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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The new black/African racial nationalism in SA: towards a liberal-egalitarian critique |
Author: | Glaser, Daryl |
Year: | 2011 |
Periodical: | Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa (ISSN 0258-7696) |
Issue: | 76 |
Pages: | 67-94 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | nationalism race relations political ideologies |
External link: | https://muse.jhu.edu/article/461825 |
Abstract: | The period of the Mbeki presidency (1999-2008) witnessed an upsurge in African or black racial nationalism in South Africa's ruling circles, a racial-nationalist discourse whose effects are still being felt under the presidency of the more nonracial Jacob Zuma. The new nationalism champions policies that benefit black elites, arguably at the expense of the black poor. This paper offers a critique of this new phenomenon from a liberal-egalitarian normative standpoint. Five conceptual premises of the new racial nationalism, the paper argues, lie at the root of what is normatively problematic about it. These are a group-based theory of moral agency, personality and standing; a race-based, unitary and teleological conception of peoplehood; an over-applied microcosmic theory of racial representation; the prioritization of deontological racial justice in the assignment of persons to producer places over consequentialist social-welfare considerations regarding the provision of goods; and a crudely 'postcolonial' theory of knowledge and power. Four negative consequences flow from these conceptions: neglect of interpersonal equality and the poor, gratuitous social division, incipient authoritarianism, and policy irrationalism. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |