Confronting the categories: Equitable admissions without apartheid race classification
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2010
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South African Journal of Higher Education
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University of Cape Town
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Abstract
South Africa’s government requires information on apartheid race classification to implement and monitor racial redress. This has sparked resistance to race classification as a criterion for redress in higher education admissions. I argue that (1) jettisoning apartheid race categories now in favour of either class or ‘merit’ would set back the few gains made toward redress; (2) against common sense uses of ‘race’ and against the erasure of ‘race’ through class reductionism; and (3) for developing and testing new indicators for ‘race’ and class disadvantage with a view to eventually replacing apartheid race categories. I offer a critical-race-standpoint as an alternative conceptual orientation and method for transformative admissions committed to racial redress that is socially just. I conclude that admissions criteria should encompass the lived realities of inequality and be informed by a conception of humanism as critique. This requires resistance to ways of knowing orchestrated by apartheid’s codes.
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Reference:
Erasmus, Z. (2010). Confronting the categories: Equitable admissions without apartheid race classification. South African Journal of Higher Education, 24(2), 244-257.