The Effect of Institutional Racism on Student Family Circumstances: A Human Capabilities Perspective

Abstract

In apartheid South Africa institutional racism was embedded in the practice of rationing resources and power in order to achieve social exclusion through formally legitimated state policies. In this article, Nussbaum's list of human capabilities is used as a framework for analysing and presenting data from student accounts of institutional racism. Social work students at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), South Africa, compiled their own Family-in-Community profiles by responding to questions on various forms of discrimination, which were designed to elicit their reflections on their families' experiences. The human capabilities approach addresses the following question: what, according to students' accounts, did institutional racism allow them to do and be, or prevent them from doing and being? In other words, how did students see themselves and their family members faring in the context of institutional racism? In this article five items on Nussbaum's list of human capabilities are focused upon in order to demonstrate how institutional racism in South Africa affected the lives of the student participants and their families. The students' accounts indicate that the capabilities outlined in Nussbaum's approach were strongly compromised in the case of their families.