SOC 152 WORKBOOK WEEK 5

11) Who are you going to interview for your assignment? Why do you
think they will give you interesting data?
For this assignment, I have been thinking about interviewing my mother as well as my uncle.
They are coloured individuals and I feel this would be very informative perspective to
research on as there aren’t many mainstream accounts of how racism and all its elements
affected coloured people, especially since the history of coloured people isn’t spoke about
enough. Both parties involved are over the age of 40 so they lived through apartheid and
through into the transition into a democratic and equal society. They can then also be able to
draw parallels of experiences they have faced then and in the post-apartheid era. The reasons
I think they will provide interesting data is because of their formative years that both had
spent on farms and my mothers’ parents used to work for white people back then. The case
with my uncle, he used to stay with grandparents which is an even older generation that too
experienced these differences and maybe being in that environment my uncle can provide a
really in depth understanding of some themes that will arise throughout the interviewing
process.

12) What is your first reaction to Ciraj Rassool’s claim that the boundaries
of racial categories are ever shifting? You should include both your
academic reaction and personal experience with racialisation
I completely agree with the claim of the writer that the boundaries of racial categories are
shifting. Racism has changed over the years in the way that is has become very systematic
and even though laws has changed, the underlying factors that contributed to racism are still
present in some cases. He makes it clear that to understand how these things came about and
are so difficult to get rid of, is to look at the history of South Africa and how factors in our
past has built these systems and ways of thinking that have become incorporated in the way
we live our lives. For the most part, South African history came to be framed through notions
of evolution and settlement, and these segregated the historical experiences of the “Bushman”
hunter-gatherers, “Hottentot” herders, and “Bantu” farmers, who were placed in an
evolutionary story of sequential and segregated archaeologies and ethnologies, with all these
features reproduced in later frames of archaeological and historical research on the peopling
of southern Africa, this time with the nomenclature changed to San, Khoe, and African iron-
age farmers. While scholars such as Martin Legassick and Paul Landau have instead shown
how interconnected people were, it is also necessary to understand how cultural and racial
essentialisms were produced through violent histories of dispossession. With the Kalahari
debate, one of the key subjects of southern African studies, where the idea of the San as
hunter-gatherer as distinct from Khoe herder was asserted, more critical scholarship has
shown how interconnected the economic activities of hunting and herding were (Wilmsen
1989; Gordon 1992). While the category “Khoisan” (today “Khoesan”) was first invoked by
German scholar Leonhard Schultze in 1928 as a racial category and deployed by
anthropologist Isaac Schapera shortly thereafter (Schultze 1928; Schapera 1930), its use also
later became part of a refusal to separate these interconnected histories of social life and
dispossession (Rasool, 2019). The long-lasting impact of colonialisation was the fact that it
introduced so many categorisations by which the African people had to conform to. This
along with many other forms of oppression which resulted in psychological conditioning.
This was used to exploit the African natives and take away everything that to an extent was
known to them. They changed cultures and enforced their own on the people for the sole
purpose of taking riches through the minerals in the land. So, in conclusion he elaborates on
non-racism and how we should try to eradicate or rewire our thinking through that
perspective as well as getting rid of the categorisations as that carries the racist intent as well.
The actual change or shift in boundaries of racialisation is that through which the people in
power change concepts of race in the past to suit what is required (Rasool, 2019).

13) Do you agree or disagree with Ashman’s claim that capitalism

maintains racial difference in order to generate profits and legitimate its
system? Why/why not?
I agree with Ashman’s claim that capitalism maintains difference in order to generate profits
and legitimates its system. When looking at colonialisation, the system that was instilled
through taking away lands of the African natives and then building the system in which
Africans were used in labour when the discovery Gold and diamonds took place were all in
the name of capitalism. With capitalism comes racism because it was used as a means to
make African people seem inferior towards the Europeans for the sole purpose of getting
these goods. People were exploited as a result of capitalism as they couldn’t provide for
themselves anymore and this system then forced the Africans to become dependent on the
Europeans. This problem is why there is still the signs of racism today due systems are built
on the capitalistic approach that was introduced in South Africa.
14) Think about Rassool and Ashman’s articles together. What would have
to change in society for race to no longer be a tool of systemic oppression
and exploitation.
In my opinion, the main factor that will have to change is the people’s mindset as well as
their thinking towards cultures. What was taken away from the African people was their
culture and that alone is biggest contributor to identity in my opinion. The people of Africa
lost their identity, whether that be black, coloured etc. Once that is formed again, we will be
able to move forward from what is the legacies of the past. Another thing that will have to
change is the categorisations that are being used in redressing the inequalities of the past.
People need to look at different poverty measures instead of race orientated ones as that is
continuing to push an underlying issue that we are still divided because people of all races
need means of survival and not just Africans for example. One that is something of the past, I
think it will be easier to spot other means of systematic oppression and exploitation in order
to completely change society.

References
Rasool, C., 2019. Duke University Press. [Online]
Available at: https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article-abstract/31/2/343/138425/The-
Politics-of-Nonracialism-in-South-Africa?redirectedFrom=PDF
[Accessed 26 August 2022].