Media

There is something surreal about the high pitched denunciation of apparent racism that percolates in our public space.

The response to the alleged racist urinating incident at Stellenbosch University was loud, outraged, sometimes racist. It was a disgusting act, but the fact that the victim was black doesn’t mean that it was racist.

This juvenile behaviour, unfortunately, is not uncommon at universities, even the Ivy League institutions. My colleague exposed us to this world here.

The commentariat, usually comprised of the privileged elite which includes university students, go out into the public square, spewing outrage. The outrage festers because social media is suited to charges of outrage and intolerance.

The urinating incident was revolting. The perpetrator deserves any punishment the university may impose on him. What I don’t know is, and I don’t know if the commentariat knows, was the incident racist? 

The commentariat holds that the fact that it happened to a black student, ipso facto, made it racist. If there was no intention to be racist and the student could as easily have done it to a white student, it’s not racist.

What is particularly egregious is that one prank by a student, most likely drunk out of his skull, reflects ‘institutional’ or ‘systemic’ racism. 

Prof. Jonathan Jansen, Professor of Education at the University of Stellenbosch, questioned why we are rightly outraged over the ‘pissing incident’ but asks where is the outrage over the 2,818 children under the age of five who have died of malnutrition in SA hospitals in the past three years? ‘Where is the campus outrage at a time when we literally put flames to the bodies of black people from other African countries? There is something deeply disturbing about student activism at present. It is so inwardly focused, transient and blissfully disconnected from the broader politics of racial resentment in the country and the world. In other words, a poverty of thinking that results from a narrow education that has little in its knapsack other than reactionary behaviour.’

James Myburgh in an article on Politicsweb entitled ‘The Two Weeks Hate and Tony Leon’ describes it thus: ‘In South Africa there is a ritual, best described as the Two Weeks Hate*, in which some person or institution becomes the focus of intense uncontrollable rage, first on Twitter, and then across the local and sometimes even international media. This developed into its current form about five years ago and the general pattern, and the High Priests responsible for its execution, are all familiar by now.’

The upshot is that the go-to position (even for Prof.Jansen), when the act of a white person has been publicly declared racist before evidence finds the alleged perpetrator to be (or not) a racist, puts the finding ahead of an examination of the facts. As a consequence, innocent lives that may be damaged, students leave their universities and jobs may be lost.

The South African Human Rights Commission has found after investigation that many cases of alleged racism, reveal that the accused have not committed racist acts. But the damage has already been done.

Prof. Jansen says ‘Now that some of the smoke of protest has cleared around an outrageously racist act in a men’s residence at Stellenbosch University (SU), it is time for deeper reflection. The facts of the case are undisputed. A white student urinated on the laptop and other possessions of a black student. However, the public incense, sometimes disguised as commentary, was all over the place. Let’s take a closer look.’

He then goes on to say that this incident is a distraction from bigger issues . On process he says ‘even a simple decision by the senate to teach a core module that requires all students to engage with issues of race, identity, culture and politics has remained in a cycle of perpetual piloting status.’

I am not convinced about “teaching” students not to be racist will resolve the problem. Prof. Jansen is correct, however, when he says racist attitudes will mostly come from a home environment. The home environment is not in the purview of the accusers or the university. For that reason it may be very difficult to change the attitudes of studdents.

In reality we will never rid society of racism. In the same way that we won’t rid society of gender-based violence, rape and murder. The best we can hope for is to lessen it or minimise it.

Attitudes are very difficult to change. What schools and universities can achieve, however, is the inculcation of behaviour that is moderate and respectful whatever a student’s beliefs are. But don’t expect to change attitudes. Attitudes change with time and exposure to different environments and different people, and because of the inculcation of good behaviour.

Many of the cases of alleged racism investigated by the South African Human rights Council find that the alleged perpetrators have not committed racist acts. But the damage has already been done.

An article in The Citizen was headed ‘Racism remains SA’s most stubborn problem, as SAHRC sees spike in complaints’. Racism is an issue in this country, but is not by any stretch South Africa’s most stubborn problem. The hysterical hyperbole of the press doesn’t help.

We have written numerous articles about the implementation of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools in South Africa.

CRT is one consequence of the current social justice movement. It is usually presented as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI or, as I prefer, DIE) training. 

Dr James Lindsay, creator of the New Discourses website which aims to educate about the scourge of this industry, says that equity is a rebranding of socialism – an administered economy that makes outcomes equal. Diversity and Inclusion are tools used to install political officers (in the school context ‘consultants’) to censor and remove dissidents. ‘In other words, the Woke Marxist DEI industry is a racket designed to install commissars for its ideology.’

The principle is that blacks (and other chosen minority groups) are perpetual victims and whites are perpetual oppressors. In these circumstances, society has to be completely changed so that the power resides with the oppressed. In summary, it is ‘transformation’ through racism.

The indoctrination is commonly accompanied by bullying and condemnation if a child doesn’t share this method of creating a tolerant society. However, it is in reality a political movement the aim of which is to change the power dynamics to achieve a Marxist society.

You would be forgiven for thinking this indoctrination was inappropriate in schools, particularly because all the other political systems are not taught. It’s inappropriate because it teaches adherence to a belief system that many parents are opposed to.

Now Gender Theory, another branch of the social justice paradigm, is starting to be implemented in schools. This theory is altogether on a level of magnitude more fact-resistant, irrational, emotional and potentially damaging than race theory.

Three conditions

There are three conditions at issue here: ‘gender dysphoria’ is a condition in which an individual feels that they do not identify with their sex. A ‘transgender’ person is someone whose gender identity is different from their sex. A ‘gender non-conforming’ person is someone whose appearance or behaviour does not align with what one might expect from a member of their sex.

Transitioning can be done in one of two ways. ‘Social transitioning’ occurs when a person chooses to present themselves as a member of the opposite sex. This may be through aesthetic changes such as clothing and hairstyles, and could also include going by a different name and using different pronouns. Generally social transitioning is reversible. A medical transition is the use of medical interventions such as puberty blockers, hormone treatment and surgery to alter the body. Some types of medical transitions, such as puberty blockers, are reversible, whereas surgery is generally permanent. Even with reversible treatment, a transitioning person may suffer permanent side-effects.

You will likely have heard about the ‘transgender movement’ in the US and the UK. It is extremely aggressive; it hounds people who disagree with it. It has led to people, particularly in academia, resigning or being fired for their non-transgender-conforming views.

The most perturbing issue in dispute currently is the insistence by transgender activists that transgender women (men who transition to women) are women in the biological sense. There is no such hysteria, however, about women who transition to men. Why this is so is not often discussed.

The most famous celebrity that the transgender movement tried to cancel is JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books. They discovered that it’s very difficult to cancel the very rich. She was very supportive of transgender women, but refused to accept that they are biological women.

False claim

Those critical of transgender women being considered biological women, usually are not opposed to the right to live life as their preferred gender, but will not accept refutation of biological sex so as to include transgender women. Many transgender women activists and journalists recognise and are angry about the false claim that transgender women are biological women. They express concern about the shrill bullying and anti-scientific assertion that sex is ‘assigned’ at birth. 

Whether there are biological explanations for the transgender phenomenon, it does not alter that men are biological men and women are biological women. There are very rare cases of hermaphroditism, the condition of having both male and female reproductive organs, but this doesn’t derogate from the argument. There is some evidence that some transgender people’s brains display a tendency that results in a clash between what a person feels his or her sex to be and the biology with which they are born.  

The ‘assignation’ at birth of sex is risible. Sex is determined in utero; it’s not as if as a child is born and some mysterious process happens which decides and certifies the sex the baby shall have. This is the gender theory equivalent of creationism – that the earth came into being 6 000 years ago despite incontrovertible science that the earth came into existence over 3 billion years ago.

The consequence of this assault on the status of biological women is that it threatens to undo over a century’s fight for women’s rights. Much of what women have had to fight for has its roots in women’s physiology.

Here’s some sobering advice for biological women and transgender women – women can’t have it all. Biological women have a very small window in which to marry and have children. This doesn’t mean that women can’t chose not to marry, or not to have children, or delay having them. Choices can be made but compared to biological men, women draw the short straw.

Women are able to bear children from puberty to the age of 35 relatively safely. Obviously the safety depends on access to the right medical facilities, or on cultural norms that may require teenagers or even children to marry and have children, which may be severely damaging if not fatal to the girls’ health.

Pregnancy

Assuming one lives in a First World context, women can bear children safely for about 20 years. After 35 the risks attendant on pregnancy and the ability to fall pregnant deteriorate dramatically; so too does the chance of the baby having abnormalities rise.

But what is a profound distinction of biological women is roughly 40 years of monthly menstruation, which can inhibit normal activity for being embarrassing, painful, likely to trigger migraines and messy, particularly for poor girls and women who don’t have easy access to feminine hygiene products.

The hormonal consequences for women are inexorably tied to the social consequences of their relationships with men and the options that they do or, mostly, don’t have in life. This informs women’s rights.

Then as all of this is coming to an end, menopause kicks in with its own discomforts and disruption. Getting over that is usually wonderful for women, only to realise that the ravages of age start to appear with disturbing frequency.

Obviously all of this represents the common experience; experiences may differ. However, all of this is what makes women biological women. Transgender women deserve respect for their choices and the way they live their life. But they are not biological women and to insist they are diminishes what women deal with just by virtue of being women.

And if your children are taught, at the age of six, that they can change their sex, protest it. Sex and gender are way too sensitive and complex issues to raise with young children. Age-appropriate education and the buy-in of parents is crucial. It is not up to teachers and consultants to inculcate their views which are false.

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“Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution.”

Mao Tse Tung in “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society” (March 1926), Selected Works, Vol. I.

A little while ago I had a conversation with the head of transformation at a top school in Gauteng. I said that I was from the Institute of Race Relations and we chatted amicably for a while. That was until I asked her whether the school was using a book called Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad to inform some of their ideas about social justice – a book that among other things requires white children to confess to all of their racist thoughts, and if they do not this is taken to mean that they are racist. She said that they weren’t and wanted to know where I heard that from. I told her that I had read it in the minutes of a transformation committee meeting that she chaired and that the document was on the school website. She backtracked a little and said that they were not using the whole book, merely employing some of the ideas contained in it. 

The following day, the document had disappeared from the website. I was not at all surprised by this or the attempted denial. 

I have been investigating, alongside some colleagues, what we have come to refer to as ‘school capture’. In the course of the investigation I have encountered such behaviour more than once. It can be frustrating, but it makes sense when you think about it from the point of view of an ideologue who considers those who disagree as roadblocks on the path to a grand and equitable future. 

‘School capture’ describes the ideological takeover of a school, from hiring practices to curriculum design to discipline, by a theory of social justice informed by the foundational beliefs of critical theories, most commonly critical race theory (CRT) and gender theory. 

CRT views race through a Marxist lens and requires converts to believe the following:

Society is just when institutions are demographically representative because, sans racism, this is what is a natural and just outcome. Among the factors standing in the way of this utopian ideal is liberalism, the core beliefs of which were designed by whites (and males, heterosexuals, cis-gendered and so on) to oppress others. Ideas such as non-racialism, equality under the law and freedom of expression all contribute to this system of oppression, even if they nominally promise citizenship, inclusion and participation in society. 

Oppression of non-whites is thought to be ubiquitous yet difficult to notice because it has become normalised throughout the western world. It is the job of those who have the special insight required to notice this, to teach others to notice it too and work together to dismantle the systems that perpetuate it. 

One group that possesses this insight by the bucketload are the diversity, equity and inclusion consultants and they are being welcomed by schools around the country. Shake an illiberal school policy and a list of racism allegations, and at least one of them will fall out. The kicker is that the consultants profit financially from selling their ideology. That is not to say that they are doing it for the money. They believe in their cause, just like the pastor of a megachurch who uses his congregation’s tithes to buy himself a jet. 

I have yet to come across a diversity, equity and inclusion consultant whose contribution has had an objective or observable net benefit for a school. Once they are allowed time with the students and teachers, segregated safe spaces appear; words and ideas are banned despite constitutional protection; students make false allegations against their peers and teachers, who withdraw and change the way they teach, choosing not to have conversations that may trigger offence; and students become fragile and relish the opportunity to advertise their victimhood and virtue.

Sooner or later, as social cohesion breaks down the school decides to fix it by granting the transformation committee an extraordinary amount of control over the running of the school, including designing and implementing a social justice curriculum. And as I have experienced, the committees, emboldened by the teachings of the consultants, are willing to bend the truth in the face of criticism. They know that what they are doing is radical and revolutionary, and that most parents would be outraged if they knew the truth of what was being taught to their children. 

Given this, why are schools hiring consultants? 

How the magic trick is done

About a year and a half ago I phoned a top private school, introduced myself and asked the receptionist if it would be possible for me to speak to somebody involved in transformation. I barely had time to finish my sentence before the lady, in what I interpreted to be a slightly panicked voice, assured me that the school was ‘doing the work’. She began listing some of what ‘the work’ entailed. We’re providing mandatory Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) training workshops; we’ve formed a Transformation Task Team; we’re decolonising the curriculum; we’re updating our codes of conduct and hiring practices. It came across as though she was reading a script. She was nervous about something.

The school had recently been accused of a few flavours of racism during the #yousilenceweamplify social media campaign that began in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. The campaign was started by students at Herschel Girls’ School and quickly spread to other schools, garnering a lot of media attention. Thousands of accusations were made across the country, some anonymous and some not, some specific and some general, and even some with identical phraseology.

Numerous media outlets and political parties called for transformation efforts to be ramped up; the former looking for clicks, the latter looking to advance a race nationalist agenda and, as we all know, willing to toss aside the constitution to achieve it.

Enter the DEI consultants. They drafted open letters, were featured on podcasts and were interviewed on primetime news networks. They all said the same thing: formerly white schools were riddled with racism. More than that, however, they were bastions of colonialism and would continue to oppress black bodies unless something fundamental – radical, in the true sense of the term – was done. Naturally, hiring them to perform the cleansing was touted as the way forward. 

Like most schools caught up in the scandal, the school management issued a statement declaring support for Black Lives Matter, accepted full responsibility for its role in a system of white supremacy, and promised to ‘do the work’. 

Following the school’s mea culpa, a transformation committee was set up to administer the school’s new transformation agenda, modelled on the Independent Schools’ Association of Southern Africa’s (ISASA) ‘Guide to Effective School Management and Diversity Toolkit’. 

The principal had little choice but to do these things. Politically connected parents were demanding the school change its hiring practices to ensure greater diversity, in many cases, at the expense of merit. Perhaps most importantly, pupils were demanding to have time set aside for conversations dedicated to topics like transgenderism, microaggressions, implicit bias, and whiteness. The principal supported the idea but soon realised, along with her colleagues, that holding such conversations with woke teenagers is difficult and can land you in a lot of trouble. People trained to teach maths or geography are ill-prepared to do so. So, she did what other schools were doing and what had been recommended by ISASA. That is, she hired a diversity consultant to teach the teachers how to have such conversations and to help plaster the cracks that were beginning to appear between pupils and teachers who held differing opinions on controversial topics to do with race and gender. 

As is the case with every diversity consultant who takes on a school as a client, she was fully on board with the tenets of critical race theory, gender theory, and postcolonial theory. There is no room for dissent in the face of the certainties these ideas embody. Such moral superiority is part and parcel of theories like these. 

Little wonder that following the diversity workshops, racial tensions at the school worsened; expressing liberal ideas like colour-blindness, individuality and meritocracy are discouraged in the name of inclusion, teachers are banned from  assuming the gender of their pupils at their all-girl’s school, and the headmistress is having to deal with an increasing number of allegedly racist incidents. With more racism will come a greater need for transformation and the cycle will repeat itself. As, inevitably, will the imperative of the consultant’s services.

The reason I bring this story up is that I have spoken to many people who say things like ‘These schools are stupid, why do they believe this nonsense?’ or ‘If I was a school principal, I’d never hire a diversity consultant’. I understand the temptation to think these things, and I have thought them, too. But that was before hearing the panic in the receptionist’s voice when I raised the issue of transformation and my subsequent meeting with the headmistress.

You see, the principal did not ‘believe this nonsense’, (neither do many others I have spoken to) which is the part I find most frightening. When we met, she expressed concern about what the diversity consultant was teaching her charges (as did most of her colleagues) and the resulting radicalisation of a number of her pupils and colleagues. 

Initially, she believed that she was doing the right thing. Later, she realised she may have made some wrong decisions, but by then the consultant had done her work and the transformation machine was gaining momentum.

The principal was no pushover. She was compassionate, smart, and not somebody I would ever like to disappoint. I could see why she had climbed the ranks and become headmistress. At any other time, she would have been presiding over a flourishing school. But this time she hired a diversity consultant. What was she to do once she realised her error? Stand up in assembly and espouse her liberal ideas of free speech and colour-blindness only to get branded a racist by a vocal minority of recently indoctrinated pupils? Face getting excommunicated by ISASA which explicitly condemns the colourblind ideal? Have to deal with the EFF at the gates, and find her name in a News24 article or her school’s in a tweet by Amnesty International? 

I don’t blame her for taking the path she did. I just think that she made the same mistake that many school leaders around the country have made, which is to underestimate the religious zeal of social justice activists and the enticingly simplistic ideology behind them. 

Always liberalism 

Liberal values in most of our top schools now sit upon pyres with flames licking at their feet. The fuel has been gathered over many years by organisations such as ISASA, the ANC, the EFF, and even overseas organisations like The Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity in the US who have partnered with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, and whose fellows now occupy prominent places in media, education and consulting spaces.

If these organisations are the fuel, the spark is lit by allegations of racism. This is an important moment for a school. They could either dowse the spark with liberalism or hire consultants, sit back and watch them fan the flames. 

Here is some practical advice for school management who find themselves having to deal with allegations against teachers.

Get all of the facts before taking any drastic measures like suspending teachers or issuing a public apology. Regard the teachers as innocent until proven guilty. The vast majority of high-profile racism allegations have been proven false. Issuing a public apology before the facts have been accounted for adds fuel to the fire. Also, if you do feel the need to apologise, make it specific. Do not apologise for ‘systemic racism’ or ‘a culture of whiteness’. This is social justice language and you tie yourself to that paradigm if you engage with it. 

You may come under a lot of scrutiny from the media, politicians and social media activists. That is part of their playbook. Ignore it, it will blow over eventually and your school will be stronger for it. 

Do not do what most elite schools have done and hire diversity consultants. Just this week, Brackenfell High School was cleared of all charges by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) regarding an alleged whites-only matric dance. Yet, according to this Times Live article:

‘In the wake of the incident, the school said it would fast-track the formation of a diversity committee and plan activities to improve pupil interactions across different backgrounds. Workshops facilitated by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation would also be held for the staff.’

This is a mistake, as the school will discover in the not-too-distant future.

In a Weekend Argus article from February, SAHRC Commissioner for Basic Education, advocate André Gaum, is quoted as saying: 

“We also want a Human Rights Commission-sanctioned social cohesion, sensitivity and diversity training programme that can be rolled out at all schools.”

Standing up to social justice bureaucracy will not be easy in the coming years. It will take courage and integrity from school leaders, reasonable teachers, and concerned parents with help from principled organisations, to protect South Africa’s children from becoming the means to an end for a cabal of ideologues.  

Schools need to build honour codes centred on classically liberal values where esteem is granted for treating people as individual agents deserving of dignity and respect regardless of inherent differences; freedom of opinion is celebrated; non-racialism is upheld as is an understanding that life circumstances differ from person to person; pupils are taught that intentions do matter and that charity in this regard is a virtue, and; being offended by an idea you disagree with is normal but that in most cases you benefit from engaging with it. 

The schools that create such honour codes might be scrutinised in the short term but they are the ones that will have happy teachers of good quality and a generally cohesive and anti-fragile student body well-equipped to be productive members of South African society.

I read with great sadness the article How to ruin a school, Politicsweb 01 March 2020.

There have been increasing instances – previously in private schools, but now also in government schools – of claims of racism being made by pupils against fellow pupils and teachers in the name of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), or what we term the acceptance of Critical Race Theory (CRT).

This is a phenomenon that was imported from the United States into academia over decades and which really came to public attention in South Africa as a result of the RhodesMustFall/FeesMustFall protests from 2015.

The praxis of CRT started to find its way into the private sector through the adoption of policies by the Independent Schools Association of South Africa.

It is largely a pernicious ideology which is fundamentally based on the concept that blacks (and minorities in general) are victims, whites are oppressors, and to solve the problem means upending the political system and seeking communism as a means of reordering society.

What you find to a greater or lesser extent in schools where diversity programmes become a feature is that they are preceded by accusations of racism by groups of pupils, often online, and against both fellow pupils and teachers.

The author of How to ruin a school, Prof. John van den Berg, points out the cowardice and pandering to the parents of the accusing pupils. One has some level of sympathy with management because one wrong step and the accusations are then levelled at management and their jobs come under threat. So there become two “mobs” – pupils and their parents.

However, there is no alternative to it; management and the school governing bodies must have the knowledge of what they’re facing and the courage to deal with it in terms of appropriate disciplinary and grievance procedures.

The sort of behaviour by the pupils in accusing others of racism is common and intensely destructive. Such pupils act individually and as a mob. And their weapon of choice is social media. It is well known that the behaviour that teenage girls are most likely to have recourse to cause havoc is bullying. Boys tend to use physical violence. Social media turns a recourse to bullying into a process akin to the Inquisition.

The St. Mary’s example highlights these egregious tactics and the weak response to them: social media accusations; the suspension of teachers without their knowing the charge (an unfair labour practice in itself); nothing to prove against the teachers but they have already had their authority undermined to the extent that they can’t teach effectively ,and resign; pupils who have falsely been accused or who just hate the new “social justice” atmosphere leave the school; and the school loses its reputation.

Probably the most disastrous action the school did not take was to charge and discipline the girls identified as having spread the libels or made accusations. Their behaviour runs the gamut from racism to bullying to undermining authority. Experience shows that the only way to overcome this destructive behaviour is through the exercise of the legitimate power of management to implement the disciplinary rules that underpin the effective running of a school.

It was for this reason that the Institute of Race Relations set up a resource website on CRT in schools to help equip parents and teachers to deal with these phenomena.

The major problem for the accused teachers and pupils, their parents, management and SGB is that the accusers are black as are their parents. This is not a racist allegation; it is a fact and a fact borne out by this case. The very aim of CRT and DEI is to empower black children to disempower white children (and teachers). This generally leads to opposing white and black parents feeling helpless.

There is no avoiding the fact that, unless the adults support CRT, they must be prepared to act together to take this on; they must put pressure on school management; they must insist that discipline is fairly and uniformly applied.

The final and most destructive consequence is the undermining of the authority of teachers. Once teachers lose their authority, teaching becomes impossible. Schools only succeed in their aims if the teachers, the adults, have authority over the pupils.

We all know that teenagers are still children; their hormonal development makes them irrational and condescending of “ignorant” adults while they still have a huge amount to learn and little practical experience to call upon. Of course teachers are not entitled to be racist or breach codes of conduct themselves, but schools have ways to appropriately deal with misconduct.

Sara Gon is head of strategic engagement at the Institute of Race Relations (IRR)

[Photo: Getty Images]

Sections of the commentariat have done much recently to expose the ‘woke’ assault on our schools and warn of its consequences. I consider these exposés to be an essential part of the campaign to save our schools from woke-capture, but all the ones I have read have come from parties outside the affected school communities, whose observations therefore are made at a personal distance. This article provides what I think is missing: an account from the inside. It is a parent’s story.

In mid-2020 the country's high school sector was convulsed by a series of self-styled 'anti-racism' protests. These started at a school in the Western Cape, before spreading quickly across the country, gaining firm traction in a subset of the country's elite schools, with private girl’s schools in particular, the hardest hit.

Passions were undoubtedly ignited by the George Floyd killing in the US and the emergence of BLM, and many of the complaints and allegations that fuelled these protests were the same, but no two schools dealt with the challenge in the same way. Some were able to steer their ships through the storm relatively unscathed, others sadly, ran theirs aground.

If there is one school in this spectrum that stands as a salutary example of what not to do, it is St. Mary’s DSG, Pretoria. Its sad story is in essence one of weak leadership leading to institutional self-harm and it bears recounting as a warning to others. But it is also an intensely personal story, for my wife was a former teacher, and my daughter a former learner, at the school, and they were pulled into the vortex.

In the build up to a much-publicised protest which took place on 25 June 2020 and which was seen as important enough to make the news on eNCA, the school's teachers had been subjected to a slanderous naming-and-shaming social media campaign, replete with obscenities (such as "f_ _ k Mrs _ _ _"), body-shaming and threats, accusations characterised by half-truths, fact-twisting and in some cases complete fabrications, and calls for the dismissal and ‘blacklisting’ of staff. Attempts were even made to entrap staff.

The school had been alerted to what was taking place in the surrounding social media space, and who the culprits were, but its response was not to come to the aid of its beleaguered staff, but rather to acquiesce to the demands of the 'mob'^[i] and initiate a witch-hunt against them.

Staff were hastily suspended and expensive teams of lawyers brought in to investigate. No stone was left unturned in the hunt for acts of discrimination. Social media sites were trawled and anonymous postings against staff carefully collected and collated. This was done not for the purpose of punishing those responsible for these actionable postings, but rather to use as evidence in the prosecution of the school's teachers.

This exercise cost DSG millions but produced in the end not a single witch, for at its conclusion, no member of staff was found to have committed any act of racial discrimination of any sort. In fact, in the case of only one staff member did the investigating advocate, who certainly didn't err on the side of generosity to the teachers, think a formal disciplinary was warranted. But the employer's case in this single disciplinary was flimsy and collapsed almost immediately because no witnesses could be found to substantiate the charge of discrimination. In an institution apparently so riven with the scourge of racism, one might have expected a slew of guilty verdicts.

But what was the human cost of all this? One can write of the reputational damage, the shattered morale of teachers and the fear each had they might be the next one hauled before The Inquisition, and so on, but numbers best illustrate the point.

Since the protest 18 months ago, more than 20 high school staff have either left DSG or given notice to do so, this from a high school staff establishment of less than 40. Of those that have abandoned the school, some have left teaching altogether, while others have taken up positions at other schools. As an aside, I'm told that the vacancies page of the ISASA website is a favourite port of call for DSG’s teachers^[ii].

If the school was worried by the loss of so many teachers, then it certainly didn’t show, for they appear to have traded a scarce-skills senior mathematics teaching post (and possibly other teaching posts too) for the establishment of two executive level ‘Transformation and Diversity’ positions. A clear indication of where DSG’s new priorities lie.

The school was, however, guilty of another arguably more egregious act of wrongdoing: one of omission. It failed to protect those learners who had become the target of bullying for having failed to show sufficient enthusiasm for the protest cause.

These learners were mainly white, but by no means exclusively so. My daughter was one such victim. She left the school before the end of her grade 11 year, after having been allowed to write her end of term exams in a separate venue (this fact alone should have signalled to the school that something terrible was amiss) leaving behind an academic scholarship and staff remission bursary.

Her plight was far from the worst, however. In one instance, the father of a white learner who had been the target of the most appalling bullying, was asked by the school management to collect his daughter from the school premises because her safety could no longer be guaranteed. (This father had, over a period of several weeks prior to this, written letters to the school imploring them to act against those responsible for the bullying of his daughter. His pleas fell on deaf ears.)

This was an extraordinary admission for the school to have made. It seemed not to have occurred to them that safeguarding children entrusted to their care, was actually a responsibility of theirs, and an important one too.

Despite bullying being a Level-4 offence (this is the most serious category of offence in terms of the DSG School Code of Conduct) and a mountain of utterly compelling evidence of the bullying of learners and the slander of staff being given to the school, chapter and verse, to the best of my knowledge, not a single learner has appeared before a disciplinary to answer for their conduct arising from the shameful events of 2020.

The consequence of all this has been a 20% reduction in the high school intake, and a steady stream of learners leaving the school. 

An irony in this is that DSG, like so many other of our elite schools, parrots the mantra of seeking 'diversity and inclusion', but its recent actions have seen the school actually becoming less, rather than more, diverse.

One can write that many of those leaving were high achievers that would have done the school proud, but again numbers best illustrate the point. In the recently announced IEB matric results, 56 distinctions were earned by nine^[iii] girls who left DSG in the aftermath of the 2020 protests. It is telling too that they all left in their grade 11 year. Ordinarily, changing schools a year before one's matric is ill-advised and these girls would surely have stuck it out, had they not found things intolerable.

The DSG matric class of 2021 would have been a bumper year. Could have been, should have been, but wasn't.

Since these figures are silent on the loss of learners in lower grades, one wonders what the 2022 matric results and beyond will be like.

There are two salutary lessons to be learnt from all this.

The first is that a school must back its teachers for they are the institution's most precious resource. Good teachers lost are not easily replaced. In cases where learner complaints against teachers are made, the common-sense principle of audi alteram partem should be applied right at the start of an investigation before consideration is given to the initiation of any formal proceedings.

Had DSG done this, almost all of the charges levelled against the teachers would have been swiftly refuted and matters laid to rest in a matter of minutes. Much anguish and reputational injury could have been avoided.

The second lesson is that school managements need to apply their codes of conduct consistently and without fear or favour. The modicum of moral fortitude that this requires was sadly absent in DSG’s case, and this failure has longer-term harmful consequences. Teachers now fear that if they admonish a learner, there is a chance the learner will take to social media and slander them in an act of reprisal, secure in the knowledge that such an act will go unpunished. This fear strips the teacher of real authority and destabilises the classroom.

The school acted with extraordinary haste in suspending its teachers. Such was the rush that many were served with notices of suspension over a weekend, and this was followed within 24 hours by a communique announcing the suspensions to the school community. This was no less than the mob demanded.

But this haste to suspend was not matched by an equal urgency to explain to the teachers what it was they were meant to have done wrong. The letters of suspension did invite the suspendees to challenge their suspensions within a four-day period, but it’s hard to challenge a suspension when you haven’t been told what the reasons for it are. The suspended staff had to wait seven very anxious weeks before any allegations were actually put to them.

But the school somehow lost all enthusiasm when it came to disciplining miscreant learners, even when these learners had been recommended for disciplinary action by the independent firm of lawyers employed by DSG with the express brief of investigating and making such recommendations. One must ask why?

The answer can be found in a quite shocking admission made by the Chair of the School Governing Body in a meeting with staff in September 2020, held soon after the suspended teachers had returned to work. Below are his exact words:

"With regards to the fact that the investigations into staff had to be finished before the disciplinary actions [against learners] was taken, it was not an easy decision for the Governors to make, it is a political thing rather than a strategic thing, the way I see it. Because you must remember teachers that this crisis has got racial undertones and the sad thing that I was confronted with was that when it comes to cyber misconduct the learners implicated, I think all of them are black, and we have black parents sitting on our shoulders trying to see what we do next …”

Later on the Chairman opines with reference to the aforementioned black parents that they were:

“… influential, loud and well-organised.”

This frank but craven admission requires no explanation.

One of the protest demands was for the compulsory teaching of ‘White Privilege’ so that this oppressive and apparently pervasive culture could be outed and then expunged from the school. One wonders, however, how the above utterances are to be explained through the paradigm of White Privilege.

In its quest to find acts of racial discrimination, as in the differential treatment of people based on their race, perhaps the Governing Body needed to look a little closer to home.

Any hopes entertained by the five returning suspendees (all had been cleared of the allegations made against them^[iv]) that a return to normality was possible with reputations intact, were extinguished by the following Instagram posting which greeted their return to the workplace:

“Today we received a letter from the school that will be posted soon.

The school has decided to allow the racist, xenophobic and homophobic teachers back into office from tomorrow onwards.

No justice has been served for the girls in our school.”

The school management was aware of this posting and who the learner was who wrote it, but took no action.

What of the future?

The attempts that I and many others made over a long period of time to get DSG to acknowledge that it had done the wrong thing and to change course, were unsuccessful. And spectacularly so, for even if a public admission of wrongdoing on their part, the issuance of apologies or just an expression of regret, was too much to ask for, one might have expected the school leadership to at least want the painful and shameful events of 2020 to quietly recede into the past.

Not so it seems, for on 25 June 2021, DSG chose to celebrate the occasion of the first anniversary of the 2020 protest with a special ceremony and the release of a commemorative video. Comparisons were even drawn between the Soweto youth of `76 who risked their lives standing up against the might of the Apartheid state, and brave girls calling out their school and its teachers for their (as it turns out phantom) racism, homophobia and xenophobia. The school had heard their calls, praised them for their heroism, apologised for the hurt caused, and set course for a new nirvana.

This marked the point at which my wife left DSG, a school she had loyally served for nearly ten years. She was not alone of course, and like many others now teaches at another institution.

A common understanding of fairness and compassion seems unable to intrude upon this stubborn narrative. Perhaps in the end cold numbers will.

John van den Berg is an academic at a South African university, but writes in his personal capacity. St Mary’s DSG Pretoria is an elite private school in the province of Gauteng South Africa.

 Footnotes:

^[i] In July 2020 DSG employed, for a brief period, the services of an advocate widely recognised as the expert in social media abuse and cyber bullying. In an online session, intended to offer legal advice to staff, she used the word 'mob' to describe those responsible for the assault against the school and its teaching establishment. She also said that the hostility directed at the institution was the worst she had ever seen.

^[ii] In 2021 an anonymous survey was conducted amongst members of the school community. The survey contained a host of questions, but some were directed at teachers specifically. One such question asked whether they had applied for a teaching position at another school. The number of teachers who answered this question in the affirmative is not known because the school management refused to make available to staff the survey results.

^[iii] This data I got from a quick survey amongst my daughter's friends and school acquaintances, but these numbers are a lower bound on the actual figures.

^[iv] These were the exact words used by the School Board of Governors in a communique sent to the school community at the end of September 2020 reporting on, amongst other things, the outcome of its investigation of the suspended staff.

https://twitter.com/wilkinsoncape/status/1488723849944485894?s=21

In response to Richard Wilkinson's tweet, below are our additional comment about Dr. Lushaba.

Dr. Lwazi Lushaba was suspended by Wits University for his involvement in a Student Representative Council (SRC) election debate which ended in physical altercations between members of Wits EFF and Project W – a non-politically affiliated student representative group.

He left Wits and was employed in the Politics Department of UCT the following year.

Prof. David Benatar’s book “The Fall of the University of Cape Town” devotes a chapter to an article he originally wrote for Politicsweb on 15 April 2021. CHAPTER 22: COMMANDANTE LUSHABA AND THE FÜHRER and it examines a statement made in a pre-recorded lecture posted online that ‘Hitler committed no crime. All Hitler did was to do to white people what white people have reserved for us, black people.’ 

Prof. Benatar in CHAPTER 18: SELECTING A DEAN: RACISTS V RACIST XENOPHOBES explores a tortuous process held to appoint a new dean to the Humanities Faculty. A selection committee had to be constituted. After the nominations and elections, Dr. Lushaba objected to a component of the committee.

When a member of the Philosophy Department said that it would not be right to re-open nominations and effectively discard the result, Dr. Lwazi accused the lecturer of being one of the ‘beneficiaries of racial privilege…[who arrogate unto themselves to (sic) right to tell us victims of racial injustice how we ought to comport ourselves’ and that the lecturer ‘can as best as whiteness does always summon institutions of British colonial violence and kill us.’ 

The process was tortuous and extended, too detailed to go into. Save to say, that when votes were being tallied he, inter alia, ‘began tearing up ballots, kicking ballot boxes removing some ballots and putting at least one in his mouth. He also “manhandled” two administrators when they tried to stop him.’

Famously Dr. Lushaba told his students that “blacks” and “whites” cannot be friends and then set an exam question in which he asked students to “specify the reason for the impossibility of such friendships. He also complained about the abundance of “white female” postgraduate students in his department.

Over and above what Prof. Benatar has said, during 2016 and 2017 the following public utterances were made by Dr. Lushaba:

“Comrades and Black people, a called for the “defeat of White settlers”.  

“Free education is a problem for Black not White people.  This struggle is not for poor people.  It is for Black people.   Until we face the realities of history, will not be able to deal with the present, let alone prepare for the future.  If you are Black, you are disadvantaged in every respect.  If you are White, you are advantaged in every respect.  The struggle for free education is not about money.  The problem is the value system of education.”

“UCT continues to “teach precisely the same ideas it taught during Apartheid in order to perpetuate the colonial system.  The task of thinking has been made an exclusive preserve of White people.  Blacks cannot produce knowledge.”

“There is a structure [current ad hominem promotion procedures] that ensures that we are kept outside of the academy.  This is not accidental.  It is by design.  Those who are beneficiaries of colonialism and Apartheid [Whites] and, consequently occupy positions must have the decency to listen to the oppressed.  They will learn, even if it’s painful, they will learn.”

“White people provoke us and tell us how to respond to the provocation.  We have no autonomy of thought.”

“Currently, UCT graduates only seek jobs within the overarching “System” saying: “Please employ me because I’ve gone to a White racist UCT and survived.”

“We must tell the White people who are threatening to walk away that a time will come along soon when we will run UCT on our own and give them a new value system and not at the whim of ‘White’ sentiment”

“….our enemies, white people”

Detroit’s school superintendent, Nikolai Vitti, says critical race theory is deeply embedded in his school system: “Our curriculum is deeply using critical race theory, especially in social studies, but you’ll find it in English language arts and the other disciplines. We were very intentional about … embedding critical race theory within our curriculum.”

His school district is not alone. Twenty percent of urban school teachers have discussed or taught critical race theory with K-12 students, as have 8 percent of teachers nationally, according to an Education Week survey. The Seattle public schools employed a critical race theorist as part of the district’s efforts to embed the theory in elementary schools.

“Unequivocally, critical race theory is taught in K-12 public schools,” said the Heritage Foundation’s Jonathan Butcher, noting he wrote a research paper detailing numerous instances of school districts openly using the phrase “critical race theory” in curriculum plans.

Seattle Public Schools notes that its “Black Studies” class includes critical race theory. “Critical Race Theory” is also “explicitly included in a course at Ballard High School in Seattle,” reports the conservative Washington Examiner. Seattle is injecting critical race theory into its curriculum, including a mandatory Black Studies course “that will be required for graduation from Seattle Public Schools.”

Yet, education reporters — almost all of whom are progressives — insist that no school system anywhere is teaching critical race theory. America has thousands of school systems, with widely varying curriculums, so reporters can’t possibly know what each and every school district teaches. But they claim that no school system anywhere teaches critical race theory, despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary.

In November, after the teaching of critical race theory in K-12 schools had become a national political issue, Washington Post education reporter Hannah Natanson wrote that critical race theory “is not taught at the K-12 level in Virginia — or anywhere else in the country.” Education reporters Laura Meckler and Timothy Bella wrote on November 8 that “critical race theory…is not taught by any K-12 systems.” The Washington Post’s Paul Schwartzman wrote that “it is not part of classroom teaching.” The Post’s Aaron Blake claimed that schools “don’t actually teach it.” The Washington Post editorial board wrote that “critical race theory is not part of local school systems’ K-12 curriculum…There’s scant evidence it’s taught anywhere.” 

The Post’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey claimed that critical race theory is “an intellectual movement that examines the way policies and laws perpetuate systemic racism and is not part of the public school curriculum.”

But it is in some schools’ curriculum, and it is not just an “intellectual movement” aimed at addressing racism or discrimination. Critical race theory is a radical ideology that is hostile to the free market economy, equating it with racism: “To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism…Capitalism is essentially racist; racism is essentially capitalist,” says the best-selling book promoting critical race theory, How to Be An Antiracist. That book is a “comprehensive introduction to critical race theory,” gushes the leading progressive media organ Slate.

And what does it teach? Not ending discrimination. The “key concept” in Ibram Kendi’s book How to Be an Antiracist is that discrimination against whites is the only way to achieve equality: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,” writes Kendi in that book. Kendi is a leading “critical race theorist.”

If state education bureaucracies had their way, critical race theory would become more common in school curriculums. In 2015, Virginia’s Department of Education instructed public schools to “embrace critical race theory” in order to “re-engineer attitudes and belief systems.'”

Virginia’s largest school system, the Fairfax County Public Schools, now encourages teachers to apply to apply critical race theory. The Washington Times reports that a “slide presentation this summer instructed social studies teachers in Fairfax County Public Schools that ‘critical race theory is a frame’ for their work.”

The Arlington County schools have students read books by critical race theorists such as Ibram Kendi. Arlington distributed hundreds of copies of Ibram Kendi’s book “Stamped” to students at Wakefield High School. The book contains many errors and celebrates a Marxist anti-Semite. It also peddles conspiracy theories and is dismissive about Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass.

The Loudoun County, VA public schools paid a contractor to train their staff in critical race theory, giving it $3,125 to conduct “Critical Race Theory Development.”

Virginia’s official “Roadmap to Equity” published by its Department of Education in 2020 thanked critical race theorist “Dr. Ibram X. Kendi” in its acknowledgments section, as having “informed the development of the EdEquityVA Framework.” Kendi says he was “inspired by critical race theory,” and that he cannot “imagine a pathway to” his teachings “that does not engage CRT.”

• Fort Worth Independent School District Superintendent Kent Scribner said he was 'very proud' the district had the 'courage to have these conversations'
• The school district denied teaching critical race theory (CRT) in May 
• Ex-committee member Carlos Turcios is now exposing the school district and posted presentations and teacher courses that implement CRT 
• One presentation used a James Baldwin quote that stated there's 'a little white man inside all of us' while discussing internalized white supremacy 
• Students at the school responded positively to opening a discussing on multiple cultures
• Turcios is now asking for Scribner to resign from his position on the board  
• The school district does not currently offer CRT classes for students, only courses for teachers  

The Fort Worth public school district has sparked outrage after giving teachers a course on critical race theory where they were taught 'there's a little white man inside all of us,' despite denying that CRT is being taught in its schools. 

The Fort Worth Independent School District in Texas in May denied that critical race theory is taught in its schools, however, an ex-committee member, Carlos Turcios - who recently resigned from the committee over CRT, exposed classes that were offered to teachers about how to implement CRT into their classrooms. 

The school district offered courses for teachers to explain CRT and how to recognize bias and implement open discussions in the classroom. It is unclear when the classes were offered, but it is believed to be in 2020.

Despite denying it was teaching CRTY, in a 2020 Zoom meeting, Superintendent Kent Scribner said he was 'very proud that we have the courage to have these conversations and that we have the skilled leadership with the right values to make this work' after introducing the new courses being offered for teachers.

Turcios, however, says the school district is 'doing a disservice to the students by teaching them that color is everything.'  

'The superintendent and the bureaucracy are doing a disservice to the students by teaching them that color is everything, that America is oppressive, and that white supremacy is everywhere,' Turcios told Fox News on Monday. 

'Last time I checked, critical race theory doesn’t help kids learn how to pay the bills, pay their taxes or pass that job interview.' 

To continue to the full article article, please click here.

Critical Race Theory places a target on the backs of Jewish and other communities, former New York Times op-ed page editor Bari Weiss told a Montreal Zoom lecture event Nov. 22. Rabbi Reuben Poupko interviewed Weiss and Tablet senior writer Liel Leibovitz. The event, part of the Frieda and Mike Dym Memorial Lecture series and presented by the Beth Israel Beth Aaron Synagogue, was entitled "Antisemitism: Old hate new vocabulary."

According to edweek.org, the core idea of CRT is that "race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies." Weiss left the Times because of what she said was online left-wing political bullying by younger staff members that influenced decisions by top brass. Weiss now has a Substack newsletter.

Rabbi Poupko started the topic by saying, "I happen to think that one of the unintended consequences of equity versus equality of opportunity... is that it puts a target on the back of those who seem to have disproportionately benefitted from the current reality — in other words, whether you're an Asian-American or a Jew in America, if you've gotten more of the pie than you were supposed to, that means you were, at the very least, a beneficiary of the systemic racism they speak about endlessly, or possibly even an architect of systemic racism.

"And therefore, that can partly explain the uptick in hate crimes against Jews and against Asians — when you speak about equity, you're putting a target on the back of those who have done too well. Am I wrong on this?" Weiss said the issue is an "open question.

"I wouldn't want to stipulate that there's a direct connection between what goes on in Anthropology or Political Science classes at Columbia, and attacks on Asians around Penn Station," she said. "I don't want to necessarily draw too strong of a correlation between those things."

She added that "we are living in a culture right now, where one of the high priests of CRT — he's won every prize elite America can offer — is pushing an ideology that is neo-racist and that stipulates that if there is inequality in terms of outcome, that in and of itself is proof that systemic racism is present — inequality is proof of racism.

"If you believe that, yes I agree, I don't know how you can't easily come to the conclusion that there must be something really suspicious or even evil or malicious about these groups that are over-performing relative to their class or size. The contortions that you see in order to justify this are quite astonishing."

Weiss said she saw a spreadsheet from an educational institution (reports say it was the University of Maryland), featuring a table listing everyone in the school, "and one of the categories said "people of colour, minus Asians."

"This is a constant trope right now — getting rid of the SAT... if this doesn't ring a bell to Jews of your generation and especially the older generation for whom quotas were a regular part of life, this should be sounding the alarm for all of us. Yes, there is the sort of suspicion around outside success relative to your proportion of the population.

"But there are two other ways I think CRT puts a target on our back — it insists we are beneficiaries not just of white privilege, which can be debated, but that we're, in a way,  the exemplars of white privilege. We were able to change our names (anglicizing Jewish names)... and in this way, we are implicitly upholding the scaffolding of the white supremacist system, and there is a reason, that if you looked at the protests to the Kyle Rittenhouse [court case] outcome, there were people raising Palestinian flags and screaming about Israel."

Weiss added that CRT also "puts a target on our back because it says not only are we upholding the system of white supremacy here at home, but we are also loyal to the last standing bastion of white colonialism in the Middle East, and so we become guilty of three things at once — power and success, a terrible sin right now in the eyes of the progressive consensus; implicit racism; and of supporting imperialism and colonialism.”

Leibovitz agreed, and said it's best to "refuse to indulge and engage in this noxious game in any way.

"I say to audiences 'I don't believe in equity, I don't.' I believe in excellence, a system that gives everyone a fair shot to be the best they can be and live out their true potential, which is exactly the promise at the core of America.... The alternative to it is a monstrous system that assumes inherent racism."

 

 

 

Richard Wilkinson on Twitter

@WilkinsonCape

 

https://twitter.com/wilkinsoncape/status/1468607063085436928?s=21

The Independent Schools Association of Southern Africa (ISASA) is the largest and oldest association of independent schools in the Southern African region. It has over 850 schools all of which pay an annual subscription fee in return for financial, advocacy, best practice and professional development services and advice.

ISASA’s theory of school transformation is laid out in two documents – the Statement on Anti-Racism and the Guide to Effective School Transformation and Diversity Management. *

The two documents suggest that ISASA’s vision and mission are consistent with those of an approach to eradicating unfair racial discrimination called critical race theory (CRT).

Critical Race Theory

CRT considers human interaction to be synonymous with interactions of power determined according to the racial identity of interacting subjects. When humans of different races interact it is never the case that they meet on equal footing. People whose racial identity grants them a higher spot on the power hierarchy must, at all times, be aware of their privileged standing and do the work of recognising and dismantling the biases necessarily present by virtue of being born with a particular skin colour. In other words, developing a critical consciousness. In other words, becoming woke.

Crucially, although racial power manifests in individuals, it does so under systems of power – systems that individuals have been socialised into. By this logic, a person is a member of an identity group first and an individual, second.

CRT rejects the main beliefs of philosophical liberalism – equality theory, individualism, objectivity, and incremental progress guided by reason and logic. Instead, it favours equity, identity politics, social constructivism, and revolution. The ultimate goal of CRT is a Marxist society where the shackles of oppression, both overt and subtle, have been discarded. 

CRT is a revolutionary endeavour in the name of social justice. As such, scholars and activists need to find a way to plant the seeds of revolution and they seem to have found fertile ground in our education system. The way that CRT ideas are spread is called praxis – the marrying of theory and practice.

In short, CRT is concerned with 1) identifying oppressive power systems (western liberalism) and disrupting them, and 2) praxis – teaching others to view the world through the ideological lens of CRT.

ISASA’s documents reflect the same ideas.

Power

ISASA holds that schools are made up of the dominant group (whites) and the subordinate group (non-whites). The goal of transformation is to eradicate the power imbalance between these two groups.

‘The drive for inclusion is informed by the reality that the dominant group in that institution already feels part of the ‘institutional family’, but the subordinate groups may feel a sense of not being considered or made part of the institution.’ (Guide)

Members of the subordinate group (sometimes referred to as the oppressed group) feel like they don’t belong because they are expected to assimilate to the ‘values, traditions and customs’ of the dominant group. Members of the subordinate group ‘are expected to give up their identities and cultures and, critically, to acknowledge the superiority of the dominant culture, and by implication, the identities of the groups into whose social context they are moving.’ (Soudien 2004: 95-96 in the Guide)

Here we see that group dynamics based on identity are given precedent over the individual, specifically regarding where they fit within a power hierarchy.

One might wonder whether the presence of some black students who do feel like they belong at their school is enough to debunk the sweeping generalisation, but here ISASA invokes the concept of ‘internalised oppression’ to explain the psychological state of somebody who falls into this category.

The Guide quotes Peterson (1986):

‘Internalised oppression is the incorporation and acceptance by individuals within an oppressed group of the prejudices against them within the dominant society. Internalised oppression is likely to consist of self-hatred, self-concealment, fear of violence and feelings of inferiority, resignation, isolation, powerlessness, and gratefulness for being allowed to survive. Internalised oppression is the mechanism within an oppressive system for perpetuating domination not only by external control but also by building subservience into the minds of the oppressed groups.’

In other words, black people who do not feel victimised by ‘white’ values, traditions, and customs are wrong and they are working against their own interests. This is extremely patronising; how does a school take this as a given?

In addition, the Guide’s definition of racism reflects CRT thought in that only members of a dominant group can be racist:

“… an institutionalised system whereby certain racialised groups are systematically dominated or marginalised by another racialised group or groups and where the inequalities and abuses that the phenomenon seeks to entrench are primarily legitimated or justified, and consequently reproduced by means of systematic inferiorisation or ‘negativisation’ of dominated racialised groups.’”

Praxis

In order to liberate the victims of oppression in our elite private schools, ISASA considers it the duty of the school to equip the learners to ‘recognise, analyse and appropriately respond to the impact of power, privilege and race in their daily lives.’

The Guide ‘recognises’ that some people might be resistant to transformation, therefore, ‘Leaders and educators may need to undergo the personal transformation journey first to enable them to facilitate and support the process of transformation, diversity and social justice among learners.’

Therefore, a school should, ‘Develop a cohort of champions and mentors for personal and group change who have a deeper understanding of transformation’, because transformation ‘must go deeper than the intellect.’

ISASA considers ‘an unwavering belief in action even in the face of resistance’ to be a necessary criterion for anybody wanting to be part of the cohort of champions.

The cohort should be named either the Transformation and Diversity Task Team or Employment Equity Committee**, and it should ‘participate together in a structured programme of personal development’ in order to best ‘prepare teachers to take up issues of inclusion, fairness, racialisation, diversity, social justice and transformation in the classroom and the curriculum specifically.’

The Guide is talking about Critical Pedagogy – a theory of education arising from the Critical School of Education – that, according to Wikipedia has the goal of ‘emancipation from oppression through an awakening of the critical consciousness.’

For a more thorough understanding of Critical Pedagogy, I highly recommend Mike Young’s essay ‘Educating for Politics: How Critical Social Justice Politicizes the Classroom and Indoctrinates Students.’

In the essay, Young summarises the goal of those who endorse critical pedagogy and the Critical School of Education more broadly not as teaching children to ‘read, write and do math while helping to prepare them for life in the world,’ but rather as a ‘site of political struggle and a vehicle for radical social change.’

Equity

Transforming stakeholders’ mindsets through education is not the only intervention proposed. Another is to engineer the racial profile of the staff and student bodies so that demographic representation is achieved. The Guide refers to this as ‘equity’ – reaching a result of equality of outcomes which may well sacrifice merit.

To help schools to track racial equity, the guide gives examples of racial scorecards. Here is one example:

 (The idea of a racial scorecard seems somewhat at odds with another statement from the Guide saying, ‘The most daunting – but not insurmountable – task of transformation efforts is also about breaking down the cycle of further racialisation of society and institutions’.)

An African Identity

An important question to ask is what does a truly transformed school look like? (How will we know when transformation is achieved?)

In material terms, the guide tells us that a quality school is demographically representative across all sectors. This is something that can be measured. But some indicators remain more abstract.

For example, what dominant ‘values, traditions and customs’ need to be dismantled? And how will we know when dismantling has been satisfactorily achieved? How do we distinguish between values, traditions and customs that are genuinely oppressive and discriminatory and those that some people just don’t like? Perhaps it would be beneficial to assess such things based on intellect (logic, reason, and evidence), something that the guide considers secondary to matters of the heart.

ISASA’s Statement on Anti-Racism offers the goal of school transformation –

‘ISASA views an anti-racist school as a school that is dedicated to providing an educational experience characterised by an African identity that is reflected daily in the experience of each member school. ISASA schools are places where attention is drawn to an understanding and appreciation of the African experience by drawing attention to and emphasising, specifically, the importance of an African identity, as well as global identities and heritages.’

But what exactly is an African identity? This seems to assume that all African people have a shared identity and experience, an idea contradicted by the Guide’s definition of ‘human diversity’ –

‘The concept of diversity encompasses acceptance and respect. It means understanding that each individual is unique, and it recognises our individual differences. It is about understanding each other in a safe and positive environment, and moving beyond simply tolerating to embracing and celebrating the rich dimensions of diversity within each individual.’

ISASA references Kwame Nkrumah’s suggestion that an ‘African identity’ (here he is referring to racial identity, not geographic) is one founded on hope, trust, friendship, and directed to the good of all mankind, in contrast to identities built on fear, envy and suspicion, won at the expense of others.

What identity is based on the second set of attributes? Perhaps the one whose values, traditions and customs require dismantling in the name of transformation and social justice.

Whatever happened to judging people on their character instead of the colour of their skin? Whatever happened to not defining somebody’s worth based on immutable characteristics?

ISASA thinks that ‘Quality schools do not subscribe to the ‘colour blindness’ approach’. It is no surprise, therefore, that many school policies regard an expression of ‘colour-blindness’ as a disciplinary infraction. Identity politics is the fashionable framing of social justice in many of our private schools.

Given our innate tendency towards tribalism, I suggest that we proceed with caution and highlight commonalities rather than play the sorts of games favoured by some of the 20^th century’s tyrants.

Racism and discrimination are complex issues. I think that instead of getting distracted by the shiny baubles of emancipation that ISASA is tossing up, schools should consider whether or not it is in their students’ interests to favour collectivism and equity over individualism and meritocracy.

Unfortunately, it may not be that simple for schools affiliated with ISASA, whose Statement on Anti-racism provides –

‘Should a member school not work towards actively combatting racism and discriminatory practices, ISASA deems this failure to be inconsistent with its vision and mission. Such a failure to combat racism and discriminatory practices may be considered a material breach of ISASA’s membership conditions and may result in that member school’s membership being terminated in terms of Article 21.2 of the ISASA Memorandum of Incorporation.’

Does this mean that as long as schools deal with racism and discrimination, it doesn’t matter how they choose to deal with it? Or is membership conditional on accepting ISASA’s terms of employing critical race theory to transform schools?

Footnote:

*In an address delivered at the 2018 ISASA Combined Conference, Minister of Basic Education, Mrs Angie Motshekga praised the guide, calling it ‘necessary’ and ‘timely’.

**The guide says that,

‘Trust between parents and school staff is one of the key factors in the success of a school. The school should work tirelessly to maintain this trust relationship between these two sets of very important role players in the education of learners.’

… which is undercut by the fact that the guide recommends that the committee take charge of budgeting for transformation, adding that, ‘The transformation team should decide what should be disclosed. Not all details need to be transparent.’