Black university students’ experiences of negotiating their social identity in a historically white university
- Authors: Mogotsi, Opelo Petunia
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Corporate culture -- South Africa , Social integration -- South Africa , Race discrimination -- South Africa , Segregation in higher education -- South Africa , Group identity -- South Africa , College students, Black -- South Africa , Biko, Steve, 1946-1977 , Fanon, Frantz, 1925-1961
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/62416 , vital:28174
- Description: This thesis seeks to explore the social identity of black students in a historically white university. Since 1994, South African government has been promulgating pieces of legislation aimed at ensuring racial integration, and indirectly enforcing acculturation in historically white universities. Studies have proven that institutional cultures in historically white universities alienate and exclude black students’ identities. These students’ sense of social identity, which includes amongst others; culture, heritage, language and traditions, and consequently self-esteem and self-concept is altered in these institutions. Research has been scant regarding the shape and form that black students’ identity assume when they get to these spaces. Face to face interviews were used to collect data and thematic analysis was used for data analysis. The Social Identity and the Acculturation models were used to explore the experiences of black students in negotiating their social identities in a historically white university. Evoking Steve Biko’s analysis of ‘artificial integration’, it was illustrated how the ‘integration’ narrative sought to discard the identity of black students and psychologically enforce a simulation of black students into white established identities. The main themes discussed indicated that black students in this study had social identity and identity challenges in a historically white university. This study has implications for policy development as I hope to theoretically sensitize historically white universities to (apart from mere opening of spaces of learning) understand the social identity challenges of black students.
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- Date Issued: 2018
The transition of Rhodes University graduates into the South African labour market : a case study of the 2010 cohort
- Authors: Ntikinca, Kanyiso Lungani
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Rhodes University -- Graduate students , Labor market -- South Africa , College graduates -- Employment -- South Africa , Labor supply -- Research -- South Africa , Market segmentation -- South Africa , Employability -- South Africa , Race discrimination -- South Africa , Sex discrimination -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: vital:3395 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018198
- Description: Recent studies have shown that graduates from historically White universities (HWUs) experience better labour market outcomes than graduates from historically Black universities (HBUs). This is a result of the legacy of apartheid which promoted racial inequality in all spheres of South African society, more especially in higher education and the labour market. Post-1994, government dedicated large amounts for the restructuring of the higher education sector of South Africa in order to level out the playing field. However, graduates from HWUs still experience better labour market success than graduates from HBUs. That said, there is limited information about the labour market outcomes and experiences of graduates from a former White university (especially graduates from Rhodes University). Therefore, the central aim of this dissertation is to show that graduates from a historically White university (Rhodes University) experience varying and unequal outcomes in the South African labour market on account of (among other factors) their chosen fields of study, race and sex. This study is informed by the heterodox labour market approach, which is partly inspired by the critical realist account of the labour market. As a result, this theoretical framework allowed the researcher to use the Labour Market Segmentation (LMS) theory as a tool to inform this analysis. The study has adopted a quantitative survey design and has incorporated some of the key methodological lessons learned from the collection of international graduate tracer studies. The findings from this study indicated that ‘field of study’ is a strong determiner of the outcomes of Rhodes graduates in the labour market. This was visible in the persistence of a skills bias towards commerce and science graduates. Evidently, even when we controlled for race and sex, graduates from the commerce and science faculties experience better labour market outcomes than humanities graduates. This is a result of a skills biased South African economy, which has a higher demand for certain skills over others. However, the findings from this study also show evidence of pre-labour market discrimination and inequality (based on race and sex) in the supply-side institutions such as the family, schooling and university. The findings also show continuities and discontinuities of labour market discrimination (based on race and sex) in the outcomes of Rhodes graduates in the South African labour market. More importantly, this dissertation indicates that Rhodes graduates experience varying outcomes in the labour market as a result of (among other factors) their chosen fields of study, race and sex.
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- Date Issued: 2015
Crime, violence and apartheid in selected works of Richard Wright and Athol Fugard: a study
- Authors: Makombe, Rodwell
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: Apartheid in literature , Politics and literature -- South Africa , Race discrimination -- South Africa , Crime -- South Africa , Violence -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , DLitt et Phil (English)
- Identifier: vital:11888 , http://hdl.handle.net/10353/525 , Apartheid in literature , Politics and literature -- South Africa , Race discrimination -- South Africa , Crime -- South Africa , Violence -- South Africa
- Description: Different forms of racial segregation have been practiced in different countries the world over. However, the nature of South Africa‟s apartheid system, as it was practiced from 1948 until the dawn of the democratic dispensation in 1994, has been a subject of debate in South Africa and even beyond. Apartheid was a policy that was designed by the then ruling Nationalist Party for purposes of dividing and stratifying South Africa along racial lines - whites, blacks, coloureds and Asians. It thus promoted racial segregation and/or unequal stratification of society. In South Africa‟s hierarchy of apartheid, blacks, who constituted the majority of the population, were ironically the most destitute and segregated. Some historians believe that South Africa‟s racial policy was designed against the backdrop of Jim Crow, a similar system of racial discrimination which was instituted in the American South late in the 1890s through the 20th century. Jim Crow and apartheid are, in this study, considered as sides of the same coin; hence for the sake of convenience, the word apartheid is used to subsume Jim Crow. Although South Africa‟s apartheid system was influenced by different ideologies, for example German missiology as applied by the Dutch Reformed Church, historian Hermann Giliomee (2003: 373) insists that „the segregationist practice of the American South was particularly influential.‟ Given the ideological relationship between apartheid and Jim Crow, the present study investigates the interplay of compatibility between apartheid/Jim Crow and crime and violence as reflected in selected works of Richard Wright (African American novelist) and Athol Fugard (South African playwright). The aim of the study is firstly, to examine the works in order to analyse them as responses to apartheid and by extension colonial domination and secondly to investigate crime and violence. The three criminological theories selected for this study are strain theory (by Robert Merton), subculture theory (Edwin Sutherland) and labelling theory (Howard Becker). While criminological theory provides an empirical dimension to the study, postcolonial theory situates the study within a specified space, which is the postcolonial context. The postcolonial is, however understood, not as a demarcated historical space, but as a continuum, from the dawn of colonization to the unforeseeable future. Three postcolonial theorists have been identified for the purposes of this study. These are: Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha and Bill Ashcroft. Fanon‟s psychoanalysis of the colonized, Homi Bhabha‟s Third Space and hybridity as well as Ashcroft‟s postcolonial transformation are key concepts in understanding the different ways in which the colonized deal with the consequences of colonization. It has been suggested particularly in Edward Said‟s Orientalism (1978) that the discourse of orientalism creates the Oriental, as if Orientals were a passive object of the colonial adventure. This study uses Bhabha‟s and Ashcroft‟s theory of colonial discourse to argue that the colonized are not only objects of the colonial enterprise but also active participants in the process of opening survival spaces for self-realization. The various criminal activities that the colonized engage in (as represented in the selected works of Richard Wright and Athol Fugard) are in this study viewed as ways of inscribing their subjectivity within an exclusive colonial system.
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- Date Issued: 2011