These days I start my talks on race and inclusion at the elite white schools with this icebreaker: thank you for inviting me but let’s be honest, you don’t really want to change and that’s OK. Nobody simply gives up the privileges they inherit and that they pay to keep.
Having done hundreds of workshops across the country and in other parts of the world on this subject, I have always been struck by the willingness of white schools (or universities) to invite a black speaker to tell them about racism and injustice and enjoy tea and snacks afterwards. One reason for the invitation is that there is in every organisation, whether schools or companies, individuals who are eager for transformation.
The problem is that most parents in schools do not want change. They would leave if the black student numbers reached a “tipping point” in enrolments; it’s called white flight. They would remove their children if the number of black teachers grew to an uncomfortable level. They would have all kinds of excuses for not offering an African language as a second language alternative or soccer as a major school sport. Those are facts.
Another reason for the invitation is that schools have learnt how to ride out a controversy and return to business as usual. Schools are not unresponsive in a crisis. An apology tendered, a speaker invited or an investigation announced shows that “something is being done”. Such actions buy time but they seldom address the underlying racism of student admissions, teacher appointments or organisational culture. It’s called impression management and the instincts of every manager in a crisis is to make the problem go away as soon as possible. Nobody, however, expected what happened in June 2020.
A wave of social media and at-school protests against racism spread across some of SA’s most distinguished public and private schools. At Durban Girls College students demanded that the school be held accountable for racism at the hands of some teachers. At St Anne’s Diocesan College in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, students lambasted their teachers for calling them by derogatory racial nicknames. At Bishops in Cape Town the matric class submitted a petition with 20 demands that made repeated reference to “the oppression of minority and vulnerable groups”. On an Instagram account called @yousilenceweamplify, students from more than 20 former white Cape Town schools posted damning stories about antiblack racism and anti-Muslim bigotry. In Gauteng similar charges of racism came from two black parents at Pridwin Preparatory School in Johannesburg and students at Pretoria High School for Girls (PHSG).
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What on earth is going on?
Until now, protests against racial incidents, such as the hair policies of PHSG and Sans Souci Girls’ High School (2016), or the media uproar about the termination of the only black African teacher at Rustenburg Girls’ Junior School (2018) have been isolated and sporadic events. Now, students from more than two dozen schools are speaking with one voice.
On the one hand, this uprising among black students at former white schools was no doubt inspired by the #BlackLivesMatter movement in the US, especially in the wake of the extrajudicial killing of a black man, George Floyd, by white police in that country. On the other hand, this outburst tells a story about young black students simply being gatvol of non-stop racist treatment at the hands of white teachers and white students in white schools since the end of apartheid. The dam of pent-up hurt and insults finally burst as these young people came out of the frustrating period of an extended lockdown that probably also fuelled their grievances.
Built into the very organisation of schools are the conditions for the perpetuation of racial and class privilege.
— Jonathan Jansen
How did we get here? For years I have heard black students complaining bitterly about their treatment at elite white schools. But their numbers are small and so they swallowed the daily assaults on their dignity. Black middle-class parents are often reluctant to complain or complain repeatedly for fear of being called a problem parent and threatening the place of their child in a well-resourced school. So they shut up but fume when among friends and families about what happens to them at these former white schools.
What sustains this kind of racism, however, is that we have allowed the continued existence of white-majority schools who use a complex set of policy instruments to keep their schools predominantly white in terms of learner enrolments, teacher appointments and school culture. How these prized schools do this is the subject of our forthcoming book Who gets in and Why? Race, class and aspiration in South Africa’s elite schools (UCT Press, 2020). Put differently, built into the very organisation of schools are the conditions for the perpetuation of racial and class privilege. This is what people sometimes call systemic racism.
How does systemic racism express itself in the daily work of schools?
Sometimes the racism is unbelievably crude such as in the recent Parklands College (Milnerton, Cape Town) scandal where a teacher tasked a Grade 7 class with a “fun” assignment which was to draw slave auction advertisements for which the winner would receive a slab of chocolate when schools reopened. But most times the racism exists in thousands of little racist micro-aggressions that have become normalised in both public and private schools in SA. These few examples shared with me (and on social media) would be familiar to those who live and learn in these spaces.
A black learner is called a scholarship kid on sight. A black teacher is told her hair is untidy. A black boy athlete is called a quota player. A group of white boys exaggerate what for them is a coloured accent whenever they pass the few coloured students in their school. A black parent is told her child will not be accepted because she lives out of the admissions’ zone — before even being asked where she lives. A black child in the foundation phase is told by a white child to wash her skin. A teacher routinely calls Indian SA learners “Pakistanis” and Muslim students “terrorists”. A white boy in a group is heard on a recording talking of his “hatred of kaffirs”. A sole black teacher is constantly ridiculed by her white students — she cannot be, as one of them asked, “a real teacher?”
How do we get out of this rut?
First, with great difficulty. Already schools are doing silly things like sending a teacher on sensitivity training when the problem is a deeply rooted structural racism in our institutions. Chief among those formative institutions is the home. By the time a child comes to school, s/he already has a language for those deemed to be different. Those words are learnt, as with all prejudices, from listening to and observing parents and the family and friends that pass through the home. The school, rather than challenge and confront incoming prejudice, often reinforces it.
The black elites, with their hands on all the relevant education policy levers, will not change white majority schools because their own children attend and benefit from these islands of privilege; the alternative is dysfunctional township schools. The black elite has learnt to posture with extraordinary suppleness every time a racial incident happens here or there; and then we all move on. Any meaningful change is more likely to come from the schools themselves and, in particular, the school leaders.
What are seven effective actions leaders can take to address the roots of systemic racism in their schools?
1. Acknowledge in public the systemic nature of racism in the school. The more you pretend it is one or two bad apples (teachers or students) to be dealt with on an incident-by-incident basis, the more your school will continue to struggle with racism. Do not cloud the issues by concealing racism under the umbrella term of diversity that includes all ’isms (sexism, ableism, and so on), important as they are.
2. Develop clear public statements that the school abhors racism. Every teacher, student, parent and alumnus must know where your school stands on racism. Place permanent notices that carry these statements in every classroom and in all public places, for example the school hall.
3. Create confidential and trusted channels within the school for reporting racist incidents. A student who is insulted with derogatory words or behaviour must be able to instantly report the teacher or student(s) without repercussions for the complainant. A school leadership that will not guarantee such safety mechanisms is often complicit in the act.
4. Act swiftly in dealing with verifiable complaints. Those white students and teachers who are accused of racist acts are often repeat offenders. They get away with such behaviour because school leaders refuse to act firmly and quickly in dealing with offenders. Disciplinary committees for acts of racism must be institutionalised and cannot be led or dominated by white people. Wherever possible, seek reconciliation alongside social justice rather than expulsion as the only form of punishment.
5. Work to change the underlying culture that perpetuates racism in schools. Much can be done. Regular workshops with teachers and students on antiracism concerns, for example the nature and effects of racial microaggressions in a school. Change the white symbolic culture of the school and create new, inclusive symbols and commemorations. Model inclusive behaviour through visible acts of leadership. Introduce soccer and an African language into the school programme.
6. Change as a matter of urgency the proportion of black permanent teachers and leaders on the staff. The recycling of white principals from one school to the next and from one area to another must stop. The racist message that competence resides in a white teacher or leader is not lost on our young people. The excuses are tiring (“we cannot find black teachers or principals”) and not changing these apartheid staffing arrangements will certainly not alter the systemic nature of racism in schools.
7. Bring parents on board — or leave them behind. Parents and alumni are often the most important blockers of transformation at schools. It is important for school leaders to invest time and energy in persuading parents that a richly diverse school that is inclusive and builds positive relations among students better prepares their children for leadership in a changing world. Make no mistake, some parents will leave because they want white schools with white leadership, white teachers and white values. Build a more inclusive and progressive school community open to all.
There is good news. A minority of schools do change — such as Red School (Pinelands North Primary School) in Pinelands or Sacred Heart in Yeoville — but mostly because of the activism of white and black parents who understand that children learning and living together is the best guarantee of human decency and citizen capability in a richly diverse and interconnected world. In these schools the parents do not see greater black learner enrolment as a threat to white privilege but as an opportunity for learning how to be in a world that looks very different from how schools and classrooms are organised in SA’s elite institutions. These parents do not see black teachers as a threat to quality education but as a way of opening their children to being inspired by role models who do not look like them and who can broaden their education beyond the culturally familiar. To be normal, in other words.
For fundamental change to happen along the lines proposed above will take exceptional school leadership. It will take a principal who says the same thing to black parents as he or she says to the Old Boys and Old Girls clubs of alumni with their powerful networks; in other words, someone who is not a racial hypocrite. It will take school leaders who are committed to the project of transformation and who themselves are antiracist in the core of their being. It will take leaders who can keep both black and white parents around the same negotiating table as they together chart a renewed future for their school. And finally, it will require teachers and principals who take seriously the voices of their students.
Short of such committed action, these problems of racism will recur but with more devastating consequences for our elite schools for they will inevitably face what James Baldwin so aptly called “the fire next time”.
• Jonathan Jansen is a Distinguished Professor of Education at Stellenbosch University
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