Ordinary Whites in Apartheid Society by Neil Roos

ISBN: 9781776148905

Publisher: Wits University Press, 1 February 2024

Paperback, 240 pages

Explores how working-class white people frequently defied particular aspects of the apartheid state but seldom opposed or even acknowledged the idea of racial supremacy. This cognitive dissonance afforded them a way to simultaneously accommodate and oppose apartheid and allowed them to later claim they never supported the apartheid system

How were whites implicated in and shaped by apartheid culture and society, and how did they contribute to it? In Ordinary Whites in Apartheid Society, historian Neil Roos traces the lives of ordinary white people in South Africa during the apartheid years, beginning in 1948 when the National Party swept into power on the back of its catchall apartheid slogan. Drawing on his own family's story and others, Roos explores how working-class whites frequently defied particular aspects of the apartheid state but seldom opposed or even acknowledged the idea of racial supremacy, which lay at the heart of apartheid society. This cognitive dissonance afforded them a way to simultaneously accommodate and oppose apartheid and allowed them to later claim they never supported the apartheid system. Ordinary Whites in Apartheid Society offers a telling reminder that the politics and practice of race, in this case apartheid-era whiteness, derive not only from the top, but also from the bottom.