Entrenched: Scrutinising Academics’ Race as a Social Construction Discourse

Abstract

Explicit racial incidents in South African higher education continue to highlight the need for institutional transformation. Academics are products of a South African society and education system dominated by an apartheid legacy that shaped how South Africans interacted with, and viewed, one another. This vestige of legalised inequity continues to intrude into academic spaces. This article contributes to the discourse on transformation in higher education by foregrounding academics’ discourses of race. A critical examination of how academics talk about race as a social construction is paramount, given that academics are central to the creation and dissemination of knowledge. Using a social constructionist theoretical frame, the article interrogates the discourses of three South African academics; one Black, one White and one Indian, as informed by their assigned racial positionality within a South African higher education institution. Findings indicate that academics’ discourse about race and racism remains bifurcated along racial lines, persisting as a salient feature of lived experience. Whereas the Black academic identified with the social construction of race in highly personal terms, the White and Indian academics externalised their discussion of race. The implications of this phenomenon for higher education transformation are discussed.