"If we continue to stay together, we will kill each other."

June 24, 2013 6:29 PM

Why the students at one prominent South African university, once a model of racial harmony, chose to resegregate. "UFS hadn’t remained segregated after apartheid’s end—it had integrated and then resegregated later. I wanted to know why the white students raised those ancient flags, and why the black students had left Karee. I uncovered a tale of mutual exhilaration at racial integration giving way to suspicion, anger and even physical violence. It seemed to hold powerful implications well beyond South Africa, about the very nature of social change itself. In our post–civil rights struggle era, we tend to assume progress toward less prejudice and more social tolerance is inevitable—the only variable is speed. But in Bloemfontein, social progress surged forward. Then it turned back."
posted by bookman117 (10 comments total)

Amazing story!!!

This one in particular,

"In America, though, few historically white universities have reached a 30 percent tipping point—yet. In this way, transformation at UFS is not behind but ahead of American transformation, not an echo but an augury for our country, where last year nonwhite births outpaced white births for the first time."

Its a bit sobering thought.

I think, we, as a species, are not good at peaceful power sharing. Or, may be, we are just not good at sharing.
posted by TheLittlePrince at 8:00 PM on June 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

That's the "defend" phase of the "other, attack, hoard, defend" cycle. Naomi Klein on the underlying dilemma WRT this particular situation
posted by aydeejones at 8:35 PM on June 24, 2013 [3 favorites]

 Because the law don't change another's mind
 When all it sees at the hiring time
 Is the line on the color bar, no

Ostensibly progress laws are not the same thing as the hearts of persons being loving.
posted by koavf at 9:57 PM on June 24, 2013

Nope, but setting laws sets norms, and the generation coming up will regard them as such.
posted by klangklangston at 11:10 PM on June 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

Fun fact: J. R. R. Tolkein spent part of his youth in Bloemfontein, and the area is in fact his inspiration for Mordor.
posted by ocschwar at 6:25 AM on June 25, 2013 [3 favorites]

Nope, but setting laws sets norms, and the generation coming up will regard them as such.

Or the abolishing of laws. I grew up in a city where every now and then you would spot the faded remnants of segregation, "Colored Entrance" and so on. As a child growing up, I couldn't conceive or understand why the community was divided in such a manner. It does make a difference.
posted by Atreides at 7:16 AM on June 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

I was reading this yesterday, it's a fascinating vignette on post-apartheid SA. This part in particular seems to sum up the problem:

The white students had been eager to incorporate the black students into their institutions—on their terms. They hadn’t foreseen that the black students might want the institutions to change to reflect their own preferences.

SA was and is a super-majority Black nation. The dorm culture of UFS was a carefully maintained bit of racial fantasy which ignored this glaring fact. So it shouldn't be a surprise that the composition of the university and its culture changed so dramatically over less than a decade; it only existed in the first place due to apartheid.

It also shows how the comparison to the (future of the) US is a bit facile. There may have been areas in the States that experience a similar end to an artificial maintenance of Whiteness, but -- pearl clutching about birthrates aside -- the supermajority of Americans have been, and still are, White.
posted by Panjandrum at 8:45 AM on June 25, 2013 [2 favorites]

It seems like simply banning off campus living for a couple of years would help get rid of the remaining white boys who refuse to live in black dorms, right? I didn't see in the article how many people live off campus though, that might not be feasible.
posted by jacalata at 9:40 AM on June 25, 2013

TheLittlePrince: ""In America, though, few historically white universities have reached a 30 percent tipping point—yet. In this way, transformation at UFS is not behind but ahead of American transformation, not an echo but an augury for our country, where last year nonwhite births outpaced white births for the first time."

Its a bit sobering thought."

Well, there's only 12 percent. You'd have to dramatically overshoot to reach a 30 percent number, and I don't think the culture divide here is nearly as fierce.
posted by pwnguin at 9:44 AM on June 25, 2013

A fascinating and often depressing story, but separation and ever-threatened violence are not inevitable. Pull-quote:

The UFS story suggests how dangerous it is to let polarization take hold. Like many institutions facing a demographic shift, UFS initially failed to take an active enough role in managing the change. “Typically, management doesn’t track what’s happening, because they think change will happen organically,” reflected powell. “They may also be afraid to confront the implications of change.” At UFS, given the demographics of the Free State, the implications were that eventually, somewhere down the line, the character of the university would change enormously. An administration composed mostly of older white Afrikaners, well-disposed toward modest change as they were, didn’t adequately face that stark reality. They failed to encourage the formation of a new, joint identity and allowed prejudices to deepen—making it exponentially harder to bring the two sides together again.

Hard, but not impossible, as the new president shows.

Thanks for the post. Lots to think about.
posted by languagehat at 11:00 AM on June 25, 2013 [2 favorites]