Apartheid apartheid cut black life expectancy by nearly 15 years while enforced knowledge asymmetry

Evidence

Where survival meant knowing those in charge better than they knew themselves, and yet sharing that knowledge only with those sharing the same condition as one. Where life expectancy of blacks was nearly 15 years shorter than that of whites. Where civil society kills, but not so softly. A life of bitterness likely washed away by spiritual consolement of one form or another, remarkably producing much less bitterness than critical observers could expect. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1555

Categorization

• DEFINE: ‘Civil society kills, but not so softly’ — an inversion of the cultural trope that killing softly (ideological, everyday violence) is more humane; apartheid’s civil society destroyed without even that gentleness.
• QUESTION: The ‘remarkably producing much less bitterness than critical observers could expect’ — what mechanism explains this? Spiritual consolation is one guess the author offers; worth probing the psychology of systemic oppression and resentment.