The role of constructions of race in student's talk of (NON) participation in the activities of students political organisations

South Africa has undergone widespread social, economic and political reconstruction since the inception of democracy in 1994. Underpinning these changes are available discourses on race that individuals use in constructing their identities. This article is an analysis of discourses on race emerging in the talk of white students accounting for (non)participation in the activities of the student political organisations (SPO’s) at the University of Fort Hare in East London. The argument here is that white students consistently assign racialized identities to SPO’s on campus by invoking deeply entrenched racially binarized discourses. These racialized discursive formations are available within South Africa’s contemporary linguistic landscape as well as its colonial past. In their talk, the participants in this study conflated SPO led structures and functions with ‘otherized’ conceptions of ‘blackness’. This confluence that white students create between SPO’s as well as terms that are shorthand for ‘blackness’ results in a distancing from and denigration of SPO’s and, more malignly, ’blackness’. It appears that whites use these problematic and racialized constructions of self and the ‘other’ to justify their non-participation in student politics on campus. This article explores the political implications of white students fixing identity in this manner. Hook’s (2010) notion of ‘white woundedness’ is brought into the discussion as a useful point of departure for rethinking ‘white’ identities in South Africa.Thesis (MSoc) -- Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, 201