Afrikaner segregationism rested on degeneration fears and racial historicism

Evidence

Segregation, then, received its boost from two grades of fuel fusing to common combustion. The larger and more direct kick came from the perception, not least among hardcore Afrikaners fearing they would dissolve in a sea of blackness but far from only, that blacks demographically, intellectually, and so politically constituted a threat to white wellbeing. (In this, Afrikaners took themselves, as they did whites generally, to occupy a position analogous to Jews in Germany.) The core ingredient here is the lingering presumption of degenerationism. The second fuel, extracted from the tradition of racial historicism, energized a commitment to separate racial development of blacks under white direction and domination. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1497

Categorization

• XREF: Afrikaners conceiving themselves as analogous to Jews in Germany connects to broad patterns of settler-racial self-mythologizing seen in other colonial studies.