Browsing by Subject "race"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    "Because the country says they have to change" : an analysis of a diversity intervention in a South African Police Service (SAPS) station
    (2011-12) Faull, Andrew
    This resource will be of value to scholars of transformation in South African organisations. The shift from apartheid to a constitutional democracy in South Africa brought with it a plethora of questions concerning ideas of nationhood, citizenship, and organisational transformation. Integrally caught up in the revolution, the South African Police Service (SAPS) faces transformative challenges on scales far larger than most other organisations in the country. From being the strong arm of the oppressive elite, it has had to restructure and re-articulate its function while simultaneously attempting to maintain law and order. Like many other corporations and organisations, the SAPS has engaged in interventions aimed at aiding the fluidity of this process. This report is an analysis of one such intervention. It attempts to ascertain the extent to which members are changing as a result of particular diversity workshops conducted in a region of the Western Cape. The analysis focuses on members at one particular station.
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    Black Adam: end of the white guy?
    (2010) Steyn, Melissa; McEwen, Haley; Wilhelm, Dominic
    This website features video material that can be used by educators and facilitators to generate discussion of whiteness in post-apartheid South Africa and the post-colonial world in general. While there are infinite ways in which an educator or facilitator could employ the DVD as a resource, below you will find instructions and discussion questions according to our vision for using it as a teaching tool as part of our Diversity Studies Honours and Masters programmes at the University of Cape Town. Ideally, the DVD will be used alongside relevant critical whiteness theory.
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    Performativity and gameplay: gender, race, and desire amongst a team of League of Legends players
    (2020) Whitfield, Kirsten/Waker; Deumert, Andrea
    Computer gaming is an important and growing form of popular media that has many cognitive and social benefits for players. It has also developed a reputation for being a white-male pastime and barring access for people who fall outside of that social grouping. While statistics show that this is increasingly not the case, certain games, particularly those that fall under the category of eSports, do attract largely male player bases. League of Legends is one such game. With Butler's Performativity Theory as a theoretical starting point, a qualitative sociolinguistic study was undertaken into the gendered dynamics of a male-dominated clan of League of Legends players. The data, collected primarily via audio-recordings of player interactions between games, is used as the basis for a sociolinguistic case study that looks at how performativity plays itself out in an environment that is characterised by a strong gender bias. With a focus on a Coloured female gamer in a League of Legends team, this paper explores the ways in which she and her teammates construct their own genders within this particular sociolinguistic context. The relationship between identity and desire, which has been a point of debate in sociolinguistics, is discussed in the context of the clan's interactions. Here I focus on the debate between Cameron and Kulick on the one hand and Bucholtz and Hall on the other. The paper looks into ways in which desire and identity interact with each other during sociolinguistic interaction. Moreover, issues around the construction of gender, race and sexuality are central to the study. The paper uses the data collected to look into the ways that social identities are collaboratively constructed, and contested. The discussion shows that while the team members replicate the gender binary, they do so by simultaneously reifying and challenging gendered norms. The study provides a compelling look into the ways in which gender identities are played with in interaction, and sheds some light on the fluidity of performative identity while simultaneously sketching out the ways that such performance is limited by its environment.
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    Race and assessment practice in South Africa: understanding black academic experience
    (Taylor & Francis, 2012) Jawitz, Jeffrey
    Despite efforts to transform the racialised system of higher education in South Africa inherited from apartheid, there has been little research published that interrogates the relationship between race and the experience of academic staff within the South African higher education environment. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and critical race theory, this article traces the experience of two black male academics in relation to the assessment practices of their colleagues at a historically white university in South Africa. The interviewees, both graduates from the departments in which they teach, reflected on their experience of their departmental assessment practices both as black students and black academics. The analysis concludes that despite their differing perceptions and experiences they both regard the assessment practices of some of their white colleagues as undermining of their black students' efforts to succeed.
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    Recall of early non-fatal suicidality in a nationally representative sample of South Africans
    (Taylor & Francis, 2012) Van Pletzen, Ermien; Stein, Dan J; Myer, Landon; Williams, David R
    Objectives. Little is known about socio-demographic patterns of non-fatal suicidality in early life in South Africa. We investigated the prevalence of self-reported early suicidality (suicidal ideation, planning and attempts) in a nationally representative sample of South Africans. Design. As part of a larger mental health survey, 3158 individuals aged over 25 years were asked to recall whether they engaged in non-fatal suicidal behaviour in early life (measured from childhood to 25 years). Race-based discrimination institutionalised under Apartheid profoundly influenced delivery and outcomes in health and other social services. Racial categories entrenched during Apartheid were therefore used to analyse data collected from individuals born before 1946, 1947-1956, 1957-1966 and 1967-1976. Results. 3.4% (95% CI=2.6-4.1) of participants recalled early suicidal behaviour. The youngest group (born 1967-1976) recalled higher rates of early suicidality than older groups in all races. In unadjusted analysis, White people were 2.84 (95% CI=1.62-4.97) and Coloured people 1.84 (95% CI=1.15-2.93) times more likely than Black people to recall early suicidality. Individuals growing up in urban and higher socio-economic settings were approximately twice (OR=2.2; 95% CI=1.14-4.28 and OR=1.92; 95% CI=1.27-2.90) as likely to recall early suicidality as those growing up in rural and lower socio-economic settings. Those with post-primary education were 2.79 (CI=1.71-4.53) times as likely to recall early suicidality as those with no or only primary education. Racial differences ceased to be significant after adjustment for rural/urban location and other socioeconomic measures estimated for early life. Conclusion. The study provides novel evidence of increasing levels of early non-fatal suicidality recalled by younger South Africans. Levels appeared significantly higher in Whites than in Blacks. Socio-economic contexts in early life were interpreted as mediators rather than confounders of the association between race and recalled early suicidality. The findings for decreased levels of suicidality among participants growing up in lower socio-economic strata and rural settings in South Africa require further investigation. The need for widespread suicide prevention programmes targeting young people at a population level is emphasised.
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    Salary disparities in South Africa: an analysis on race and gender in the Labour Market
    (2020) Mabuza, Nokulunga; Alhassan, Abdul Latif
    One of the most definitive identifiers of socio-economic status within modern society is a person's salary. In South Africa, labour market income is the largest source of household income when compared to other income sources namely social grants, remittances, income from a business, and pensions (Stats SA, 2019). Labour income is thus the primary source of an individual's sustenance. It determines the lifestyle they can afford and ultimately also conveys their sense of worth to their employer organization and to society at large. Consequently, employees want to be compensated fairly in exchange for their employment contributions. They want to know that they are being paid well relative to others tasked with the same work and with the same level of experience and qualification irrespective of their gender and/or race. Through a quantitative approach with an explanatory research design using regression techniques, salary disparities by race and gender have been analysed in this study using the LMDSA 2018 data. The analyses of earnings distributed across race and gender revealed that females consistently across all racial groups earn less than their male counterparts. The regression results showed that females overall earn 14% less than males and amongst the four prominent racial groups in South Africa, Blacks earn the least followed by Indians, then Coloureds and Whites earning the most (23% more than Blacks). This puts Black females at the bottom of the labour earnings hierarchy and White males at the top. From this study, salary disparities based on race and gender can be seen very distinctly in South Africa's labour market. The reasons for these disparities are at the very least multidimensional, however the most prominent of these reasons is Education. Education is multifaceted because not only is the level of education completed by employees a cause of the salary disparities but the variance in quality of education received by employees. The variance in quality of education is distinguished by race in this country which at its root cause lies the history of apartheid, and consequently, the quality of education will have an adverse effect on the level of education completed. Income inequality is but one element to many moving parts which contribute to overall inequality in South Africa. Another element is unemployment, and another is the accessibility of quality education. With Blacks being on the lower end of the spectrum in terms of labour earnings, having the highest levels of unemployment amongst all other racial groups and again being on the lowest end of the spectrum in terms of access to quality education and the level of education completed, it comes 3 as no surprise that Blacks are the poorest in South African society and that overall inequality is steadily rising. We conclude this study by providing recommendations for future studies based on the limitations we encountered as well as policy recommendations to address the high levels of income inequality proven to be prevalent in South African labour market. These include revised HR practices, a rebalance to the tax system and an amendment to the BBBEE scorecard criteria.
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    South African quantity surveyors: issues of gender and race in the workplace
    (2008) Bowen, Paul; Cattell, Keith; Distiller, Greg
    A web-based questionnaire survey of the opinions of SA quantity surveyors was undertaken to establish gender- and race-based differences in job satisfaction. Issues explored included demographic factors, issues of gender and race in the workplace, and gender and racial harassment and discrimination at work. 'Significant' differences on the basis of gender exist on a number of issues. Women, more than men, have strong positive feelings regarding their levels of job satisfaction, feel that their career expectations have been fulfilled, would choose the same career again, and would unequivocally recommend the career to others. Females see QS practices as male-dominated, see themselves as being blocked from advancement to managerial ranks, participating less in decision-making, and remunerated at a lower level than equivalent colleagues. Issues important to women include : gender representivity in the profession, flexible working hours and maternity leave above the statutory minimum. Although both gender groups report racial harassment and discrimination at work, women experience significantly more sexual and gender harassment and religious and gender discrimination than do males. 'Significant' differences on the basis of race are evident concerning : feelings of job satisfaction and views on maternity / paternity leave above statutory minima. 'Highly significant' differences on the basis of race arise over issues of : being subjected to greater supervision because of race, not being allowed to contribute meaningfully to the decision-making process, viewing PDI status as a valid basis for promotion, seeing race representivity in the profession as important in combating discrimination at work, having personally experienced racial harassment and discrimination at work, and seeing respect for individual diversity in the workplace as important - with 'Whites' viewing these issues less 'empathically' than their 'Non-white' counterparts. The results provide valuable indicators for how the quantity surveying firms can create a more conducive work environment for professional staff, particularly females.
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    Unearthing white academics’ experience of teaching in higher education in South Africa
    (Taylor & Francis, 2016-06) Jawitz, Jeff
    The real and imagined racial differences and similarities between groups of students and staff have consequences in everyday experiences in South Africa. One aspect of engaging with the challenges facing higher education transformation post-Apartheid is through understanding how the racialized context interacts with the experience of teaching. This paper reports on what the narratives of four white academics reveal about their experience of teaching at the University of Cape Town (UCT). It analyses indicators of their identity as white academics and how they are both positioned and actively position themselves in relation to students and other academics at UCT. Their narratives reveal how academics simultaneously grapple with the privileges and limitations that accompany identifying as white. These tensions are explored through issues of black student development amid an alienating institutional culture and opposition to the behaviour of their white colleagues.