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Covert Racism: An Application of Essed's Analysis in a South African Context

Department of Industrial Psychology, University of the Western Cape, Private Bag XI 7, Bellville 7535, South Africa'

This paper has a two-fold aim: to illustrate the use of qualitative, linguistic data in the study of overt racism; and to focus on the experience of black people at the receiving end of racist acts. Accounts of the experience of covert racism in the context of an 'open' university in South Africa were examined in terms of a method based on attributional principles (Essed, 1988). It was found that black students' accounts of racist experiences did not constitute incoherent stories containing snap judgments about an actor's racism, but followed explicit and logical rules. In addition, these accounts illustrated that when judging an incident as racist or not, black students showed a high degree of tolerance (i.e. testing all possible alternative interpretations before deciding that an incident could be construed as racist) and made clear distinctions between racist and non-racist incidents (i.e. did not react in an 'over-sensitive' manner by classifying all discriminatory instances as racist). It was also found that most students expressed a sense of powerlessness and resignation regarding covert racism on campus. Finally, suggestions were made regarding the extension of this method for socially responsible research in South Africa.

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