"Whiteness Just Isn't What It Used to Be": White Identity in a Changing South Africa

Abstract

ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY Melissa Steyn. Whiteness just Isn't What It Used to Be: White Identity in a Changing South Africa. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. xxxix + 228 pp. References. Indexes. No price reported. Paper. Melissa Steyn's Whiteness Just Isn't What It Used to Be is an interpretation of white South Africans' narratives of their whiteness. It is based on the analysis of a questionnaire pertaining to the implications of being white. In comparison to the situation in Europe or North America, whiteness in South Africa no longer carries social privilege. With black political leadership and increasing African social and cultural assertiveness, white identity is challenged to adapt to new circumstances. Steyn identifies five narratives that try to come to terms with these new conditions. The first two are based on the Eurocentric belief in white superiority and never question the existence of a white identity that is in a dichotomous relationship with a denigrated blackness. The first narrative is unapologetic about the superiority of white culture and identifies with the paternalist task of furthering the progress of humankind (67) in South Africa; the second bemoans the injustice of the new social order and looks upon whites as the victims of a reversal of fortunes. The remaining narratives accept to varying degrees that white identity may change. Still projecting a strong affiliation with white identity, the third narrative concerns the possibility of using qualities supposedly inherent in white culture to succeed in the new South Africa. The more pragmatic version, which is based on liberal humanism with its trust in the individual and the belief in racial equality and democratic pluralism, seeks common ground with the black leadership. White guilt is acknowledged by way of critical self-observation, and such introspection has the potential to envision possibilities of new forms of subjectivity within more inclusive structures (99). The fourth narrative denies that whiteness has any implications in relation to people of color. Instead, an unproblematic white African or a South African identity is asserted. A lifelong commitment to racial equality culminates in the claim that color blindness has been achieved. Authors of this narrative are those who supported the struggle and in some way or another resisted apartheid. It is understandable that they find it particularly difficult to review their attitude to whiteness since they, after all, lived with the ideal of nonracialism. …