Race and whiteness in a post-apartheid SA
- Wits University
Samantha Vice is a Distinguished Professor who works with the Wits Philosophy Department and the Wits Centre for Ethics.
Is there still a role for white academics in South Africa?
This is one of the complex questions Distinguished Professor Samantha Vice, former head of Rhodes University’s Philosophy department asks herself on a daily basis – both in her personal and academic capacities.
Vice joined Wits as a Distinguished Professor in January 2015, where she will be teaching Philosophy III and postgraduate students, and researching a wide range of areas, including the existential experience of race and ‘whiteness’ in a post-apartheid society.
“Many white South Africans, including myself, are committed to contributing to South Africa. This is our home and at the same time we experience the tension of feeling we benefited from a long history of injustice and we wonder whether there is a place and role here for us now,” she says.
“The whole question makes me feel deeply uncomfortable and I have been trying to work through this, in both a personal and academic context, for many years.”
Her hope is that South Africa will become less segregated in a natural way over time, but as an academic, she questions whether there is still a role for white professors at South African universities.
“As a philosopher, you want to feel that you are dealing with the universals of human experience, and that you are thinking about the shared and most valued fundamentals of human existence. But this view comes under scrutiny for someone like me in the current South African curriculum debate because I am trained in Analytic Philosophy.”
One of the questions she is grappling with is whether South Africa’s philosophy is based on white, Western values.
“I would hope not. I would hope that it is regarded as a hugely valuable tradition with wonderful thinkers and amazing theories that should be part of a mix of philosophical traditions,” she says.
“At the same time there is no question that Philosophy Departments should be teaching African Philosophy and Non-Western Philosophy. The question is to what degree, if any, that European and Continental traditions are retained in the mix.”
Vice works with the Wits Philosophy Department and the Wits Centre for Ethics to continuously develop deep question research.
“We are developing both the academic and non-academic contexts by attracting postgraduates and by bringing citizens onto campus for exciting debates about what it means to be human,” she says.