Racism In Schools

It is intolerance, segregation, bias, prejudiced, it is racism. Racism according to Cambridge dictionary is the “belief that people’s qualities are influenced by their race and that the people of other races are not as good as the people of your own or resulting unfair treatment of people of other races”. Furthermore, racism lives in school, it hurts both individuals, learning and teaching atmosphere. It generates tensions that misrepresent cultural understanding and narrow the educational experiences of all students. Therefore in this essay there will be a discussion about racism specifically focusing in racism at schools and also a discussion about the perspectives of two philosophical perspectives, existentialism and African philosophy

This subtlety means many kids believe that because apartheid is over and school are generally diverse, therefore racism no longer exists-that somehow we are living in a post-racial society (Zulu, 2017). However that is not true, there are some schools there that still promote/practise racism. Yes those schools do accept the learners which we refer to as “black learners” but they still treat them badly, “they” being the ones we refer to as “white learners”. So what happened during Physical Education is that learners had to be divided into groups and surprisingly how they automatically grouped all the black leaners in one group and all the white learners in one group, and that one group of white learners was broken down into smaller groups, so that the learning/working can be much more easier, but the black learners were still left in one big group and it seemed fine. For I haven’t experienced that kind of situation before, I had a chat with a group of black learners and it was very intriguing to hear that they always treated like that, whites with whites and blacks with blacks and often refer to the whites as the superior and intelligent ones. Therefore one can say learners in other schools are still experiencing racism, as they are not given the same

According to Ubani (2005:20) African philosophy created an identity for Africa in projecting African worldview which is known as Africanism which is African ways of life. African ways of life is a way of life that holds strongly on the principle of harmonious complementation in their traditional thought which maintain that anything that exist serves as a missing link of reality. There are a few components underlying all African philosophical thinking, namely Ubuntu and communalism. Broodryk (2002:13) defines ubuntu as a comprehensive ancient African worldview based on the values of strong humanness, caring, sharing, respect, compassion and associated values. Similarly, Letseka (2000:180) argues that ubuntu has normative implications in that it summarises moral norms and values such as ‘kindness, generosity, compassion, benevolence, courtesy, and respect and concern for others’. Ubuntu encourage us to integrate with others and to also encounter the difference of their humanness so as to inform and enrich our