wrote about white privilege from the perspective of a white individual. McIntosh states in her writing that, "as a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege which puts me at an advantage". To back this assertion, McIntosh notes a myriad of conditions in her article in which racial inequalities occur to favor whites, from renting or buying a home in a given area without suspicion of one's financial standing, to purchasing bandages in "flesh" color that closely matches a white person's skin tone. She further asserts that she sees

a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions which were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turf, and I was among those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways, and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.

Unjust enrichment

Lawrence Blum refers to advantages for white people as "unjust enrichment" privileges, in which white people benefit from the injustices done to people of color, and he articulates that such privileges are deeply rooted in the U.S. culture and lifestyle:

When Blacks are denied access to desirable homes, for example, this is not just an injustice to Blacks but a positive benefit to Whites who now have a wider range of domicile options than they would have if Blacks had equal access to housing. When urban schools do a poor job of educating their Latino/a and Black students, this benefits Whites in the sense that it unjustly advantages them in the competition for higher levels of education and jobs. Whites in general cannot avoid benefiting from the historical legacy of racial discrimination and oppression. So unjust enrichment is almost never absent from the life situation of Whites.

Spared injustice

A protester holds a sign reading "They don't shoot white women like me" at a Black Lives Matter protest in the wake of the non-indictment of a New York City police officer for the death of Eric Garner

In Blum's analysis of the underlying structure of white privilege, "spared injustice" is when a person of color suffers an unjust treatment while a white person does not. His example of this is when "a Black person is stopped by the police without due cause but a White person is not". He identifies "unjust enrichment" privileges as those for which whites are spared the injustice of a situation, and in turn, are benefiting from the injustice of others. For instance, "if police are too focused on looking for Black lawbreakers, they might be less vigilant toward White ones, conferring an unjust enrichment benefit on Whites who do break the laws but escape detection for this reason."

Privileges not related to injustice

Blum describes "non-injustice-related" privileges as those which are not associated with injustices experienced by people of color, but relate to a majority group's advantages over a minority group. Those who are in the majority, usually white people, gain "unearned privileges not founded on injustice." According to Blum, in workplace cultures there tends to be a partly ethnocultural character, so that some ethnic or racial groups' members find them more comfortable than do others.

Framing racial inequality

Dan J. Pence and J. Arthur Fields have observed resistance in the context of education to the idea that white privilege of this type exists, and suggest this resistance stems from a tendency to see inequality as a black or Latino issue. One report noted that white students often react to in-class discussions about white privilege with a continuum of behaviors ranging from outright hostility to a "wall of silence". A pair of studies on a broader population by Branscombe et al. found that framing racial issues in terms of white privilege as opposed to non-white disadvantages can produce a greater degree of racially biased responses from whites who have higher levels of racial identification. Branscombe et al. demonstrate that framing racial inequality in terms of the privileges of whites increased levels of white guilt among white respondents. Those with high racial identification were more likely to give responses which concurred with modern racist attitudes than those with low racial identification. According to the studies' authors, these findings suggest that representing inequality in terms of outgroup disadvantage allows privileged group members to avoid the negative implications of inequality.

A 2019 study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology had socially liberal people read about white privilege, and then read about a poor person who was either black or white. They found that reading about white privilege did not increase empathy for either, and decreased it if the person was white. One of the study's authors said that this demonstrates the importance of nuance, and recognizing individual differences, when teaching about white privilege.

White privilege pedagogy

White privilege pedagogy has been influential in multicultural education, teacher training, ethnic and gender studies, sociology, psychology, political science, American studies, and social work education.

Several scholars have raised questions about the focus on white privilege in efforts to combat racism in educational settings. Lawrence Blum says that the approach suffers from a failure to distinguish between factors such as "spared injustice" and "unjust enrichment".

White fragility

Robin DiAngelo coined the term "white fragility" in the early 2010s, later releasing her 2018 book White Fragility. She has said that "white privilege can be thought of as unstable racial equilibrium", and that when this equilibrium is challenged, the resulting racial stress can become intolerable and trigger a range of defensive responses. DiAngelo defines these behaviors as white fragility. For example, DiAngelo observed in her studies that some white people, when confronted with racial issues concerning white privilege, may respond with dismissal, distress, or other defensive responses because they may feel personally implicated in white supremacy. Elsewhere, it has been summarized as "the trademark inability of white Americans to meaningfully own their unearned privilege".

DiAngelo also writes that white privilege is very rarely discussed and that even multicultural education courses tend to use vocabulary that further obfuscates racial privilege and defines race as something that only concerns blacks. She suggests using loaded terminology with negative connotations to people of color adds to the cycle of white privilege.

It is far more the norm for these courses and programs to use racially coded language such as 'urban,' 'inner city,' and 'disadvantaged' but to rarely use 'white' or 'overadvantaged' or 'privileged.' This racially coded language reproduces racist images and perspectives while it simultaneously reproduces the comfortable illusion that race and its problems are what 'they' have, not us.

She does say, however, that defensiveness and discomfort from white people in response to being confronted with racial issues is not irrational but rather is often driven by subconscious, sometimes even well-meaning, attitudes toward racism. In a book review, Washington Post critic Carlos Lozada said that the book presents self-fulfilling and oversimplified arguments, and "flattens people of any ancestry into two-dimensional beings fitting predetermined narratives".

White backlash

White backlash, the negative reaction of some white people to the advancement of non-whites, has been described as a possible response to the societal examination of white privilege, or to the perceived actual or hypothetical loss of that racial privilege.

A 2015 Valparaiso University journal article by DePaul University professor Terry Smith titled "White Backlash in a Brown Country" suggests that backlash results from threats to white privilege: "White backlash—the adverse reaction of whites to the progress of members of a non-dominant group—is symptomatic of a condition created by the gestalt of white privilege". Drawing on political scientist Danielle Allen's analysis that demographic shifts "provoke resistance from those whose well-being, status and self-esteem are connected to historical privileges of 'whiteness'", Smith explored the interconnectivity of the concepts:

The hallmark of addiction is "protection of one's source." The same is true of backlash. The linear model of equality drastically underestimates the lengths to which people accustomed to certain privileges will go to protect them. It assigns to white Americans a preternatural ability to adapt to change and see their fellow citizens of color as equal.

In Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America, philosopher George Yancy expands on the concept of white backlash as an extreme response to loss of privilege, suggesting that DiAngelo's white fragility is a subtle form of defensiveness in comparison to the visceral racism and threats of violence that Yancy has examined.

Global

White privilege functions differently in different places. A person's white skin will not be an asset to them in every conceivable place or situation. White people are also a global minority, and this fact affects the experiences they have outside of their home areas. Nevertheless, some people who use the term "white privilege" describe it as a worldwide phenomenon, resulting from the history of colonialism by white Western Europeans. One author states that American white men are privileged almost everywhere in the world, even though many countries have never been colonized by Western Europeans.

In some accounts, global white privilege is related to American exceptionalism and hegemony.

Africa

Namibia

The apartheid system in Namibia created the legal environment for establishing and maintaining white privilege. The segregation of peoples both preserved racial privileges and hindered unitary nation building. In the period of years during the negotiation of Namibian independence, the country's administration, which was dominated by white Namibians, held control of power. In a 1981 NYT analysis, Joseph Lelyveld reported how measures which would challenge white privilege in the country were disregarded, and how politicians, such as Dirk Mudge, ignoring the policy of racial privilege, faced electoral threats from the black majority. In 1988, two years before the country's independence, Frene Ginwala suggested that there was a general refusal to acknowledge the oppression of black women in the country, by the white women who, according to Ginwala, had enjoyed the white privilege of apartheid.

Research conducted by the Journal of Southern African Studies in 2008 has investigated how white privilege is generationally passed on, with particular focus on the descendants of German Namibians, who arrived in the 1950s and 1960s. In 2010, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies further analyzed white privilege in post-colonial Namibia.

South Africa

Registration certificate identifies a person as white

White privilege was legally enshrined in South Africa through apartheid. Apartheid was institutionalized in 1948 and lasted formally into the early 1990s. Under apartheid, racial privilege was not only socially meaningful—it became bureaucratically regulated. Laws such as the 1950 Population Registration Act established criteria to officially classify South Africans by race: White, Indian, Coloured (mixed), or Black.

Many scholars say that 'whiteness' still corresponds to a set of social advantages in South Africa, and conventionally refer to these advantages as "white privilege". The system of white privilege applies both to the way a person is treated by others and to a set of behaviors, affects, and thoughts, which can be learned and reinforced. These elements of "whiteness" establish social status and guarantee advantages for some people, without directly relying on skin color or other aspects of a person's appearance. White privilege in South Africa has small-scale effects, such as preferential treatment for people who appear white in public, and large-scale effects, such as the over five-fold difference in average per-capita income for people identified as white or black.

"Afrikaner whiteness" has also been described as a partially subordinate identity, relative to the British Empire and Boerehaat (a type of prejudice towards Afrikaners), "disgraced" further by the end of apartheid. Some fear that white South Africans suffer from "reverse racism" at the hands of the country's newly empowered majority, "Unfair" racial discrimination is prohibited by Section Nine of the Constitution of South Africa, and this section also allows for laws to be made to address "unfair discrimination". "Fair discrimination" is tolerated by subsection 5.

Asia

Japan

Academic Scott Kiesling's co-edited The Handbook of Intercultural Discourse and Communication suggested that white English speakers are privileged in their ability to gain employment teaching English at Eikaiwa schools in Japan, regardless of Japanese language skills or professional qualifications.

South Korea

White privilege has been analyzed in South Korea, and has been discussed as pervasive in Korean society. White residents, and tourists to the country, have been observed to be given special treatment, and, in particular, white Americans have been, at times, culturally venerated.

A 2006 study found that 40 percent of females in the country used skin whitening products, which professor Charles A. Gallagher described as serving as "a mark of beauty for women, a tangible asset that privileges those with lighter skin". Professor Helene K. Lee has noted that possessing mixed white and Korean heritage, or, specifically, its physical appearance, can afford a biracial individual white privilege in the country. In 2009, writer Jane Jeong Trenka wrote that, as an adoptee to a white family from the United States, it was easier for her to recognize its function in Korean culture.

The culture of US military camptowns in South Korea (a remnant of the Korean War) have been studied as a setting for white privilege, and an exacerbation of racial divides between white American and African American soldiers located on bases, as well as with local Korean people.

North America

Canada

In 2014, the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario received media coverage when it publicly advertised a workshop for educators about methods of teaching white privilege to students. "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" had become one of its most recommended teaching tools. During the 2014 Toronto mayoral election, then-candidate John Tory denied the existence of white privilege in a debate.

In 2019, the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences suspended a man from attending their annual meeting for three years for racially profiling a black Canadian scholar. The federation stated that it required the offender to demonstrate that he had taken measures to increase his awareness of white privilege before he would be allowed to attend any future congress.

Later in the year, a former First Nations in Manitoba grand chief stated how many indigenous Canadians perceived the court system of Canada to discriminate against them under the structure of white skin privilege. Journalist Gary Mason has suggested that the phenomenon is embedded within the culture of fraternities and sororities in Canada.

United States

Some scholars attribute white privilege, which they describe as informal racism, to the formal racism (i.e. slavery followed by Jim Crow) that existed for much of American history. In her book Privilege Revealed: How Invisible Preference Undermines America, Stephanie M. Wildman writes that many Americans who advocate a merit-based, race-free worldview do not acknowledge the systems of privilege which have benefited them. For example, many Americans rely on a social or financial inheritance from previous generations, an inheritance unlikely to be forthcoming if one's ancestors were slaves. Whites were sometimes afforded opportunities and benefits that were unavailable to others. In the middle of the 20th century, the government subsidized white homeownership through the Federal Housing Administration, but not homeownership by minorities. Some social scientists also suggest that the historical processes of suburbanization and decentralization are instances of white privilege that have contributed to contemporary patterns of environmental racism.

Wealth

According to Roderick Harrison "wealth is a measure of cumulative advantage or disadvantage" and "the fact that black and Hispanic wealth is a fraction of white wealth also reflects a history of discrimination". Whites have historically had more opportunities to accumulate wealth. Some of the institutions of wealth creation amongst American citizens were open exclusively to whites. Similar differentials applied to the Social Security Act (which excluded agricultural and domestic workers, sectors that then included most black workers), rewards to military officers, and the educational benefits offered to returning soldiers after World War II. An analyst of the phenomenon, Thomas Shapiro, professor of law and social policy at Brandeis University, says, "The wealth gap is not just a story of merit and achievement, it's also a story of the historical legacy of race in the United States."

Over the past 40 years, there has been less formal discrimination in America; the inequality in wealth between racial groups however, is still extant. George Lipsitz asserts that because wealthy whites were able to pass along their wealth in the form of inheritances and transformative assets (inherited wealth which lifts a family beyond their own achievements), white Americans on average continually accrue advantages. Pre-existing disparities in wealth are exacerbated by tax policies that reward investment over waged income, subsidize mortgages, and subsidize private sector developers.

Thomas Shapiro wrote that wealth is passed along from generation to generation, giving whites a better "starting point" in life than other races. According to Shapiro, many whites receive financial assistance from their parents allowing them to live beyond their income. This, in turn, enables them to buy houses and major assets which aid in the accumulation of wealth. Since houses in white neighborhoods appreciate faster, even African Americans who are able to overcome their "starting point" are unlikely to accumulate wealth as fast as whites. Shapiro asserts this is a continual cycle from which whites consistently benefit. These benefits also have effects on schooling and other life opportunities.

Employment and economics
Median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers, by sex, race, and ethnicity, U.S., 2009.

Racialized employment networks can benefit whites at the expense of non-white minorities. Asian-Americans, for example, although lauded as a "model minority", rarely rise to positions high in the workplace: only 8 of the Fortune 500 companies have Asian-American CEOs, making up 1.6% of CEO positions while Asian-Americans are 4.8% of the population. In a study published in 2003, sociologist Deirdre A. Royster compared black and white males who graduated from the same school with the same skills. In looking at their success with school-to-work transition and working experiences, she found that white graduates were more often employed in skilled trades, earned more, held higher status positions, received more promotions and experienced shorter periods of unemployment. Since all other factors were similar, the differences in employment experiences were attributed to race. Royster concluded that the primary cause of these racial differences was due to social networking. The concept of "who you know" seemed just as important to these graduates as "what you know".

According to the distinctiveness theory, posited by University of Kentucky professor Ajay Mehra and colleagues, people identify with other people who share similar characteristics which are otherwise rare in their environment; women identify more with women, whites with other whites. Because of this, Mehra finds that white males tend to be highly central in their social networks due to their numbers. Royster says that this assistance, disproportionately available to whites, is an advantage that often puts black men at a disadvantage in the employment sector. According to Royster, "these ideologies provide a contemporary deathblow to working-class black men's chances of establishing a foothold in the traditional trades."

This concept is similar to the theory created by Mark Granovetter which analyzes the importance of social networking and interpersonal ties with his paper "The Strength of Weak Ties" and his other economic sociology work.

Other research shows that there is a correlation between a person's name and his or her likelihood of receiving a call back for a job interview. Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan found in field experiment in Boston and Chicago that people with "white-sounding" names are 50% more likely to receive a call back than people with "black-sounding" names, despite equal résumé quality between the two racial groups. White Americans are more likely than black Americans to have their business loan applications approved, even when other factors such as credit records are comparable.

Black and Latino college graduates are less likely than white graduates to end up in a management position even when other factors such as age, experience, and academic records are similar.

Cheryl Harris relates whiteness to the idea of "racialized privilege" in the article "Whiteness as Property": she describes it as "a type of status in which white racial identity provided the basis for allocating societal benefits both private and public and character".

Daniel A. Farber and Suzanne Sherry argue that the proportion of Jews and Asians who are successful relative to the white male population poses an intractable puzzle for proponents of what they call "radical multiculturism", who they say overemphasize the role of sex and race in American society.

Housing

Discrimination in housing policies was formalized in 1934 under the Federal Housing Act which provided government credit to private lending for home buyers. Within the Act, the Federal Housing Agency had the authority to channel all the money to white home buyers instead of minorities.The FHA also channeled money away from inner-city neighborhoods after World War II and instead placed it in the hands of white home buyers who would move into segregated suburbs. These, and other, practices intensified attitudes of segregation and inequality.

The "single greatest source of wealth" for white Americans is the growth in value in their owner-occupied homes. The family wealth so generated is the most important contribution to wealth disparity between black and white Americans. It has been said that continuing discrimination in the mortgage industry perpetuates this inequality, not only for black homeowners who pay higher mortgage rates than their white counterparts, but also for those excluded entirely from the housing market by these factors, who are thus excluded from the financial benefits of both capital appreciation and the tax deductions associated with home ownership.

Brown, Carnoey and Oppenheimer, in "Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society", write that the financial inequities created by discriminatory housing practices also have an ongoing effect on young black families, since the net worth of one's parents is the best predictor of one's own net worth, so discriminatory financial policies of the past contribute to race-correlated financial inequities of today. For instance, it is said that even when income is controlled for, whites have significantly more wealth than blacks, and that this present fact is partially attributable to past federal financial policies that favored whites over blacks.

Education

According to Stephanie Wildman and Ruth Olson, education policies in the US have contributed to the construction and reinforcement of white privilege. Wildman says that even schools that appear to be integrated often segregate students based on abilities. This can increase white students' initial educational advantage, magnifying the "unequal classroom experience of African American students" and minorities.

Williams and Rivers (1972b) showed that test instructions in Standard English disadvantaged the black child and that if the language of the test is put in familiar labels without training or coaching, the child's performances on the tests increase significantly. According to Cadzen a child's language development should be evaluated in terms of his progress toward the norms for his particular speech community. Other studies using sentence repetition tasks found that, at both third and fifth grades, white subjects repeated Standard English sentences significantly more accurately than black subjects, while black subjects repeated nonstandard English sentences significantly more accurately than white subjects.

According to Janet E. Helms traditional psychological and academic assessment is based on skills that are considered important within white, western, middle-class culture, but which may not be salient or valued within African-American culture. When tests' stimuli are more culturally pertinent to the experiences of African Americans, performance improves. Critics of the concept of white privilege say that in K–12 education, students' academic progress is measured on nationwide standardized tests which reflect national standards.

African Americans are disproportionately sent to special education classes in their schools, and identified as being disruptive or suffering from a learning disability. These students are segregated for the majority of the school day, taught by uncertified teachers, and do not receive high school diplomas. Wanda Blanchett has said that white students have consistently privileged interactions with the special education system, which provides 'non-normal' whites with the resources they need to benefit from the mainline white educational structure.

Educational inequality is also a consequence of housing. Since most states determine school funding based on property taxes, schools in wealthier neighborhoods receive more funding per student. As home values in white neighborhoods are higher than minority neighborhoods, local schools receive more funding via property taxes. This will ensure better technology in predominantly white schools, smaller class sizes and better quality teachers, giving white students opportunities for a better education. The vast majority of schools placed on academic probation as part of district accountability efforts are majority African-American and low-income.

Inequalities in wealth and housing allow a higher proportion of white parents the option to move to better school districts or afford to put their children in private schools if they do not approve of the neighborhood's schools.

Some studies have claimed that minority students are less likely to be placed in honors classes, even when justified by test scores. Various studies have also claimed that visible minority students are more likely than white students to be suspended or expelled from school, even though rates of serious school rule violations do not differ significantly by race. Adult education specialist Elaine Manglitz says the educational system in America has deeply entrenched biases in favor of the white majority in evaluation, curricula, and power relations.

In discussing unequal test scores between public school students, opinion columnist Matt Rosenberg laments the Seattle Public Schools' emphasis on "institutional racism" and "white privilege":

The disparity is not simply a matter of color: School District data indicate income, English-language proficiency and home stability are also important correlates to achievement ... By promoting the "white privilege" canard and by designing a student indoctrination plan, the Seattle School District is putting retrograde, leftist politics ahead of academics, while the perpetrators of "white privilege" are minimizing the capabilities of minorities.

Conservative author Shelby Steele believes that the effects of white privilege are exaggerated, saying that blacks may incorrectly blame their personal failures on white oppression, and that there are many "minority privileges": "If I'm a black high school student today ... there are white American institutions, universities, hovering over me to offer me opportunities: Almost every institution has a diversity committee ... There is a hunger in this society to do right racially, to not be racist."

Anthony P. Carnevale and Jeff Strohl show that whites have a better opportunity at getting into selective schools, while African Americans and Hispanics usually end up going to open access schools and have a lower chance of receiving a bachelor's degree. In 2019, a National Bureau of Economic Research study found white privilege bias in Harvard University's application process for legacy admission.

Military

In a 2013 news story, Fox News reported, "A controversial 600-plus page manual used by the military to train its Equal Opportunity officers teaches that 'healthy, white, heterosexual, Christian' men hold an unfair advantage over other races, and warns in great detail about a so-called 'White Male Club.' ... The manual, which was obtained by Fox News, also instructs troops to 'support the leadership of non-white people. Do this consistently, but not uncritically,' the manual states." The manual was prepared by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, which is an official unit of the Department of Defense under the control of the Secretary of Defense.

Oceania

Australia

Indigenous Australians were historically excluded from the process that lead to the federation of Australia, and the White Australia policy restricted the freedoms for non-white people, particularly with respect to immigration. Indigenous people were governed by the Aborigines Protection Board and treated as a separate underclass of non-citizens. Prior to a referendum conducted in 1967, it was unconstitutional for Indigenous Australians to be counted in population statistics.

Holly Randell-Moon has said that news media are geared towards white people and their interests and that this is an example of white privilege. Michele Lobo claims that white neighborhoods are normally identified as "good quality", while "ethnic" neighborhoods may become stigmatized, degraded, and neglected.

Some scholars claim white people are seen presumptively as "Australian", and as prototypical citizens. Catherine Koerner has claimed that a major part of white Australian privilege is the ability to be in Australia itself, and that this is reinforced by, discourses on non-white outsiders including asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants.

Some scholars have suggested that public displays of multiculturalism, such as the celebration of artwork and stories of Indigenous Australians, amount to tokenism, since indigenous Australians voices are largely excluded from the cultural discourse surrounding the history of colonialism and the narrative of European colonizers as peaceful settlers. These scholars suggest that white privilege in Australia, like white privilege elsewhere, involves the ability to define the limits of what can be included in a "multicultural" society. Indigenous studies in Australian universities remains largely controlled by white people, hires many white professors, and does not always embrace political changes that benefit indigenous people. Scholars also say that prevailing modes of Western epistemology and pedagogy, associated with the dominant white culture, are treated as universal while Indigenous perspectives are excluded or treated only as objects of study. One Australian university professor reports that white students may perceive indigenous academics as beneficiaries of reverse racism.

Some scholars have claimed that for Australian whites, another aspect of privilege is the ability to identify with a global diaspora of other white people in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. This privilege contrasts with the separation of Indigenous Australians from other indigenous peoples in southeast Asia. They also claim that global political issues such as climate change are framed in terms of white actors and effects on countries that are predominantly white.

White privilege varies across places and situations. Ray Minniecon, director of Crossroads Aboriginal Ministries, described the city of Sydney specifically as "the most alien and inhospitable place of all to Aboriginal culture and people". At the other end of the spectrum, anti-racist white Australians working with Indigenous people may experience their privilege as painful "stigma".

Studies of white privilege in Australia have increased since the late 1990s, with several books published on the history of how whiteness became a dominant identity. Aileen Moreton-Robinson's Talkin' Up to the White Woman is a critique of unexamined white privilege in the Australian feminist movement. The Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association formed in 2005 to study racial privilege and promote respect for Indigenous sovereignties; it publishes an online journal called Critical Race and Whiteness Studies.

New Zealand

In New Zealand, a localized relationship to the concept, frequently termed Pakeha privilege, due to the legacy of the colonizing Pākehā settlers, has developed.

In the country's colonial era, Pakeha privilege was enforced in school classrooms by strict time periods, European symbols, and the exclusion of te reo (the Māori language). All of which would have been alienating and disadvantaging for Māori children.

Academic Huia Jahnke's Mana Tangata: Politics of Empowerment has explored how European New Zealanders rejecting the 'one people' national narrative, naming themselves 'other' by embracing the label Pākehā, has allowed space to examine white privilege and the societal marginalization of Māori people. Massey University scholar Malcolm Mulholland has stated that "studying inequalities between Maori and non-Maori outcomes allows us to identify Pakeha privilege and name it."

In 2016, on the 65th anniversary of Te Rōpū Wāhine Māori Toko I te Ora, the League's president criticized the "dominant Pakeha culture" in New Zealand, and embedded Pakeha privilege.

Entropy (information theory)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory) In info...