Distancing the Past: Racism as History in South African Schools

How are histories of racial oppression dealt with in contexts of diversity? Chana Teeger tackles this question by examining how young South Africans, born into democracy, confront their country’s racist apartheid past in high school history lessons. Drawing on extensive observational, interview, and textual data, Distancing the Past vividly chronicles how students learn that racism is a thing of the past, even as they experience it in their everyday lives.

Teeger shows how teachers’ desire to avoid conflict between students mirrors a national focus on racial reconciliation, leading to the historical distancing of the recent apartheid past. This historical distancing allows schools to present a façade of transformation. Beneath the surface, however, the lessons reproduce unequal power relations at school and legitimize inequality at the societal level. In documenting these processes, Distancing the Past illuminates the subtle reconfiguration of racism in the era of civil liberties. It shows how acknowledging the racist past is not enough. When the past is remembered--but its legacies ignored--racism can continue unabated in the present.

Distancing the Past is a timely account of the remaking of race and inequality in the aftermath of de jure discrimination. It offers vital lessons for other societies grappling with their own racist histories.

Chana Teeger is an assistant professor in the Department of Methodology at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a senior research associate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg.