Tackling racism in South African schools
On 16 June every year, South Africa remembers the high school learners in Soweto who faced off against the apartheid security forces to demand that they be taught in their mother tongue. Twenty-six years into democracy, some schooling practices in South Africa still carry a "subtle racism" that discriminates against black learners. Mduduzi Qwabe and Mark Potterton offer practical suggestions of how schools can embrace diversity and promote true racial integration. Structural racism and white privilege remain real concerns in the world and in South Africa.
Gary Younge’s Another Day in the Death of America is a brutally honest book is about 10 American children and teenagers killed by guns in a 24-hour time-span. Younge investigates how the deaths are normal by American standards in that none made national news, but not normal by commonsense standards. In it, the father of Samuel Brightmon, - one of the boys killed in gun violence - talks about how little the rest of America cares about the death of children like his son: “When it’s a black child shot, it’s a flash,” he says. Llike a flash of lightning. you see it and you’ll be like, was that lightning? That's how it is when a black child gets murdered or
gets killed. No big news… in the end result, you are still living in a white world. And we’re still thought of as less than. And basically, they’re saying we don’t matter. But if it was their child, they want the world to come to a halt.” - Another day in the Death of America Gary Younge The stories that Younge searched out are not exaggerated. African Americans are six times more likely to be incarcerated, twice as likely to be unemployed, and almost three times more likely to live in poverty than whites. Younge condemns a system that renders the poor and the dark in America invisible.
Institutional racism still holds black students back When Trevor Manual launched the national Planning Commission’s report in 2011, he told the story of an African 18-year-old matric pupil - Thandi. Because she was black and a female, she only had a 4% chance of getting into university Financial and other barriers forced her to remain at home and there was only a 4% chance of her getting a job. In fact, she only got her first job five years after finishing school. Little has changed for people like Thandi since then. Teacha! Magazine | 11
