Racism Is a System

Drawing on the insights of Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko and systemic racism theory as best articulated by American sociologist Joe R. Feagin, this chapter presents the basic argument of this book: that in South Africa racism is a system that is constitutive of, and deeply embedded in, the structure of society. Primary focus falls on drawing out how exclusionary mechanisms relating to land, housing, education, and employment have been tied to racial categorization and woven together into a self-replicating racist web in which African people have been and continue to be entrapped. Moreover, by drawing out how progressive elements within the dominant racial frame of the white moral community (that pertain to liberal-legalist reasoning and neo-Calvinist political thought) shaped the creation of a new constitutional state that has largely kept the differential life chances between white people and African people locked-in place, it is made clear that the human potentiality of Man as Man remains lost to all. To counter this, it is argued that systemic racism theory must be further developed into a critical theory of society that can challenge racial inequality and racial injustice.