‘Today you are not a white man, you are a Black Man’: Inauthentic whiteness in Johannesburg football fandom

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhile whiteness studies often begin from the assumption that being ‘white’ means having access to an unspoken centre of power, the third wave of whiteness studies focuses on nuanced forms of whiteness. In the post-apartheid context, various discursive strategies are employed by South African whites to retain privilege. Yet whiteness is also constructed spatially. Through an autoethnographic methodology, the paper explores the ‘inauthentic whiteness’ of the author. Drawing from the case studies of football supporters’ clubs in Johannesburg, South Africa, the actions of the author travelling through different racialised spaces in Johannesburg football fandom destabilised the supporters’ understanding of whiteness and what it was to be white. This inauthenticity created new opportunities for the supporters’ clubs to engage with the other, which had previously not existed.