Abstract
The outbreak of anti-immigrant violence in May 2008 in the Johannesburg township of Alexandra have in the mainstream media been presented as an instance of xenophobia, this chapter argues that what is termed xenophobia is in fact racism: black-on-black-racism/intra-black racism practised by people of the same population group, which has characterised postapartheid South African black social relations. These are characteristics of decolonisation and difficulties of assimilating and integrating black African immigrants into the new South Africa. On the other hand, there is increased cultural contact and intermixing as a result of accelerated presence of other identities. There are, of course, conceptual and definitional limitations of the term xenophobia in describing the complex social realities happening in present-day South African black communities. Rather, the call is for the deconstruction of the term xenophobia and that we begin to see it as culturally based racism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The violence emanated from Madala hostel and spread to other parts of the township.
References
Balibar, Etienne. 1991. Is There a New Racism? In Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, ed. Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein. London: Verso Books.
Benveniste, Emille. 1971. Problems of General Linguistics. Miami: University of Miami Press.
Bonner, Phil, and Noor Nieftagodien. 2008. Alexandra: A History. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.
Chinweizu. 1994. On Negrophobia: Psychoneurotic Obstacles to Black Autonomy. Lagos: Sundoor Publications.
Du Bois, William Edward Burghart. 1965. The World and Africa. New York: International Publishers.
Fanon, Franz. 1967. Towards the African Revolution. Trans. H. Chevalier. New York: Grover Press.
Frederickson, George M. 2002. Racism: A Short History. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Goldberg, David Theo. 1993. Racist Cultures: Philosophy and Politics of Meaning. Oxford: Blackwell.
———. 2002. The Racial State. Oxford: Blackwell.
Gqola, Pumla Dineo. 2008. Brutal Inheritances: Echoes, Negrophobia, and Masculinist Violence. In Go Home or Die Here: Violence, Xenophobia, and Reinvention of Difference in South Africa, ed. Shireen Hassim, Tawana Kupe, and Erci Worby, 209–221. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
Grillo, Ralph D. 2003. Cultural Essentialism and Cultural Anxiety. Anthropological Theory 3 (157): 157–173.
Hacking, Ian. 1992. Forms of Desire: Sexual Orientation and the Social Constructionist Controversy. New York: Routledge.
Hall, Stuart. 1996. Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. In Stuart Hall. Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, ed. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen. London: Routledge.
Magubane, Bernard M. 2007. Race and the Construction of the Dispensable Other. Pretoria: UNISA Press.
Marx, Anthony W. 1998. Making Race and Nation. A Comparison of South Africa, United States and Brazil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Miles, Robert. 1993. Racism After Race Relations. London: Routledge.
Mngxitama, Andile. 2008. We Are Not All Like That. Race, Class and Nation After Apartheid. In Go Home or Die Here. Violence, Xenophobia and the Reinvention of Difference in South Africa, ed. Shireen Hassim, Tawana Kupe, and Eric Worby. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
Modood, Tariq. 2001. Difference, Cultural Racism and Anti – Racism. In Race and Racism, ed. Bernard Boxill. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nyamnjoh, Francis B. 2006. Insiders and Outsiders. Citizenship and Xenophobia in Contemporary Southern Africa. Dakar: CODESRIA.
Rex, John. 1997. Race Relations in Sociological Theory. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Stolcke, Verena. 1995. Talking Culture: New Boundaries, New Rhetorics of Exclusion in Europe. Current Anthropology 36 (1): 1–24.
Taguieff, Pierre-Andre. 1990. The New Cultural Racism in France. Telos 83: 109–122.
West, Cornell. 1993. Prophetic Fragments. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing.
Wieviorka, Michel. 1997. Racism in Europe: Unity and Diversity. In The Ethnicity Reader. Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Migration, ed. Monserrat Guiberbau and John Rex. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tafira, H.K. (2018). Is Xenophobia Racism?. In: Xenophobia in South Africa. African Histories and Modernities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67714-9_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67714-9_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-67713-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-67714-9
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)