Racism At Universities? My Foot.

Unathi Kondile 15 May, 2009 10:05 Straight Up Permalink Trackbacks (0)


The irony of all these transformation debates and whatnots is that I just got back from Wits – where I constantly had to restrain myself from being a racist. I couldn’t help but ask where all the white kiddies had disappeared to? That campus sure is the epitome of over-transformation. And then I get back to Cape Town – to find a really rather stale debate raging with hypocrites lamenting on race being scrapped as a proxy for transformation and others calling for more darkies on campus.

Drunk captains steering a ship straight into an iceberg if you ask me.

How else can you explain such blind confidence in the unknown?

We’re a university that prides itself on being the fore-runners of research and so on in this country. So surely by this time someone would have thought of formulating a thesis around transformation or race-relations at our institution and thereafter shed some light. And actually tell us that race is not the problem. The problem is more socio-economic and social-grooming related. You cannot open the floodgates to black kids from disadvantaged backgrounds because a) I do not think UCT or any university for that matter is fully equipped to handle these particular kids’ background baggage b) such institutions were not created with this emerging market in mind and c) many universities do not invest for the social dynamics (or local social diversities) of their incumbents. One assumes that Sigelekeqe from Centuli High School, who just got a bursary because of his high matric marks will flourish at UCT. No. No. No.

In the midst of all the perceived learning at universities, there is also a predominant lesson revealing itself upon learners from disadvantaged backgrounds – a lesson in learning to adapt or go home. Let me use myself as an example. I rocked up in 2001, convinced I was the next rocket scientist - turns out I wasn’t. It’s terrible. You get here; you’re convinced you have some of the best researchers readily espousing their knowledge upon you, then as a black kid you slowly learn and I’m sure many (irrespective of race) have learnt that being a prolific research writer or high-esteemed academic with two doctorates or more is not directly proportional to being a good teacher. Universities largely employ people based on their academic standing – which is understandable considering the fact that they want the best. But I ask – is there any screening procedure to find out whether or not said employee can actually transfer knowledge beyond their own great mind or guide learners efficiently into whatever discourse via the English medium.

No honestly.

And this is not about black lecturers who get hackled for poor pronunciation as ETV reported last night. Actually this is not even about race. You get academics from afar - Europe, China, etc... who can’t even string along a sentence in English – you get them standing there trying to teach you science. You get a nerdy type spewing close to 300 words per minute on some mathematical theorem. You get some Icelandish type, speaking in the most exotic accent that you have to convince yourself you’re not dreaming it up.

Universities are rather complex animals. Especially ones that deem themselves as transit rooms of the world. The problem is not so much race. I mean admitting more black students is easy. But sadly the reality is they will not last – for reasons I’ve just cited in the previous paragraph. Of further damage to their humane esteems is that they will not extrapolate this incompetence or inability to adapt upon the institution itself but will rather see it as some kind of unspoken self-deficiency created by their background or previously disadvantaged state of being. If you want to talk race or transformation you must be prepared to go deeper and transform mindsets as well as assess whether or not the garden you’re attempting to plough is conducive to the seeds you have in mind.

And all the other palaver being spewed on this matter is irrelevant. You can lower admissions criteria for blacks, you can dish out bursaries, you can employ black staff in the hope that this will attract black learners, you can do it all. It will not work. Until you do a little bit of introspection on certain areas of your household. Once all is neat and tidy – you can open your doors and invite the entire continent if you will.


comments

  1. Viva! Unathi, viva! It is a simple fact of life that underprivileged and disadvantaged kids of WHATEVER 'racial" origin will struggle, however bright they are, when taken out of their socioeconomic milieu and plunked into what amounts to an academic fasttrack sausage machine which happens to be the best research institution in the country. With all of the bad teaching and funny accents due to diversity of its staff that that implies. And I note that we academics here at UCT are not in fact qualified to teach, except by the act of teaching.... So trying to do two things simultaneously - that is, to offer redress for economic and educational disadvantage AND transform the "racial" profile fo the institution - is a tortured and ultimately silly thing to attempt. Folks: the proxy for disadvantage is OVERWHELMINGLY financial status. Which, because this LARGELY coincides with the old apartheid government's racial classification, means the simple use of parental income to determine "disadvantaged status" has been complicated beyond measure. I have recently met some Afrikaans-speaking "white" kids from Brooklyn and its environs who would easily qualify for entry to UCT on the grounds of educational and fianancial disadvantage - but wll probably never be considered. Because we are a racist University.

    Posted by notmax — 15 May 2009, 10:40

  2. Been done, Unathi, been done. Or at least some of your recommendations at any rate. One example would be the work done in social literacies research (check with anyone in the Language Development Group in CHED if you will), by a well-known scholar in that field, JP Gee. (Gee, James Paul.: Social linguistics and literacies : ideology in discourses, London : Falmer, 1990.UCT Main library 401.3 GEE). In the Learning & teaching in higher education module of the PG Dip / M.Ed in higher education offered through School of Ed, by the staff of CHED, we place quite an emphasis precisely on the point you make ("If you want to talk race or transformation you must be prepared to go deeper and transform mindsets as well as assess whether or not the garden you’re attempting to plough is conducive to the seeds you have in mind"). Among other tools, we make use of Gee's work. I agree to that increased access and success at university is not about simply increasing numbers or quotas(as we have seen world-wide, where the same issues are at stake). Many would argue (and I think rightly) that we have a particular historical bent to the issues of widening access. And the use of 'race' as a proxy is inherently messy. Race, like class, is a chaotic concept - but they are useful indicators even if they require much unpacking. Increasing access does involve (among other things) recognising that the values, beliefs, ways of acting that make up universities, distinctly favour middle class Western people who have first language access to the language of the university (be that English, French or whatever). They are far less accessible and decodable to people who do not possess what Bourdieu may have called 'cultural capital'. There is a lot of evidence that any student who attends the university as a first member of the family to do so, experiences what you experienced to some degree or another. SA's history just exacerbates the matter. I was the first graduate from my family (my parents had Std 6 certificates from the Depression era), and the idea of reading and taking notes (indeed taking books out a library) were almost foreign to me. Citation was a mystery. I took sociology because my mates did, psychology 'cos a teacher told me it was easy, history 'cos I'd liked that a school, and law 'cos I wanted to make money. I only survived, I think, because the evening classes that I attended at the University of Natal, Durban, were made up mostly of fellow working students (I was a paramedic) - it took a while to get the hang of learning, but since all the classes were made up working people, lecturers could work with us that way. We were lucky. That's gone now. My kids, and my siblings kids, all have at least Masters degrees: it was so much easier for them (a point they largely acknowledge). The question that societies must ask is whether we favour middle class universities. If we don't, then we must change schooling, but we must also change universities and they way we function. Perhaps that may mean changing degree structures, focusing also on developing the technikon system (and losing the social arrogance that sees them as lesser institutions). As lecturers we need to be aware of what diversity in a class room really means (other than just ensuring quotas are right), but we also will need to review curricula and degree structures (a genuine 4 year degree for example, not simply an opportunity to pack more in) - perhaps a new system along the lines of the US's college / university. And indeed this is under investigation - but of course it has significant implications. None of this denies that there is racism present in any university - but then universities reflect to a large extent the societies from which they spring and in which they are located. Discrimination appears almost endemic, whether its race, gender or class or religion (often quite closely tied to race and class anyway). Any way, back to your query about the university household - and even 'notmax's Brooklyn kids - the theory to understand what keeps insiders in and outsiders out, is there - but translating that into changed practice? That's another matter. Too often it gets mired down in the petty disputes of politicians (at all levels, including the university) rather than making a difference.

    Posted by Transplant_Ed — 15 May 2009, 12:47

  3. "Increasing access does involve (among other things) recognising that the values, beliefs, ways of acting that make up universities, distinctly favour middle class Western people who have first language access to the language of the university (be that English, French or whatever). They are far less accessible and decodable to people who do not possess what Bourdieu may have called 'cultural capital'" - this more or less sums up what I was trying to articulate :-) If we plan to deal with universities on this whole transformation pilgrimage then I might also suggest we look at the (inferior-deemed) Technikon models, not for academic material, but more for how such institutions managed to be such welcoming environments/ homely/ bastions of academic hope for young black people. Even at the "University of Technology" level they still continue to thrive in accomodating and retaining black learners. Or is that exactly it? That black learners perhaps are more technically inclined and work better in majority black environments whereas the presence of other races stifles their superiority complexes due to ingrained ideologies of race heirachies which play themselves out unconciously?

    Posted by Unathi — 15 May 2009, 13:35

  4. Do you like giving your opponents their lines? ;-) Or is that "bait"? I think Technikons / UniTech's (whatever) are desperately needed for whoever attends. Our economy needs well educated technicians (look at the ads) probably more than it needs 1000's of university graduates who have no clue as to why they chose that degree. We have some weird social thing that says university graduates are so much cooler. However, I am NOT convinced that they are much more accessible to black learners than are universities (if my colleagues at CPUT are to be believed), and the dreaded throughput figures also don't suggest that either. I accept that schooling is a huge problem - but we cannot sit here at university saying "not my problem" for infinity. We have to find ways of creating possibilities at all opportunities of the post-secondary system (e.g I also think we need to revive the trades and apprenticeship - when last did you find a really good young mechanic or electrician?). Since the discussion was about universities tho', my sense is that academics are so swamped by burgeoning class sizes, that students who cannot afford the text books that are prescribed, who have never worked with a PC before and certainly never an web-based system, never used a library (see http://www.uct.ac.za/dailynews/?id=7014) and who face all the cultural capital issues already noted, simply vanish under the tide. I really have no answers: just "a thousand million questions" as Justin Hayward would have sung it. But perhaps by foregrounding the questions (as JP Gee does), maybe a starting place.

    Posted by Transplant_Ed — 15 May 2009, 14:17

  5. I guess I'm basing my views of 'UniTechs' on a quick glance perspective. There could be many darkies across these campuses and reses but that does not necessarily mean they're passing. However these UniTechs seem more appealing for darkies; or at times are seen as a last resort measure should university dreams not materialize. On the matter of universities I'm more aligned to "notmax's" financial status angle but to add more to this one has to then accept that universities can't do much for this problem i.e: This should not be on Blade Nzimade's to-do list, but should actually be on Angie Motsega's list since she's dealing with basic education and high schools - which is where they should be groomed for university. And with patience universities will get more darkies - seeing as we're busy playing catch-up and more and more emerging classes are sending their kids to Bishops, Sacs or wherever deemed good enough. This is more about being patient. Universities are dependent on these lower structures/ grounding structures. It should not be the role of universities. Black kids should come 'pre-cooked' because dropping varsity standards or bringing various bridging courses will not make it any better. Let's just wait until these BEEs and AAs in other sectors enable parents to ground their kids. Surely if some kind of socio-economic-equilibrium is reached before entering university level - transformation will become a non-factor as there'll be a natural order (not forced) influx of darkies on campuses.

    Posted by Unathi — 16 May 2009, 09:11

  6. Hey, universities are elitist: selecting people ont he basis of educaitonal achievement for further education IS elitist, whichever way you look at it. Attempting to "level playing fields" by biasing selection criteria to account for other people's past impositions of inequity is...a little like fingers in dikes; a little help, but not that much. Society needs transforming so that we are flat - like Nordic countries. Will that ever happen? Look at Brazil. Look at the USA. I sincerely doubt it. Ah, well.

    Posted by notmax — 18 May 2009, 10:14

  7. Do we blame all this on culture, ones background having in mind the misfortune that one cannot choose where they are born (rich or poor, black, coloured or white). Are we justified to neglect others because of misfortunes they had no say on, and us, were we any better to be where we are, just think about it. From the University of Nairobi

    Posted by Paul Mungai — 05 Jun 2009, 08:18

  8. Speaking as someone who was ALMOST a victim of financial need - I got bursaries to come to UCT, in the absence of any state funding (different state, further north) - I am fervently of the view that University education should be enabled for everyone who deserves it. The problem lies in defining "deserves": should it be on the basis of educational potential, perceived or proven, or on one of the proxies of disadvantage like actual income (hey, truck driver father / primary school teacher mother; I qualified...) - or on race? Only one of those perpetuates racism.

    Posted by notmax — 08 Jun 2009, 11:56

  9. Well, I am black as far as categorization goes. And I am studying at UCT and in my final year or studies. Looking forward to graduate as well! As already debated, I do acknowledge that one’s ‘social grooming’ or ‘socio-economic’ sphere do come into play (to a certain extent) as previously mentioned. But we cannot render these as a fundamental base for the problems of our today. One another thing that we need to be cognisant of is the need for us to unlearn and embrace the complete new. First, is the mentality, or should I call it ‘black mentality’ which people have—of anticipating things to come the easy way, and many a times we blame it upon the ‘social strata,’ issues of demographics, culture or better put; our parents poverty or failures. Where is self-will, passion, drive to achieve in the best in the many youth of today, especially blacks? I grew up without a silver spoon, more like Oliver Twist, but I worked my way up. And because that is what a thankful heart can teach one to do. Will it be a good thing to say that because my parents were so damn poor, therefore I can’t instigate change within my own circle??Do I have to stick to the former? But that seems to be the case. People must learn to work hard. Don’t forget the corrupt education system, which has also changed drastically over the years (esp. in the lower structures). Opening the “flood-gates” to black students or anyone from a disadvantaged background is not the solution either; this would be like trying to solve a problem that you really don’t know. Yes, it starts in the lower structures. Today, you even see people who couldn’t even make it to high school talk about transformation! Politics is s**t. With regard to hiring black people in our institutions perhaps I must say that, when you build a house you always start somewhere—doing the tedious job of digging the trenches, and later on laying the foundation. You don’t wake up and suddenly there is this roof above you. So, Mr Unathi, undeniably I must also say that we do have many learned blacks who can deliver, but we haven’t come to the point where we can fully accept one another (as observed), and still many of our institutions (not only of learning), still perpetuate this further. E.g. look at gas stations; one is complete with blacks, the next with coloured peeps. And then you wonder WTH???Rainbow nation my foot! It will take a while.By the way, I am government sponsored too.

    Posted by Thuthuka Tumelo Tumie — 09 Aug 2009, 21:42


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