Fear and Loathing at the Southern Tip: violence and teenagers in South Africa

摘要

South Africa is a society with genocidal potential because of (amongst other things), the high salience of ethnic group identity, and the frequently dehumanized representations which competing groups have of one another. This is what helps legitimate the extreme violence we have witnessed in competition for power and scarce resources in South Africa. At first glance the obvious answer to these concerns is to build tolerance and reduce racism in young people. But there is no magic for such a complex problem which requires explanation from individual-developmental through to socio-historical levels of analysis. (Lerner, 1986) One way to proceed is to embrace the view that racism, is relational rather than individually circumscribed, and that the very nature of social group definition must be addressed. Racist practices may thus emerge as an effective way of dealing with an individual child whom the group wishes to exclude on grounds that may not have had anything to do with race to start with.