Apartheid demolished a thriving mixed-race neighborhood precisely because it embodied racial mixing

Evidence

Perhaps nothing more symbolizes the crusading spirit, subjugating domination, and repressive suffering which apartheid sought to impose than the legacy of Sophiatown. Founded at the edge of spreading Johannesburg as the twentieth century opened up, it became a site of freehold property first by whites and then increasingly by blacks and mixed race people as the Johannesburg city council established a sewage plant in the area and upwardly mobile whites sought better living conditions in less polluted environments of the city. By the 1940s Sophiatown had become Harlemlike in hosting a vibrant avant-garde culture of writing, music, art and poetry, the font of a vernacular cultural expressiveness unmatched elsewhere in South Africa. Home to kwela and penny whistle street corner jive, to the dramatic photography and writing of Drum Magazine and convivial dance halls, to the great saxophonist Kiepie Moketsi and the street sense of writer Bloke Modisane, to Jewish watchmakers and The Jazz Epistles, to the grittiness of smoky shebeen life and the unstinting humanizing commitments of Anglican archbishop and apartheid arch-critic Terry Huddleston. The site and standard-bearer of intense, vibrant, lived South African mestizaje, Sophiatown stood for everything apartheid found repulsive and sought to deny. The living spirit and symbol of another way of being, for the protectors of apartheid Sophiatown was the site of sin, the Earthly City. It had to be destroyed. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1547

Categorization

• XREF: White flight created the very mixed space apartheid later destroyed — connects to real-estate-driven residential segregation and contact dynamics in the reader’s race literature. — connects to: Apartheid destroyed Sophiatown precisely because it embodied vibrant racial mixing — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1547; Apartheid targeted racial mixing as the central site of resistance — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1546; Under apartheid, racial mixing itself became a political act of resistance (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Apartheid destroyed Sophiatown precisely because it embodied vibrant racial mixing #corroborates (1.00) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1547
• Apartheid erased Sophiatown and renamed its rubble Triomf as racialized housing #expands (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1549
• Apartheid targeted racial mixing as the central site of resistance #expands (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1546
• Under apartheid, racial mixing itself became a political act of resistance #expands (0.72)
• The Sophiatown demolition marked the beginning of apartheid’s end #expands (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1550