Internalizing The White Colonial Discourse Analysis

2.1. b- Blacks: Internalizing the White Colonial Discourse: This victimization of blacks is, in fact, far from being one sided. Just like they were oppressed and suppressed by external forces, they also contributed to their own subjugation, by internalizing the colonial discourse advocated by the Apartheid in order to preserve the status quo. The long years of silencing all kinds of revolt and blocking all attempts to proving the blacks’ well being had affected greatly and negatively the blacks’ existence and it was their silence and submissive reactions towards their bitter reality which aggravated their situation and exacerbated their traumatization. The prevailing atmosphere which favorised the white privilege led to a number
In fact, this is how hegemony works. Despite their bitter situation, blacks accept all sorts of oppression and struggling to come to terms with all the ambiguities of the South African life. They perceive their inferiority and struggle as a natural part of their existence. To their minds, this was their fate and no power can change it. Here is, in fact, where the power of the dominant race lies. It is in its ability to make the subaltern think of their inferiority as totally natural. In his book Antonio Gramsci, Steve Jones outlines that hegemony could be perceived as “The ability of a ruling power’s values to live in the minds an lives of its subalterns as a spontaneous expression of their own interests” ( 2 ). This hegemony is based on a false conception about race. That is why the white government finds legitimacy to do anything that fit its own benefit strengthened only by the white skin colour. In his article “Nadine Gordimer and Post-Apartheid Interregnum: An analysis of July’s People”, Ernest Cole highlights this idea stating that:
In the discourse of race, the body in terms of skin color is treated as hermeneutic through which race and the humanity of people could be interpreted. Skin color becomes an index for classification and categorization of people into races and, in the index of Apartheid, provides
Gordimer defines such a period as “an interim order after the collapse of the former South African regime “,“a sense of being in between, a vacuum that occurs between the old and the new regime, which creates where norms and values are unfamiliar” (Life in the Interregnum: July’s People 3). She associates such a period with the state of loss, dilemma and uncertainty reigning over South Africa at that time. The old, referred to at the epigraph denotes the white power structures which were on their way to vanish. The new denotes the takeover of the blacks which was a long and a difficult process to acquire. In this sense, the interregnum refers to an in-between period, where no definite superstructure can be clearly identified. Accordingly, in such a delicate historical period, the victimization of blacks can be regarded as a cause of the “hegemony of whiteness”, a concept coined by Sarah Ahmed, professor of race and culture studies at Goldsmiths, University of