Anti‐racism and the ‘New’ South African Educational Order

> This article traces the desegregation of South African schools, particularly within the Gauteng region, from 1990 to 1996. It argues that there is a discernible shift from ‘race’ to ethnicity in the educational discourses of South Africa and that at school level the response to ethnicity has been predominantly assimilationist. Attempts to move towards a more multicultural way of operating are affected by conceptions of identity as stereotyped, homogenised and generalised, leading to ‘bad’ multicultural approaches being adopted. Simultaneously, within official enunciations at national level, a consistent anti‐racist stance is emphasised in order to ‘redress’ apartheid's legacies. I argue that such initiatives are limited due to their structurally functionalist underpinnings and their failure to address the complexity of identities contained within the classifications of ‘black’ and ‘white’. I argue that, on both the macro and the micro level, questions of identity and difference are central in developing a school (and societal) environment that is not only free from racism, but other forms of discrimination too.