Posted inEqualityGeneral

Unpacking ‘whiteness’

My last post “Whiteness is like herpes” did exactly what I thought it would. It resonated with a small number of fellow whites who correctly understood the analogy, and then provoked an angry reaction from many more whites who simply just proved my point, that “whiteness” (as an issue that is being spoken about internationally […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Rescuing whiteness

Well before Gillian Schutte’s letter to white people calling on them to reflect on their whiteness, its invisibility and centrality in the reproduction and edification of white power, the very experience of blackness has been characterised by this same demand. Yet, as is wont to be the case, it would be Schutte’s, a white woman, […]

Posted inGeneral

Dancing to the tune of whiteness?

By Sipho Singiswa Almost 19 years after the 1994 election, institutionalised racism against indigenous African people has remained intact and largely unchallenged. The majority of Africans still live in poverty with very little access to land, housing, basic quality education, clean water and decent primary healthcare. All this is in violation of the much-praised South […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Mngxitama and the whiteness debate

By Max Rayneard I’m a white South African, admittedly seated in a coffee shop in upstate New York where I teach African anglophone literature to American students, but wanting desperately to be home. I agree with Andile Mngxitama’s characterisation of whites “dealing” with complicity as something akin to a pastime: something one does now and […]