“One Day You’ll Work for Us”: Exploring the Rituals of Class Privilege and Their Redrawing of Racial Hierarchies in Cape Town Private Schools

Abstract

ABSTRACT Post-Apartheid South Africa is a unique period in which Black and White people can participate in acts of privilege. Seekings and Nattrass therefore argue that, contemporarily, class has taken over race as the biggest identifier of privilege. This argument has shaped the new racial composition of the once heavily segregated elite schools in the twenty-first century. I argue that while this is true, inequalities exist within the socio-psychological implications of entering these institutions, where Black students are forced to confront their identities and belonging, within predominantly White spaces, in a way that White students are not. My research has observed a form of “disculturation” taking place, as argued by Erving Goffman, which sees an individual stripped of their former identity. Black students are thus made to exist within two worlds: their private and indigenous identity, and their public, White identity adapted to their environment. Importantly, schools are fundamental to the fostering and transmission of social values and beliefs, making them pivotal in the socialisation of certain societal practices. It is for this reason that I argue that in these elite spaces, race still plays a fundamental role in identifying privilege. The question I probe, therefore, is whether we can or should separate the idea of an “elite,” private school from Whiteness. If we cannot, then how can these spaces continue to claim inclusion and diversity, while still being explicitly and implicitly exclusionary?