Apartheid, Jim Crowm and Education

There are a number of similarities between the development of public education systems in South Africa and the United States. Apartheid in South Africa bears striking similarities to the Jim Crow era. Not only are there similarities between these two abominable institutions of domination and tyranny, but there is also the presence of a continuing legacy of oppression that is manifest in lack of equality and in attitudes towards those who have been historically victimized by this kind of institutionalized racism. The impact on the culture and identity of a people cannot be underestimated, and the lingering affects of such atrocities cannot be overstated.

Elusive Equality (Vandeyar & Jansen) speaks of the long history of colonialism followed by four decades of Apartheid as having complicated South Africa’s pursuits of a more just system of education. This is easily comparable to a long history of slavery in America followed by nearly 100 years of Jim Crow segregation, which equally complicated African American’s pursuit of equity in education. It is not coincidence that the issues (inadequate political representation, poor schools, few opportunities for employment, and concentrated poverty) brought to roost as a result of both the dismantling of Apartheid and the dismantling of segregation were/are similar and are connected to the systems of education in many ways. Races, biologically speaking, were separated along geographical lines, but perhaps more importantly, they were often separated in their abilities to hope to attain their highest levels of academic achievement. Knowing my history makes that a difficult statement to make because I know full well how many African Americans achieved great success in spite of both Jim Crow and slavery in the US, as there are numbers of blacks from South Africa who could attest to achieving at high levels of success in spite of the difficulties created by these oppressive traditions; nevertheless, the overarching ethos was one that dictated what people were “not” capable of more so that what they could achieve. Blacks on both sides were often convinced that their positions as second class citizens were fixed, and the overwhelming poverty, as well as, the prevailing ideas about inferiority of the black race only served to further that mindset. According to Fisk and Ladd, a black middle class did develop under Apartheid, but the majority of Africans emerged from Apartheid bearing the vestiges of concentrated poverty and isolation. The vestiges included low educational attainment. The same can be said for African Americans as evidenced in Shame of a Nation (Kozol). These vestiges ultimately translate into privilege. In the end, some people had access to a quality education and some did not. This made education a privilege, and not a right. The ultimate crime is that the lack of access to a quality education and the resulting lower academic achievement across the board served to reinforce the myths of inferiority from both inside and outside of black culture. These myths cultivate feelings of white superiority from outside, and promote an identity formation based on stereotypes of inferiority from the inside (black culture).

Just as the South African educational system under Apartheid underinvested in the black Africans, so to did the education system in America under Jim Crow underinvest in the education of African Americans. The problems with both of these systems are still evident today in the continued existence of inequalities. There are persistent problems with under qualified teachers, lack of resources, poor facilities, and poor outlooks in both countries. Even if we begin to look at these issues from the perspective of class, we can still trace them back to the oppressive systems of colonialism/slavery and Apartheid/Jim Crow. Today we see the continued presence of poverty, poor housing, broken families, and poor healthcare haunting black communities in both South Africa and the United States. Both countries have come a long way, but we are not there yet.

Written by Frederick Hanna