Race, Gender & Class:  Volume 11, Number 2, 2004 (     )

Race, Gender & Class Website:  www.suno.edu/sunorgc/

Problematizing Race for Journalists:  Critical Reflections on the South African Human Rights Commission Inquiry
into Media Racism

Guy Berger
Department of Journalism & Media Studies,
Rhodes University, South Africa

Abstract:  How journalists report race and racism was at the center of the South Africa's Human Rights Commission Inquiry into racism in the media.  A critical analysis of the conceptual assumptions in the Inquiry’s Final Report, however, reveals serious limitations to the enterprise.  In particular, the flawed conceptualizations plus the generalized character of the findings are of little help in assisting the momentum of eradicating racism in South African media, and for linking race transformation to issues of class, gender, sexual orientation and xenophobia.  This article identifies the problems as a race essentialism and a racism relativism, and argues instead that journalists need the concept of racialization in order to change their reporting.  The argument upholds the desired role of the South African media as one that contributes to a non-racial, as opposed to a multi-racial, society.

Keywords:  
Race, Racism, Apartheid, Media, Journalism, Human Rights, Inquiry

Guy Berger is head of Journalism and Media Studies, Rhodes University, South Africa. He conducted the research for this article during a Fulbright African Research Scholarship at University of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 2001. 

Address:  Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Rhodes University, South Africa.  Ph:  27 (46) 603 8336/7  Fax: 27 (46) 622 8447, Email:  G.Berger@ru.ac.za. Website: http://journ.ru.ac.za/staff/guy/

"The boundary and meaning of the concept of racism 
is the site of theoretical struggle." Miles (1993:7)

	T
his article is written with the explicit acknowledgement that it cannot be "race-free" in its authoring.  The writer grew up as a "White" South African under apartheid, and although he was later jailed for fighting the system, he would not presume to be free of all aspects of a racist mentality—many of which are deep and not always easy to recognize.  It is an ongoing process of learning and unlearning. As made clear in his submission to the hearings of the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) in Johannesburg during 2000, one who is not a victim of racism may not pick up all instances of racism—the desire to be as sensitive as possible notwithstanding (Berger, 2000a; see similar points by Essed, 1991:59; and Knowles & Mercer, 1992:111).  Thus, in writing this article, there has been an attempt to be aware of the blinkers deriving from "White" racial experience. 

	On the other hand, as Cohen (1992:95-6) rightly argues, there are dangers in "ethnic credentialism", the view that a body of work possesses a monopoly of the truth about racism because it derives from an author who experiences it.  Similarly, Miles (1989:6) observes that although there are limits to the experience of many "White" people when compared to "Black" people, there is no single truth about racism which only "Blacks" can know. He continues:  "To assert that the latter is so is, in fact, to condemn 'white' people to a universal condition which implies possession of a permanent essence which inevitably sets them apart."  It is in the spirit of Miles' anti-race thinking that this article is intended as an anti-racism contribution and one which aspires to transcend at least some of the limitations of its source.  

	South Africa has been the site of the world's most intense struggles against racism.  What the struggle has been for, has been less clear—especially whether the objective has been an entirely race-free society (non-racialism), or one that remains racial but without the racism (multi-racialism).  As part of the country's transition away from apartheid, South Africa's media is a factor in both defining, and moving towards, one of these objectives over the other.  There have been significant media changes since 1994, including in the race, nationality and class of ownership; in the race and gender of staffing; and in the environment of freedom of expression and pluralistic broadcast regulation.  However, it remains of relevance to examine the state of racism in media representation, and what this means in terms of the trajectory of transformation to either non-racialism or multi-racialism. 

	This matter also has implications for several important questions facing South African media.  How do journalists understand racial factors, and how do they report in a way that counters, rather than contributes to, racism?  Can they ensure that race sensitivity does not mean an insensitivity to issues like class, gender, xenophobia and sexual orientation?  And how can their reporting lean in the direction of either non-racialism or multi-racialism?  This article does not aim to fully answer these questions, but to offer the preliminary step of chopping through some of the tangled undergrowth obscuring paths that may otherwise be hidden.

	The article is an intervention into a debate triggered by the SAHRC Inquiry, although it also ranges wider than this.  The argument is that the SAHRC’s conceptualization of race and racism ends up reifying racial differentiation, and that this holds out a future of multi-racialism, rather than non-racialism.  In this article, the distinction between (neutral) racialism and (negative) racism is accepted―but with the immediate corollary that the distance between these is extremely short. The recommendation is to strive towards ridding journalism of abstracted racial thinking altogether, and instead acknowledging only the potential salience of racial identity as an historically shifting factor and one which may well mask other social dynamics just as much as it can appear to be adequately explanatory.  This entails elaborating the concept of racialization (which can be neutral or negative) as against that of race or racialism. 

	By way of essential background, it may be pointed out that South Africa's media under apartheid played a chequered role.  There are major debates about which parts of it helped maintain the racist order, and which opposed the system, and how that history implicates the kind of role they should play post-apartheid (see Berger, 1999).  It is true to say, however, as was concluded by South Africa's Truth and Reconcilation Commission, that the bulk of media—with some important exceptions—either expressly promoted apartheid, or implicitly complied with it, and in both ways contributed to a climate of gross human rights violations.  (See TRC, 1998).  

	It was not unexpected, therefore, that the spotlight would be focused on the media in the post-apartheid era, with the aim of assessing the institution as a factor for or against transformation, and in what direction.  Various conferences, studies and critiques have taken place, but the most impactful initiative has unquestioningly been the 1999-2000 Inquiry by the SAHRC.  This statutory body was set up as part of the new democratic constitutional apparatus in post-apartheid South Africa, and which dispensation expressly holds out the promise of a non-racial society.  It is charged with promoting the country's bill of rights, which include the rights to dignity and equality which were so denigrated under legalized racism.  The Commission is primarily an investigative and monitoring unit, and while it has powers to achieve these objectives, it has no legislative, administrative nor judicial role.  Its impact is, by its own acknowledgement, primarily symbolic, and this capacity has special congruence with the media whose products can do so much to construct the realm of ideology.
	The initial impetus for the Inquiry into racism in the country's media came from complaints to SAHRC in 1998 by the Black Lawyers Association and the Association of Black Accountants of South Africa.  The two alleged there was racism in two liberal newspapers they perceived to be "White".  This designation reflects part of the complexity of current South Africa. In the past, it used to be that most media was "White"-owned, "White"-edited and "White"-staffed, and served a "White audience" with "White content" informed by a "White worldview".  The two newspapers referred to cannot be so easily classified (at the time of the accusation, both had editors of what is commonly considered mixed-race ancestry, one had "Black" owners and both had only a minority of "White" readers).  My wording, "perceived” to be “White,” signals the impressionistic nature of the reference.  In similar vein, this article uses racial labels in quotation marks in order to signal that there are question marks over the meaning of categorizing people in these blanket terms.  The reasons for this caution will become clear as the article proceeds. 

	The SAHRC's subsequent decision to launch an inquiry into the media as a whole evoked a lot of controversy.  The matter heated up with the publication of an Interim Report that criticized much of the media for racist content.  The two-part document is titled "Cultural Bloodstains", and "The News in Black and White", and was compiled by private researchers hired by the SAHRC, namely Claudia Braude and a non-governmental organization called the Media Monitoring Project (MMP). (See Braude, 1999; and MMP, 1999).  Boiling point was reached when the SAHRC went on to issue numerous editors with state subpoenas requiring them to testify in response to the report's (widely-disputed) findings.  A deal was eventually brokered, and once the subpoenas were lifted, numerous journalists gave evidence in hearings that took place in a climate of catharsis.  A Final Report on the Inquiry, titled “Faultlines” was published by the SAHRC several months later (SAHRC, 2000).  In it, the Commission concluded that the South African media was indeed guilty of racism, and it made several proposals to change this, including calling for statutory support for media diversity and for stronger professional codes of conduct among journalists. 

	In remarkable contrast to the hostile reception given to the Interim Report (see Jacobs, 2000), the Final Report elicited comparatively mild and even positive media response (see, for example, editorials, Sunday Times, City Press, 27 August 2000).  This suggested a possibly positive taking up of the appeal in the Preface to the “Faultlines” document, which declared:  "Let this report speak ... to the hearts of every media practitioner in the country and let it guide every human rights advocate, inform and inspire the work of every anti-racism activist" (2000:4). Unfortunately, as will be argued below, the document "speaks" in a confused, and confusing way, and offers a problematic understanding of the nature of the problem. 
	In the view of this article, the positive momentum set up by the Inquiry process will need to continue despite, rather than because of, the analysis in the Final Report. Fortunately, useful insights were generated in the hearings (see ANC, 2000; Whitfield, 2000).  Commission recommendations like racism awareness training for journalists are being implemented on a small scale, and many media workers have increased sensitivity about the issue. Journalists, many of whom were strongly divided along racial lines during the Inquiry, have emerged with greater awareness of each others' perspectives.  The grievances of many "Black" editors in particular have been aired.  But a lot more work still needs to be done in terms of promoting a serious understanding of what constitutes racism.  It is with such an understanding that instead of treating racism in isolation as the SAHRC Inquiry did, media workers can also begin to grasp its articulation to xenophobia, sexism and class exploitation.  The SAHRC to its credit has also launched a campaign called "roll back xenophobia". The challenge for journalists (and researchers) is to see the connections between all these issues.  As Bertelsen (2000) has well demonstrated, one of the problems of the SAHRC position was that its researchers read race into a certain report, when class would appear to have been the greater determinant in that particular case.  The issue is: how do we locate racism in amongst the multiplicity of social relations within what Memmi (2000) includes under the umbrella term of "heterophobia"?  It is the case that, as Brah (1992:138) points out, a search for grand theories of interconnections between race, class and gender has been less than productive.  I agree with her that these are best construed as historically contingent and context-specific relationships, but that still requires clear conceptualization about what each of them is.  Few would dispute that in South Africa, racism is an appropriate topic to prioritize because of its historically overdetermining role in structuring the lives of South Africans.  It is then on the basis of establishing the analytical distinctiveness and unity of racism (even in its various guises) relative to other forms of privilege (and hidden privilege), that connections between all these relations can begin to be drawn.

The problem illustrated

	In the wake of the SAHRC hearings, a workshop was convened in Johannesburg in July 2000 by the South African National Editors Forum to discuss racism in reporting. In the course of the discussions, a particular story came up concerning a court case where three people were sentenced for murder and rape.  This being South Africa, it was not unnoticed that the murderers were poor young "Blacks" (two brothers and a cousin), and the victims were rich "Whites" (mother and daughter).  A participant at the Johannesburg workshop objected to a news report which had stated that "the mainly black crowd at the court" had cheered the severity of the sentences that were handed down.  The racial reference, argued the participant, signaled that the racial mix of the crowd was noteworthy, and in so doing implied that "Black" people normally did not place the same value on human life as "Whites", and indeed that "Blacks" in South Africa ordinarily support the killing of "Whites".  Other workshop participants took a different view.  One said that it was precisely because of the existence of such stereotyped assumptions that the story was correct in highlighting that most of the crowd was "Black"—how else could the prejudice be shown to be incorrect?  And in a society where the majority of "Whites" had dehumanized the majority of "Blacks", was it not newsworthy that "Black" people transcended this to demonstrate their support for punishment of killers of "Whites"?

	A third participant said that it would have been better to show the racial aspect visually, rather than mention it explicitly.  This comment in turn was criticized for overlooking the limitations of media such as radio that could not show visuals, and more deeply for failing to tackle the basic issue.  At the end of the discussion, there was no consensus as to whether the report had been racist, and whether it had perpetuated racist stereotypes or not. 

	Imbedded in this discussion was the difficulty in South Africa of assessing what race signifies, when it is a relevant factor and when it entails racism.  As the society moves away from the legalized racism that was apartheid, racial designation continues to be frequently acknowledged precisely in order to recognize ongoing effects of the system—in part to address these.  The paradox is that in thus working with the categories created by apartheid, they are partially perpetuated.  For South African journalists to get a grip on this, requires a sophisticated understanding of racism.  In short, they need to know when racial issues should inform their reporting, and when it is racist to be color-blind and when it is racist not to be. 

The central challenge: conceptualizing racism

	Essed (1991:77) has usefully observed that "without general knowledge of racism, individuals cannot comprehend the meaning of racism in their lives."  This principle applies to everyone—whether as victim, perpetrator or accomplice of racism, because experience has to be made sense of.  Likewise, Knowles and Mercer (1992:110) write:  "Experience is often presented as if it is an unmediated encounter between categories of people and their environment.  ‘But what is experience?’  It has no such immediacy—it is organized by our understanding, how we interpret behaviour." 

	For Essed, the general knowledge enabling an understanding of racism has two components:  (a).  Generalizations about specific types of racist episodes, and (b).  Abstract cognitions about the processes and mechanisms of racism (1991:76).  She is correct in this, and yet it can be argued that a third and even more fundamental element is also required:  (c).  a clear conceptualization of what defines racism.  This triangle of elements is the key to making—and changing—the meanings of racism.  However, it is the third element that informs the others and which is therefore the critical axis upon which a general knowledge of racism can be operationalized. 

	As part of the SAHRC Inquiry, a huge amount of time was spent researching, preparing submissions, discussing at hearings, preparing the Final Report—but still there was very little clarity or consensus about defining the devil under the spotlight.  Media commentator after commentator agreed there was racism in the South African media, but what they meant by this was many varying things and most disagreed with the cases cited by the Interim Report.  There are of course obvious features of racism and racist stereotypes that can be identified without problem, and some were during the Inquiry hearings.  These are cases evident by both omission and commission.  But as the SAHRC Final Report concluded: "(g)enerally speaking, we have found no evidence of the mainstream media indulging in blatant advocacy of racial hatred or incitement to racial violence. We have found much evidence of condemnation of hate speech" (2000:90). 

	So, the issue of extreme racism in South Africa’s media is not the main matter that bothers people there. The trouble comes in the less obvious cases.  These are far more complex—and indeed controversial, as evidenced in the responses to the research in the SAHRC’s Interim Report (see inter alia, Berger, 2000a; Glaser, 2000).  The difficulty is that if there is no real agreement on what amounts to racism, there can be little scope for spotting it and combating it (or for relating and extending this struggle to other dimensions of human oppression such as racist xenophobia which is a growing problem in South Africa).  Without a clear concept of racism, there is also little scope for academics to apply a research methodology and come up with credible findings—as the SAHRC researchers discovered to their peril (see criticisms by Steenveld, 2000; Tomaselli, 2000). 

	This general point about the importance of conceptualizing and defining racism is especially, but not exclusively, relevant to "White" journalists (in South Africa and indeed in many other places too).  Martinot (2000:xvii) highlights “White” ignorance by pointing out that while most “White” people do not consider themselves privileged, “the freedom from having to deal with gratuitous hostility, or suspicion, or subtle exclusion, remains the quintessential privilege.”  Further, as noted by Knowles and Mercer (1992:113), “... some white people are responsible for certain sorts of racial exlusions, but ... in developing antiracist strategies it is helpful to know exactly how they are racist, so their actions can be challenged.”

	However, defining racism is also relevant to “Blacks.”  Essed (1991:43) points out that it should not be assumed that all “Whites” are agents of racism and all “Blacks” only the victims.  Indeed, as Miles (1989:55) argues, racism covers all acts that have as a consequence the creation or maintenance of racial disadvantage—no matter whether these acts are done by “Whites” or “Blacks.”  In the USA, Campbell (1995:92/3) writes that “... minority journalists may indeed be inadvertently playing a role in advancing the sophisticated attitudes of contemporary racism.”  For him, it is a paradox, but “Black” journalists in the USA “may actually contribute to contemporary racist myths...” Similarly, both the SAHRC’s interim and Final Reports suggest that South African “Black” journalists can and do sometimes perpetuate the same inequalities that are stacked against “Blacks” (SAHRC, 2000:58,69; MMP, 1999:52-3).  So, just as it would be wrong to say that a beneficiary of racism is automatically a racist, it would also be wrong to say that a victim of racism cannot be a racist.  This is not suggest a symmetry between the two sides here: it is of course far more likely that the beneficiaries will support racism (even without always recognizing this; there are many rationalizations for such privilege), and it is far more likely that the victims will oppose racism.  Ultimately, it is who practices racism, and who challenges it, that needs to be looked at.  But this in turn requires a clear conceptualization of racism—what is being practised and what therefore needs to be challenged.

Dodging the difficulties

	The problem with the SAHRC Final Report is that it fails to give a coherent account of what racism is. The consequence is that it is―as will be shown―not only unwilling, but also unable, to establish responsibility for media racism. 

	In the Interim Report, the point was strongly made that the findings did not mean to impugn or criminalize any specific medium or journalist as being racist (MMP, 1999:7,59; Braude, 1999:17).  This proved somewhat naïve, given that specifically named media were selected for analysis, and this list provided the basis for identifying the individuals against whom subpoenas were later issued.  Nonetheless, the intention was evidently there. Even greater delicacy appears in the Final Report (2000:88):  "It was agreed prior to the commencement of the hearings that there would be no findings in respect of individual journalists, publications or titles."  In addition, " ... (o)ur view is that the manner in which the inquiry was conducted, in any event, does not lend itself to the making of such individual findings."  The document also argues that:  

"If racism is the outcome of an historical process it is not the personal fault of anyone now experiencing its effect. Although racism is expressed by individuals, it is not primarily or only a personal characteristic.  It is a manifestation of a centuries-old shared ideology about how merit is measured by a person's physical appearance ....  Personal responsibility comes into the equation only when the syndrome is understood but neither acknowledged nor rejected in practice" (2000:59). 

	This is a first conceptual problem: you have—for the SAHRC—texts effectively without authors.  It amounts to saying that no one is really to blame for racism in the media.  This leaves hanging the issue of how much, or how consistently, must a medium or a journalist, commit racism or fail to challenge it in order to be called racist.

	Of course, name calling—branding someone a racist―is not a particularly good fertilizer for the growth of constructive dialogue.  But there are ways to approach this difficult issue.  Knowles and Mercer (1992:117) point out that a failure to challenge racism is not the same as its active promotion.  This observation has important political significance that the SAHRC could have done well to pursue.  The distinction draws attention to the more serious offenders—and even here, a further distinction can be made between the unintentional and the intentional racists.  Sooner or later, confrontation with the latter has to be faced, and meanwhile there is no need to shy away and keep silent on specifics as regards the other categories of culprits.  Underlying the Commission's lack of finger-pointing is probably diplomacy, and there may be some arguments in favor of such a non-confrontational stand (especially after the subpoena wrangle).  However, as argued here, a case can be made for a different political practice by the Commission than its blanket refusal to finger specific culprits.  

	Setting aside tactical debates, however, it would still have been instructive for the SAHRC to take a leaf from Alcoholics Anonymous practice (see also Derman-Sparks and Brunson Phillips, 1997).  This is: to combat a problem does require acknowledgement and recognition of it. To continue the alcoholism parallel, as many writers (eg. Essed, 1991; Martinot, 2000) point out, and as the SAHRC Final Report makes very clear (2001:63-5,107), denial is a very common bedfellow when it comes to issues requiring painful acknowledgement.  So, the SAHRC effectively allows denial to persist. Yet, the propensity for individuals accused of racism to plead innocence is not—in principle—sufficient reason to drop an indictment. But the SAHRC avoids prosecution specifics and does not even come close to naming the suspects or the cases.  

	Steering clear of details and in this regard taking a step backwards from the Interim Report, the Final Report states that "there was a general recognition before us that racism was manifested in the media, in a general rather in particular or specific ways (sic)" (2000:79-80).  This formulation misses the point that the general would need to be evident in the particular, a point made well by Wieviorka (1995). Unsurprisingly, the final verdict is just as general:  "... South African media can be characterized as racist institutions" (2000:89).  The report explains this conclusion in terms of inter alia a "persistent pattern" of racist content (2000:89). But by not supplying examples of such content, it leaves the meaning of "racist institution" overly abstract. 

	As Essed (1991:39-41) points out, institutions and individuals are linked: "structures of racism do not exist external to agents—they are made by agents."  She argues that individual power is a function of group power, meaning that "White" and "Black" individuals are "representatives of groups with relatively more and relatively less power", and—at the same time—"racism as group power only exists because it was created and is maintained through individuals."  This insight points to the SAHRC’s shortfall in its silence about linking the institution to specific instances of media racism and the individual authors of these instances. 

	If journalists are to change with the institution, they do need explanation as to what and why certain practices and representations are indeed racist.  However, even if the SAHRC had decided to name names and cases, there is a logical difficulty in coming down to such specifics on the basis of the theorization in the Final Report. It is, in short, not possible to credibly cite cases of racism when you do not have a clear concept of racism.  

Racism and racialism

	In the words of the Final Report, "the Commission was also adamant that it did not wish to begin the inquiry on the basis of a set definition of racism" (2000:68).  In addition, SAHRC chairperson Barney Pityana has written (2000):  "In a sense the Commission did not want to begin with definitions, but sought to examine the narratives of race that were communicated to the South African media reading, listening and viewing public. ... To have done otherwise would have been to stifle debate about the nature, meaning and manifestations of racism".

	This approach may have had its merits during the Inquiry, but the question is what the Commission’s position was at the end:  what was the yardstick definition on which its general finding could be made?  It is not easy to pinpoint this in the Final Report.  According to the document: "... the Commission preferred that an understanding of racism should emerge from submissions and evidence from the inquiry" (2000:68).  However, part hidden away, a seeming commitment to one definition of racism can be detected:  "Lynnette (sic) Steenveld is correct when she says that racism is an ideology or discourse used to make inferences about people on the presumed notion of a hierarchy in order to maintain unequal power relations between them" (2000:52/3).  

	This is a definition broadly supported by the writer of this article, as long as it is understood that ideology, in the Althusserian sense (1971), operates as a bundle of practices that are far wider than the purely discursive. For the SAHRC’s purposes, what is relevant is not such a qualification of Steenveld’s formulation, but rather a concern in saying what racism is not.  Thus, for the Commission, racism in pejorative sense (as described by Steenveld) is to be distinguished from the neutral sense of racialism.  The Final Report elaborates this by suggesting support for an additional definition, thus:  "(w)hereas racialism are (sic) value-free expressions, racism, as we understand the expression, constitutes unfair discrimination in terms of the Bill of Rights" (2000:68).

	The SAHRC’s earlier Interim Report uses, in a fuddled way as even the Final Report concedes (2000:53), a similar distinction between racialism and racism (see Braude, 1999:58; MMP, 1999:7).  In the SAHRC’s usage, racialism entails a practice that operationalizes race (along with alleged racially-linked attributes) as a functional social category; racism is when this practice is used to dominate and unfairly discriminate between the groups concerned.  In this view, race (and racial reference) can be significant without having to equate to a hierarchy of races.

	Many writers utilize a similar distinction between racial differentiation (for the SAHRC, racialism) and racial oppression (racism).  Thus, Goldberg (1990:304) writes:  "Racial differentiation—the discrimination between races and their purported members—is not in and of itself racist."  Elsewhere (1999:373), he argues:  "No one seriously objects to discrimination between members of different races, only against them.  We speak of ‘black business’ and ‘black self respect’ or ‘Jewish political interests’ without thereby demeaning members of the group to whom we refer."

	Memmi has perhaps gone further than most in developing this distinction. According to Martinot (2000:xviii), he analyses the structure of racism in four elements:  (a).  insistence on a difference, whether real or imaginary; (b).  negative evaluation of those seen as different; (c).  differential valuation that makes the difference unignorable and generalized to entire group; (d).  negativity becomes the legitimation for hostility and aggression.  This elaboration, however, still retains the basic distinction used by the SAHRC, and Memmi in his own words states (2000:37/8):  "The description of a difference does not constitute racism; it constitutes a description. ... Ultimately, one becomes racist only with the inclusion of the third point: the deployment of a difference to denigrate the other, to the end of gaining privilege or benefit through that stigmatization."  He acknowledges that difference is the “principal notion around which the racist enterprise revolves", yet, nevertheless for him, "... it is not so much difference itself that is important as the significance given to it. ...To acknowledge that differences exist is to concede nothing to racist reasoning" (2000:39-47). 

	The conceptual distinction between racialism and racism is well-intended, but it is also something that is less clear cut than meets the eye, and is one which requires careful elaboration when applied to the murky empirical world—not least in the representation of race in the South African media.  As will be argued, the difference would be better analyzed as one between racialization and racism. 

The difficulty of separating racialism and racism

	Wieviorka (1995:43/4) makes the case that there are two possible extreme racist logics that can be applied to difference ("racialism"):  one that sees difference as requiring purification/cleansing-extermination, and another that implies inequality-domination-exploitation.  The second is the more common historical occurrence, and in his view apartheid is one of these cases.  Here, Wieviorka is correct in that the South African system combined "difference" ("Whites", "Coloureds", "Indians", "Africans") with the logic of inequality/inferiorization ("Whites" are superior to all, "Indians" and "Coloureds" are superior to "Africans"). The case also supports his view that a logic of (racial) inequality/inferiorization must be backed by what he calls a logic of (racial) differentiation.  Importantly, however, Wieviorka also asserts the converse:  that a logic of differentiation must— unless it ends up eliminating the "Other" (purification-extermination)—co-opt a logic of inequality/inferiorization.  In other words, for Wieviorka, it is hard to have a logic of difference on its own, i.e. without this leading to racism of one logic or another.  This of course is the big question in South Africa:  whether there can be racialism without racism. 

	The matter for Wieviorka is one of intensity:  when racism is weak and fragmented, the logics of difference and inequality/inferiorization are often dissociated; when racism is raised to the political level, the tendency is towards fusion of the two logics.  Going further, Wieviorka’s schema provides for an extreme when racism is intensified to the level of genocide and thereby fuses the logic of difference with that of elimination (as with Nazism, Serbian "ethnic cleansing" and Interahamwe killings of Rwandan Tutsis).  These remarks point us in the direction of asking about the intensity of racism in South Africa. 
 
	Apartheid ideology raised racism to a political level unprecedented globally by legalizing the fusion of difference with inequality/inferiorization.  Interestingly, apartheid always claimed not to be racist.  It acknowledged, fetishized and promoted separateness, but still professed that it stood for "separate-but-equal". In other words, it claimed to be racialist without the racism.  Of course, the rationale for dictating difference was racist. Even different standards were applied to "Black" and "White" difference.  "Whites" were referenced as a single (racial) entity, rather than "English" or "Afrikaners", Indeed they (alone) were constructed as South Africans.  "Blacks", in contrast, were subjected to the divide-and-rule treatment.  Thus there were "Africans," "Coloureds" and "Indians."  And despite all "Africans" being equally oppressed qua "African", at a symbolic level apartheid would only recognize them as members of different tribes.  Each tribe was deemed to be linked to a different "homeland" (constituting a grand total of 13% of South Africa), and each homeland was designated to become an "independent" and fragmented statelet with its own "national" borders.

	The pretence of apartheid was that its logic of difference meant that "Blacks" actually had the same rights as "Whites" such as entitlement to the franchise—only they should merely exercise it somewhere else.  In reality, this system of difference was integrated with a logic of inequality/inferiorization whereby "Black" votes were for sham parliaments, and for "Africans" in particular these institutions were based in the bantustan reservations which served purely as labor reservoirs and dumping grounds.  In practice, the marriage of these two logics also entailed forced removals of "surplus people" to these poverty-stricken areas, resulting in malnutrition levels that provoked Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak of genocide.  The intensity of the apartheid system therefore actually saw the combination of all three of Wieviorka’s logics—differentiation, inequality/inferiorization and extermination.  The genocidal logic is now history (although there remain "Whites" who celebrate AIDS for threatening to annihilate so much of country’s "Black" population).  But what about the other two logics? Here we come to the crux of the racism-racialism distinction in South Africa today.

	Notwithstanding proper political equality in contemporary South Africa, race continues to be symbolic of a legacy of a past racist system.  Moreover, it remains a badge in many instances of a continuing reality that is racist in the (qualified) sense of the Steenveld definition above, in that it entails a hierarchy of inequality combined with a logic of racial difference. It is not really possible in South Africa today to be "Black" and not still be relatively disadvantaged by a history of opportunities reserved for "Whites" and by a current class social structure and process that continues to give greater access to "Whites".  It is also not really possible in South Africa today to be "White" and not to have benefited from such accumulated generations of advantage, and to continue to benefit (and often with the consciousness that such benefit is a right of birth or similar natural entitlement).  In brief, racial difference in current South Africa is still largely bound up with class, residential, educational, linguistic and other factors that can count towards inequality. 

	Although things are changing (primarily for an "African" middle class), and although South Africa is a lot less racist a place than previously, it can be still be said that the overall society still reproduces itself as racist.  This reality does not render all who live there racist either in identìy or practice, but it does highlight how interwoven race, privilege, power and prejudice remain more than six years after the 1994 democratic elections.

	What this means is that the present South Africa, it is very hard to be racialized without being implicated in a society that still bears so much racism in its persistent structures and ongoing practices.  In this regard, racial identity in South Africa is also still linked to the tensions of racism.  When racial identities come into play (which importantly is not all the time), “Black” and “White” (and “Coloured,” “African” and “Indian”) subjectivities are frequently constructed not just as different to, but necessarily against, each other, precisely because of contestation over the associated logic of inequality/inferiorization.  During the SAHRC Inquiry, the stimulus of “Black” identity (in a particular form that excluded “Coloureds” and “Indians”) was arguably a result of the marginalization of a group of “African” editors by international groups lobbying against the subpoenas.  (See Berger, 2000b; Print comes in black as well as white, Business Day, 14.03.00).

	So the point is that even if there is an attempt to make a conceptual distinction between racialism and racism, there is empirically a very close interwining of these in South African practice.  Racial discourse (of special relevance to the medias) is no exception here (see below).  In turn, all this highlights just how hard it will be for the country to approach a situation where racial difference is somehow “neutral” and not tied to inequality, and how difficult it will be for a non-racial journalism to ultimately emerge.

	As an example of this complexity, we can consider the niching of media in contemporary South Africa.  In particular, there is the question of the racial and racist meaning of discourse when a newspaper or a broadcast program targets a grouping that—for reasons of class, residence, culture or language—coincides with race-defined parameters handed down by apartheid history.  In this regard, it has been argued that the Sunday Times newspaper’s racially-based editions perpetuate racial stereotypes and are therefore racist.  The editor of this newspaper has argued in defense that if racial difference equates to racism, the wholly "Black"-read paper, the Sowetan, would be even more racist than his paper.  For him, the issue is serving reader markets based on their particular interests  (see Nkutha, 2000).  In effect then, the editor believes that catering to racial audiences is not per se racist.  He does not deal, though, with whether this practice perpetuates a segregationist outlook (and social reality), which in South African terms also correlates with the notion of "White" and "Black" worlds that are of different values.  This is an outlook where each racial "community" is deemed to be interested only in its "own affairs", and where, for instance, the death of "Black" people (whether "African", "Coloured", "Indian" or "White") does not traditionally make news for "Whites".  (For many of the latter, their privileged insularity prefers that the disliked and supposedly-inferior "Other" ought not to intrude their media agenda unless absolutely necessary).  In short, media racialism can be a slippery slope to racism, and the latter can very easily survive under the cover of the former. 

	These considerations gain special significance in South Africa as racism takes on additional forms and guises.  As discussed by Solomos and Back (1996:19, cited by Mac an Ghaill, 1999:71), "new" racism entails a range of discourses on social differentiation that may have a metonymic relationship to racism. They refer to cases where "the semantics of race are produced by a complex set of interdiscursive processes where language of culture and nation invokes a hidden racial narrative."  In contemporary South Africa, certain racial differences are sometimes reformulated to focus on culture rather skin-color, etc., thereby concealing inequalities that are indeed congruent with racial phenotypes, etc. Similarly, xenophobia against immigrants specifically from Africa, is often unrecognized as specifically racist xenophobia (the racist dimension obscured by a discourse of crime-hysteria about "Zimbabwean hijackers" or "Nigerian drug dealers", or of intra-class dynamics wherein South African hawkers, laborers, etc. see themselves as economically threatened by these "aliens").  

	Given South Africa’s intricate interpenetration of racial differentiation and racism then, the question is how journalists can be empowered to understand them, and indeed if they can be aided to pinpoint and eliminate the specifically racist dimension as it affects their work.  This raises another issue, however: whether getting rid of racism entails countering inequality so as to be able to celebrate racial difference as some kind of diversity, or whether the aim is to deconstruct the notion of race altogether.  The one route is towards multi-racialism, the other aspires towards non-racialism. 

The problem of racialism: essentialism.

	It is not just South Africa that suggests a deeper problem with the idea that there can be a racism-free racial difference, i.e. racialism.  As Mac an Ghaill (1999:50) points out, there is little conceptual clarity about what "difference" means.  For him, there is often a failure to distinguish symbolic difference (as marked through representation), and difference that operates materially and socially through inclusion and exclusion.  He is right to make the distinction, although it needs to be grasped that inclusion/exclusion can also operate at the symbolic level, and further that these two levels do not exist in isolation of each other.  Thus, difference at the symbolic level (for example, in the phrase "instead of ‘White’-domination, we now have a democratic multi-racial South Africa") may simply serve to conceal material and social inclusion and exclusion, thus a racialist discourse of equality may detract from a racial reality of inequality, i.e. a racist reality.  The lesson in this is that the notion of "difference" ought not to be applied wholesale to a society. Nor, I will argue below, should it be applied as if it were a continuously-prevalent feature of the landscape—let alone a permanent one.

	Stuart Hall (1992:257) also signals a problem with "difference" by pointing out that it is "a slippery, and therefore, contested concept".  For him, there is "the ‘difference’ which makes a radical and unbridgeable separation: and there is a ‘difference’ which is positional, conditional and conjunctural..."  But in another statement by him, we can begin to see the tip of the problem iceberg about the notion of a neutral racialism as distinguishable from the negative racialism which constitutes racism.  He writes (1980:338):  "The question is not whether men-in-general make perceptual distinctions between groups with different racial or ethnic characteristics, but rather, what are the specific social conditions which make this form of distinction socially pertinent, historically active."  As Miles (1993:49) has pointed out, this statement—sociologically correct at first glance (if sexist in phraseology)—actually reifies ‘race’ by talking about "groups with different characteristics" as if these were intrinsic and natural features.  In fact, as will be argued below, racial characteristics are always wholly ideologically constructed, even though they appear to be based on given physical features. 

	In a different emphasis to Hall, Memmi (2000:35) writes that "racism, first of all, puts in relief certain differences,” and Miles (1989:79) states that racism entails "signification of a biological characteristic as criterion of identification of a collective".  For both writers, such identification must expressly include a negative component in order for it to count as racism, but the main point I am focusing upon here is their acknowledgement that racial features only gain recognition through human signification.  To go even further, it can be said that different versions of racism focus on a massive and inconsistent range of items, which cannot be reduced to the binary "Black/White" color reference (which anyway is so "commonsensical" and familiar, that it is often forgotten that the reference is actually an illiteral and inconsistent shorthand).  What count as "racial" features in some contexts, can in others be as socially insignificant and unnoticed as the number of eyelashes a person has, and their social arbitrariness is revealed by the fact that they need not even be consistently physical—but instead can be entirely imaginary constructions of what is significant about bodies, accents, dress, etc. 
	The key point, then, as Brah (1992:140-4) elaborates, is not difference per se, but who defines it, and how categories of people are represented within discourses of difference.  This insight, however, is overlooked by the SAHRC and indeed by many writers who fail to recognize that the issue is not merely what signified meanings (eg. pejorative or neutral) get attached to racial signifiers, but also the actual constitution of signifiers as even being worthy of discernment as potentially meaningful. 

	Certainly, the SAHRC holds a very different perspective to that of Brah. Thus the Final Report tells us that racialism "suggests that certain groups of people have common inheritable characteristics which divide them from others, a kind of racial essence" (2000:53).  It adds: 

"There need not be anything offensive about this notion as long as it does not so essentialise race that it presumes moral values inherent only in particular groups.  Then that becomes racial prejudice, the first rung on the racism ladder.  Those who believe or structure their practice according to the notion that racial difference bestows a moral status are racists" (2000:53).

Embedded in this perspective is an assumption that runs directly against arguments by Appiah and others, writers for whom the second rung of racism is prejudice, and to get to it requires climbing the first rung of racialism (or better put, the racialization of social relations—see Appiah and Gutman,1996:82).  Contrary to Appiah’s strong and wise insistence that racial identity cannot rest on any essence (which would assume intrinsic qualities for all group members), the SAHRC falls into the trap of suggesting exactly this assumption:  a fixed, immutable ascription such that inherently significant physical difference is, per se, an eternal fount of racial identity.  In contrast, for Appiah, races only exist as a social and historical construct. Likewise, for Miles (1989:71-2): 

"The fact that only certain physical characteristics are signified to define ‘races’ in specific circumstances indicates that we are investigating not a given, natural division of the world’s population, but the application of historically and culturally specific meanings to the totality of human physiological variation.  This is made equally evident when we consider the historical record which demonstrates that populations now defined as ‘white’ have in the past been classified as distinct ‘races.’ ... The signification of phenotypical features is therefore not an end in itself but is effected for particular purposes." 

	Miles goes on to point out that even those who mobilize on race grounds by inverting the negative evaluation of their purported characteristics "reinforce at a deeper level the process of signification by which the Other was originally constituted... and therefore, in the course of resistance, the discourse of ‘race’ is further legitimated." (1989:73).  My point, as will be elaborated below, is that what is legitimated by accepting the premises of racial difference and racialism, is a flawed and essentialist way of viewing the world. 

	Within such a view, as for the SAHRC, race is evidently a legitimate natural entity describing intrinsic racial difference.  Race in this outlook becomes a cause of continuing ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and even economic difference, rather than vice versa. As an autonomous force, it has no conditionalities.  There is therefore no reason why the world’s races (like the poor!) won’t always be with us.  In sum, the essentialists appear to believe is that races exist and will exist, period. For the SAHRC, the qualification is only that we ought not to restrict moral virtue to, and bestow moral value upon, any single one.  

	Instead of essentialism, it can be stated that because race is a socially constructed category, it cannot be value-free as the SAHRC suggests.  Indeed, if race is to have any meaning in post-apartheid South Africa, a case can be made that it ought not to be linked to (fluid) ethnic or linguistic attributes or even to the (shifting) class structures—but mainly to a sense of history.  Thus to be "White" ought to be to have a sense of guilt and remorse; to be "Black" ought to include sensitivity to all forms of oppression.  These are of course constructions, influenced by political activity inter alia, and alternative constructions can be (and are) put upon these categories. In this sense, Derman-Sparks and Brunson Phillips (1997:11) rightly refer to race as politically constructed. 

	The insight of South Africa’s Black Consciousness thinking, epitomized by the murdered leader Steve Biko, is very valuable in this regard (Berger, 2000b; 2000c).  Thus, Black Consciousness saw "Black" skin-color, etc., as insufficient for "Black" racial personality.  To be officially designated a "non-White" in South Africa meant only to be Black-in-itself as a precondition of Black-for-itself.  Similarly, Stuart Hall (1991:53) has noted:  "Black... is a historical category, a political category, a cultural department. ...  We have to create an equivalence between how people look and what their histories are.  Their histories are in the past, inscribed in their skins. But it is not because of their skins that they are Black in their heads."  Importantly, Hall also cautions us that "to operate exclusively through an unreconstructed (essentialist—GB) conception of Black was to reconstitute the authority of Black masculinity over Black women..." (1991:56).  It is this outlook that probably informs his view (Hall, 1992:255) that  "... the question of the black subject cannot be represented without reference to the dimension of class, gender, sexuality and ethnicity".  The point is that racial identity is not given by "natural" racial differentiation, and nor is it simple or static. It is a social artifact with a wide range of significations. 

	If it is the case that race and racial identity cannot avoid being historically value-laden in one way or another, then to lose this character means losing its social relevance.  Of course in South Africa, there is still lots of relevance (and potential relevance) in redefining (and prolonging) differing racial identity, but not the kind of relevance that calls for a celebration of racialism as racial difference in and of itself. 

	To sum up, it can be stated that, as for Appiah, race is a historical construct.  This means that a racist society, in principle at least, can change to become one without race and hence without racialism.  However, the scenario for South Africa that flows from the SAHRC’s endorsement of race essentialism is not non-racialism, but multi-racialism.  In such a view, the country will continue to have races, even as it rids itself of racism between them.  

Against race, for racialization.

	The problem of essentialism is that race is not seen as a social relation, but as Gilroy (2000:242) says, as a fact of sameness and difference, allowing "absolutists on both sides of the color line ... a set of shared assumptions about what culture is and about the nature of its hold on ‘races’." 

	Omi and Winant (1994:16) talk about this in the way that race becomes a ‘common sense’ way of comprehending, explaining and acting in the world.  It implies what South African trainer Eric Meijer calls a "racial default setting" (personal communication—GB).  And this, as Wieviorka (1995:50) sets out, is a way of managing meaning by extracting from a "fund" of historical or cultural reference where signposts are confused or absent.  At the same time, such racialistic knowledge may have a short life-cycle precisely because of its inability to do the job of explanation.  Gilroy (2000:104) describes this situation as follows:  "the desire to fix identity in the body is inevitably frustrated by the body’s refusal to disclose the required signs of absolute incompatibility people imagine to be located there."  The point, as with the need to resort to official identity documents to determine who was a Tutsi in the Rwanda genocide, is that "the bodies in question did not freely disclose the secrets of identity."

	The key argument against "racialism" then, is that while it gets rid of the negatives of racism, it continues to operate as if "race" was a meaningful category where signifiers exist in and of themselves, and to which coherent signifiers can be attached.  As Donald and Rattansi (1992:3) observe:  "Race can produce simplified interpretations of complex social, economic and cultural relations for antiracists as well as racists".  And, as Cohen (1992:77) notes, racial formulations are reductionist: they claim that phenomena can be explained by a single, simple cause, yet they tell only part of the story.  Race, sans racism, is taken to signify a range of largely cultural meanings, misleadingly suggesting  there are fixed properties of socially-marked physical signifiers, when these elements can clearly be detached from each other and the latter de-signified. 

	This is a critical matter when it comes to journalism, because it impacts directly on whether the media can avoid racism and still hold on to racialism.  The problem is that the notion of "race" and races constitutes the (dubious) bedrock without which neither racialism nor racism could operate.  So the issue then is whether journalists accept these shaky foundations and while rejecting racism, still represent race at face value.  Or whether they go further to demonstrate the limited, contingent and historically-specific character of race as a social construct.  This issue influences whether the media explains events in society in ways that race pretends to, but cannot and does not.  And it affects whether reportage draws the links to sexism, xenophobia and class exploitation in a non-essentialist way which can assist wide-ranging "post-modernist" alliances to be forged between anti-racism and these struggles.  

	All this is not to reject the motivation behind the conceptual distinction between racism and racialism, but rather to warn of the pitfalls entailed.  Certainly, racism is far worse than racialism; negativity given to an essentialism is a much greater problem than essentialism per se.  The trouble is that both racialism and racism depend on a flawed foundational concept of race as "natural characteristics" that in themselves only give the illusion of explaining human practice.  Journalists who wish to avoid solely racism, cannot avoid stumbling on the inadequacies of race itself. 

	Instead of "racialism", a preferable concept is "racialization", which suggests a dynamism and agency in the social constitution of races (See Appiah and Gutman, 1996).  This use of "racialization" is somewhat different from that articulated by Essed (1999:52) who writes that "social relations are racialized (or ethnicized) when they represent racially or ethnically identified differences in position and power."  Similarly, Cornell and Hartmann (1998:33) state:

"Racialization is the process by which groups of people come to be classified as races. ... A code of racial etiquette directed Whites to treat Blacks as inferiors and directed Blacks to act deferentially towards Whites. All of these are aspects of racialization."  

The implication here is that racialization is intrinsically bound up with discrimination.  Historically, of course, it has been, and this is exactly the point. The term "racialization" points us towards historical value-laden characters of races, even at the same time as being conceptually different to racism.  Miles (1989:74) provides a useful characterization of racialization as a dialectical process of signification. For him:  

"Ascribing a real or alleged biological characteristic with meaning to define the Other necessarily entails defining Self by the same criterion. ... The African’s ‘blackness’ therefore reflected the European’s ‘whiteness’: these opposites were therefore bound together, each giving meaning to the other in a totality of signification.  Similarly, when Africans were later identified as constituting an inferior ‘race’ by Europeans, Europeans were simultaneously, if only implicitly, defining themselves by reference to the discourse of ‘race’, albeit with a different evaluative connotation.  Thus, Self and Other were similarly encapsulated in a common world of (European) meanings."
	
This understanding of racialization is different to that of Omi and Winant (1994:18), for whom the term refers to the "extension of racial meaning to a previously unclassified relationship, social practice or group (my italics—GB)." Their formulation underestimates the way racial meaning has to be continuously reproduced if it is to survive.  Racialization does not only apply to tabula rasa situations, but to ongoing racialized relationships.  This has critical bearing on the role that media plays in constituting race, and on its contribution to the waxing and waning of race and racial identity as a social factor. 

	Applying "racialization" to the case study presented earlier in this article, the point is not that "Black" South Africans are essentially (or even typically) caring or uncaring about "White" murders (both of which racial assumptions, incidentally, can easily lend themselves to racist co-option and abuse).  The matter is who might hold such assumptions, and whether these ought not to be tested rather than taken as obvious. In this regard, the challenge is digging into the range of factors that explain why, on a particular issue, people may act (or not) according to certain particular readings of significance as per certain racial scripts.  So, instead of working within the simplistic paradigm of race essentialism, journalists reporting the story could have inquired into the actual relevance of race in this particular incident.  To the extent that it was a factor (eg. Some "Black" spectators there explicitly qua "Black" to demonstrate "Black" empathy), then they could have reported on exactly this particular racialization.  To accept or to make racial assumptions otherwise is to court crudeness and thereby to perpetuate fodder for racist beliefs in a racial hierarchy that justifies unequal practices. 

Risking relativism.

	Strangely, at the same time as the Final Report proposes a fraught essentialism about racial identity in South Africa, it also includes a dangerous relativism.  Thus, parts of the report tautologously present racism as being something to be decided by the victims—as being in the eye of the aggrieved beholder.  According to the document:  "We believe that the starting point of all theory is practice and experience.  The narratives told by those who experience racism provide the basis for interrogating racist discourse" (2000:54).  In the concluding judgment referred to earlier, the same line of thinking is evident in the words:  "To the extent that expressions in the South African media reflect a persistent pattern of racist expressions ..., and given that we take seriously the fact that many submissions complained that such expressions cause or have the effect of causing hurt and pain, South African media can be characterised as racist institutions" (2000:89).  Racism becomes a phenomenological experience.  In fact, experience, as discussed earlier, is mediated by understandings.  And as a result, unless there is a common currency of general knowledge to give shared meanings, experience can be as different as different people claim it to be (Knowles & Mercer, 1992:111).  This takes us back to the need for a general conceptualization of racism.

In making a case against relativism, one can utilize the point made by Essed (1991:55) who argues convincingly that we must differentiate between people’s comprehension of racism, and our understanding of that comprehension.  It is certainly the case that it is the victims of (real, not imagined) racism who are typically better equipped to identify the practice or discourse of racism than others, not least the perpetrators.  But at the same time, a universalizable standard is still required if one is to be able to assess when accusations or defenses of racism charges are actually valid. 

	The problem in the SAHRC’s position is that by logical implication of relativism, anyone can claim to support or oppose racism, because all individuals’ feelings about this topic are valid. If the Commission’s researchers feel that the "Black"-run Sowetan or City Press newspapers, or the etv broadcaster, are racist in perpetuating stereotypes (see MMP, 1999:25,32), then they are.  If the journalists there disagree, then simultaneously it is not. If the Black Lawyers’ Association feels the Sunday Times is racist in its coverage, so it must be.  By the same token, if the Sunday Times’ staffers feel they are victims of negative "White" stereotyping, then the accuser becomes the racist. Many "Whites" in South Africa today experience the loss of privilege as—to use the SAHRC’s own words—racial "hurt and pain", and they perceive affirmative action as anti-"White" racism (2000:79, footnote 61). Relativism legitimizes all these experiences. 

	One implication of this is that, as Essed (1991:59) makes clear, covert racism is especially hard to prove when taking as a criterion the actor’s definition of the situation (though she unnecessarily limits this remark to "White" actors).  In this light, Miles (1993:9) is wise in warning that "... to marginalize the matter of definition is to grant to the racists an autonomy to deny their avowal of racism.  For if we ‘retreat’ to the position that racism is whatever we define it to be at any time, we concede to the racists the opportunity to argue (with justification) that the notion is no more than an item in the arsenal of ‘left-wing’ rhetoric."

	Relativism also means an all-too-easy rebuttal of defenses by accused people: anyone who protests the allegation of racism simply confirms the stereotype of the racist. Hence, for the SAHRC,  "(i)n most cases the principals will deny consciously invoking different stereotypes to match the skin colour" (2000:61).  In this way, a relativist position gravely undermines the authoritativeness of pinpointing racist practice.  It also means that the conceptual distinction between racialization and racism becomes irrelevant, because the latter means anything a person wants it to mean.

	By providing a confused and contradictory mix of race-essentialism and racism-relativism, the SAHRC undermines the definitions of racism it appears to support. As reflected earlier in the article, these definitions are:  "(R)acism is an ideology or discourse used to make inferences about people on the presumed notion of a hierarchy in order to maintain unequal power relations between them," and racism as "unfair discrimination" as per the South African constitution.  These definitions, unproblematic as they are by themselves, do not balance upon, and neither do they inform, the overall conceptualization that emerges from other elements of the Final Report.  In consequence, the SAHRC cannot concretely and with certainty declare a particular text or producer of such text as racist or exhibiting racism.  The result is that the Final Report leaves begging the questions of what the anti-"Black" racism is that some "Black" journalists are accused of perpetuating, and whether certain "White" journalists at the Inquiry hearings can continue to be blind to any iota of racism in their work. In short, the Report does not help journalists to change the way they represent reality in the media.  Simply, the conceptual tools to do so are not available. 

Conclusion

	As argued in this article, the SAHRC’s Final Report falls short in terms of engaging journalists in a practically-useful way in regard to combating racism.  This is in part because of the "original sin" of a confused conception of racism and related concepts.  Alternative theorization is needed if journalists are to get a handle on this complex problem.

	Like the SAHRC’s perspective on race, Memmi (2000:41-2) argues that "(h)istorically, difference signalled inequality. ... But we are mistaken if we insist there are no differences."  This article does not deny difference, but it problematizes it.  Thus, instead of accepting races as fixed entities, the notion of racialization has been put forward to emphasize the historical construction, reconstruction and possible deconstruction of race.  Racialization as we know it has entailed a group of powerful people who constituted themselves and others as "Whites", and did so by grouping other people into an inferior category of "Black", with particular inflexions in South Africa.  In this construction project, racism relied on the power to both discern purported classes of physical difference and to define the meaning of such discernment.  As Martinot writes:  "The act of definition of the other is the power of one group over the other; the dependence of the dominated on the other for social identity; the content of that definition which becomes the legitimation of the domination relation." (2000:xxvi). 

	Can these acts of definition be reconstructed in South Africa so as to have races without interracial domination?  Perhaps, notwithstanding the difficulty of separating these matters as discussed in this article. But this very project is also open to question. Such a multiracialism is arguably not what should be striven for— and not only because "race" is an inadequate explanatory concept.  Goldberg (1990:304) points out that racial identity implies unity, and that particular implications flow from this.  Thus:  "When this identity is internalized it prompts identification, a sense of belonging together.  Only then does racial differentiation begin to define otherness and discrimination against the other becomes at once exclusion of the different."  Difference, in short, has a built-in tendency to become division.  Conversely, as Appiah has warned, racial "unity" can elicit a tyranny of deeming individuals to be within each "race" and requiring them to conform to pre-ordained scripts (Appiah and Gutman, 1996).  These negative racialist phenomena do not necessarily amount to racism, but they are not very different to it. Eradicating racism and holding racialism aloft still leaves us with these dangers.

	The challenge that arises from an understanding of racialization is the need to transform, not just invert, the negativism of racism.  This would mean being against not just racism, but also race as a category that is accepted without further explanation and as designating a potentially inoffensive reality.  The trouble with racialism is not only its potential to cover up and perpetuate racism.  It is the intrinsic essentialism that erroneously reduces the social to the imagined biological, whereas the latter is only made relevant in particular circumstances under a changing complex of causes that are firmly rooted in the social.  It is also race essentialism which entails division and compels conformity.  Finally, it is race essentialism which is the core on which racism relies and which racism creates and/or parasites upon.  

	Wieviorka (1995:38-41) makes useful distinctions between escalating levels of racism.  The first is infra-racism—disjointed and erratic discrimination; the second entails a fragmented (more visible, repetitive) racism.  A third level is the political (when racism mobilizes broad sections) and becomes a political force; and lastly a level where state power is engaged to promote racism.  He writes that  "(o)nly when racism reaches the political and state level does the phenomenon acquire cohesion.  Otherwise it remains fragmented and, ultimately, contradictory." South Africa has come from Wieviorka’s highest level of racism, and may now be seen as somewhere between the first and second, with a racism that—compared to the past—is now fragmented and disjointed, not least in the media.  It is precisely in order to continue move forward that adequate tools are needed to make sense of this stage of transition. 

	It is with clarity in regard to the anti-racist struggle that South African media can properly begin to pay attention to other struggles.  To return to the case study described earlier in this article, journalists might then begin to critically scrutinize not only the racial relevance, but also the class and gender significance, of a given crowd at a given court case. 

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