OPINIONISTA: Race haunts the halls of Stellenbosch University By Handri Walters
has been immense, and so it should be. The study, which is the product of a broader research project in the Sport Science Department of Stellenbosch University, proclaimed that “coloured” women of South Africa have “an increased risk for low cognitive functioning”. In this study, the term “coloured” became the centre of generalised conclusions that could be seamlessly applied to a single, supposedly homogeneous category of people.
Yet it seems this idea has not completely left the ranks of academia. Take Stellenbosch University: here a study was produced by researchers who seemingly saw no problem in making claims about the cognitive functioning of a supposed racial category – highlighting the lingering presence of broad assumptions about race, or rather, common-sense understandings of the race that still appear to haunt both this country and its academic institutions.
The 1937 study appears to have been the start of a fixation with the “coloured” category at Stellenbosch University. .” In this study, it was the physical characteristics of the research subjects that took precedent, seemingly in an attempt to solidify this category through scientific practice leading up to the subjection of this population group to targeted laws of the apartheid state.
In 1994, the apartheid-era racial categories were inherited by the new government with our democratic transition. We continued along the path of racial classification coupled with a common-sense belief that in South Africa we had many races, each with their own, essentialised, characteristics. Fast-forward 25 years and we arrive at the publication of the article in question.
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