Race for Education
Gender, White Tone, and Schooling in South Africa

An examination of families and schools in South Africa, revealing how the marketisation of schooling works to uphold the privilege of whiteness.

Mark Hunter (Author)

9781108727631, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 24 January 2019

320 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.7 cm, 0.48 kg

'Race for Education is a welcome addition to the literature on the history and politics of schooling and inequality in South Africa … the depth and breadth of the research and the window it provides into different worlds of schooling in the first two decades after apartheid-make this book essential reading for anyone looking for a deeper understanding of contemporary South African social dynamics.' Linda Chisholm, American Historical Review

Following the end of apartheid in 1994, the ANC government placed education at the centre of its plans to build a nonracial and more equitable society. Yet, by the 2010s a wave of student protests voiced demands for decolonised and affordable education. By following families and schools in Durban for nearly a decade, Mark Hunter sheds new light on South Africa's political transition and the global phenomenon of education marketisation. He rejects simple descriptions of the country's move from 'race to class apartheid' and reveals how 'white' phenotypic traits like skin colour retain value in the schooling system even as the multiracial middle class embraces prestigious linguistic and embodied practices the book calls 'white tone'. By illuminating the actions and choices of both white and black parents, Hunter provides a unique view on race, class and gender in a country emerging from a notorious system of institutionalised racism.

1. Introduction
Part I. Racial Modernism, 1950s and '60s: 2. 'Larney' and 'rough and tough' schools: the making of White Durban
3. Umlazi township and the gendered 'bond of education'
Part II. Marketised Assimilation, late 1970s–1990s: 4. The routes of schooling desegregation: protest, cooption, and marketised assimilation, 1976–2000
Part III. Schooling and Work after Apartheid: 5. From school to work: symbolic power and social networks
Part IV. Racialised Market, 2000s–: 6. 'What can you do for the school?' The racialised market, 2000s–
7. New families on the bluff: selling a child in the schooling market
8. Beneath the 'black tax' in Umlazi: class, family relations and schooling
9. Conclusions: hegemony on a school bus.

Subject Areas: Education [JN], African history [HBJH], History [HB]