Race under construction: The political and legislative foundations of racism and group position in South Africa

There is an assumed consensus among social scientists that race and racism are social constructs. However, theories that explicate the nature and process by which race and racism are defined and thus constructed, exhibit a great deal of variation. From psychological approaches which emphasize the role of individual personality orientations in the formation of racial concepts and racist ideologies, to sociological traditions that locate the formation of racial classifications in institutions, group dynamics and sociopolitical power structures, or Marxian and economic theories that conflate racial conflict with class conflict, there is certainly no shortage of diversity regarding the discourse on the subject. I examine the formation of racial categories and the attendant racism that flows from such categories as a function of group position. To do this, I analyze the legislative and political elements of apartheid in South Africa through the theoretical lens of Herbert Blumer's Group-Position theory. To my knowledge, group-position theory has never been applied to a substantive analysis of race relations in South Africa during apartheid. I utilize historical sources, law reviews, pertinent scholarship and seminal legislative documents of apartheid, such as the Population Registration Act of 1950, the Group Areas Act of 1950 and the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act (1953). I also access relevant sociological literature in order to compare and assess the strengths and weaknesses of competing sociological perspectives on race and racism. The resultant analysis demonstrates the accuracy of group-position theory as an explanatory model of the social and political impetus behind the formation of racial categories and racism in South Africa.