University of Cape Town (UCT) professor Nicoli Nattrass is free to write what she likes; everybody else is free to say she is racist. Yes, it is more complicated than that, though not a whole lot more.
Nattrass is a serious scholar. Her work on labour markets, employment and poverty is empirically rich, scholarly and well-argued. Her conclusions are not what those in the labour movement, government or the left in general want to hear. In her most recent book she argues for a differentiated or dual labour market as a pro-poor, pro-employment strategy, where regulation — such as minimum wages — in some sectors or areas is relaxed to enable labour-intensive industry to thrive. This is “inclusive dualism”, where the trade-offs between employment and wages are made explicit and weighed up, which is not often done by SA’s policymakers.
But for a serious scholar, her “commentary” in the SA Journal of Science on “Why are black SA students less likely to consider studying biological sciences?” is one of the oddest journal articles I’ve ever read. Nattrass has defended the article as falling into the journal’s category of “commentary”: these are not peer-reviewed articles but “views regarding scientific challenges or opportunities that have arisen out of research experiences”. It is a first “toe in the water” to test out an idea for a bigger research project.
The overarching research question she asked is an important one, about which everyone, especially UCT, should be concerned. But the specific questions asked in the survey were positively bizarre. These included how many pets a student had growing up; whether they thought nature conservation important; whether they believed humans descended from apes; and whether they minded the starlings picking at their sandwiches on the UCT campus.
The questions, she explains, came out of a brainstorm with students and were aimed at probing attitudes that might influence the career choices of students. The commentary then goes one step further, imputing materialistic values to black students and highlighting a lack of understanding of things as basic as evolution.
Taken at a face value, lacking in academic rigour (it was a preliminary, almost arbitrary, survey, but dressed up as a scientific study) and laden with value judgments (even if Nattrass thought not), it was an open invitation to UCT’s Black Academic Caucus to kick the door down. And so they did. So far so good.
It is after this that the trouble starts. The first complication comes when the university executive jumps into the fray, escalating it from a poorly executed piece of work into a matter of academic freedom. The university should rightly check that it complied with ethical standards, which is what it now seems to be investigating. It has done much more than that though, passing judgment without even a preliminary investigation. Worse than that, it has tried to pressurise the journal to remove the article, or for Nattrass herself to have it removed.
Academic freedom, such as freedom of speech, is a value that requires the lightest of all touches if it is to retain its value. The picture grows uglier as the mobs pile in. The methodology questions are cast aside; it is now a question of branding Nattrass a racist who set out with a racist intention, no more questions asked. On the other side there are mobs too. People who believe Nattrass to be under unfair attack even though they too have not looked at the facts.
In SA, scarred by hundreds of years of racial oppression and violence by white people against black people, it is not surprising that as a society we are unable to have a rational discussion about race. The hurt among black people, and the anger, run deep; they can’t be wished away. At the same time, unconscious racism is a subtle and insidious thing that infiltrates our work, our ideas and behaviour.
How do we then go forward? First, it is vital to call people out for racism, whether in the supermarket queue or for a piece of writing. This is never going to be an easy argument and often might be simply an opinion. Whether someone is guilty of unconscious racism is impossible to prove.
Second, as hard as it is, and as irrational as it inevitably becomes, we do need to discuss race issues, racism, culture and attitudes. To ban them from academic discourse or social discussion, or to create an environment in which people censor themselves, will not help us come to terms with the problem. This makes the university wrong for elevating the Nattrass issue to one of academic freedom.
But let’s also recognise that we, as a country, have a problem. When it comes to race, things others do and say can trigger us; and things we do and say can trigger others. Of course, we all have the freedom to choose not to use this discretion, especially where academic inquiry is involved. But then we will pay the price and must stand tall when the mob arrives to insult us.
• Paton is editor at large
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