Declassified : Moving beyond the dead-end of race in South Africa

In writing this powerfully engaged and argued book, Gerhard Mare takes up the challenge to imagine a world beyond the boundaries created by race, one in which we can live together imaginatively and open to the diversity each of us presents.

Twenty years after the end of apartheid, race still continues to play a role in South African society. Now, however, it is a black majority government that is demanding and maintaining race thinking in an effort to redress the discrimination of the past. Both the Employment Equity Act and the Black Economic Empowerment Act, for instance, use the racial categories of apartheid to achieve their ends, but the demand to classify people racially extends beyond business to many other areas of life. Ironically, in a society that is constitutionally committed to nonracialism, race thinking and race classification have been carried forward unthinkingly from the past. Not only does the rationale for such continuation not address the real concerns of our society but the system of classifying also carries inevitable seeds of conflict within itself. What is more, the classification of fellow human beings into races remains a crime against humanity, no matter what justification is offered. In writing this powerfully engaged and argued book, Gerhard Mare takes up the challenge to imagine a world beyond the boundaries created by race, one in which we can live together imaginatively and open to the diversity each of us presents.