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The invisible silence of race: On exploring some experiences of minority group teachers at South African schools

In its hasty retreat from a racialized and racist South Africa, democratic South Africa was intent on embracing the newly formed ‘rainbow nation’. It would be a nation free from all forms of oppression, and unshackled by anger and hatred, as made visible in the life of Nelson Mandela – the first president of a non-racial, democratic South Africa. It made sense to open schools to all races, inviting children, once divided along lines of race, ethnicity and cultures, to share a uniform, share a school and learn together. Admissions determined on the basis of race and ethnicity, were considered part of an apartheid past. Given the newly established landscape of desegregated schools, many teachers opted for posts at schools where they were previously not allowed to teach. This meant, for example, that coloured teachers began teaching at White schools, and Black teachers at Indian schools. Although not in the same numbers as learners, teachers began to migrate across racial lines in terms of teaching posts. This paper draws on research conducted with what the authors refer to as minority group teachers. These are teachers who do not form part of the majority group in the school in terms of race and ethnicity. In exploring the issues of race and ethnicity of minority group teachers at schools, this paper examines how the silence around conversations on race, ethnicity, religion, culture and language – what its authors call the identity of ‘otherness’ – leads to an invisibility that pretends there is no difference. In other words, if the identity of ‘otherness’ is not discussed, it does not exist. Secondly, this paper explores how this invisibility of ‘otherness’ experienced by teachers affects their teaching in diverse classroom settings. Thirdly, in exploring a conception of ‘otherness’, it is not the intention of this paper to advance an argument in defence of deracialized schooling. Instead, it looks for a language that can break the silence around race and racism – one that is not necessarily constituted by race. As such, this paper argues for a language of ‘otherness’ that is constituted by conceptions of infancy, potentiality and becoming – a language that will re-imprint itself on a re-imagined consciousness of post-apartheid citizenship.