Boer racism is a pre-ideological reaction to desperate colonial conditions

Evidence

Boer racism, unlike the oth?r brands, has a touch of authenticity and, so to speak, of innocence. A complete lack of literature and other intellectual achievement is the best witness to this statement. It was and remains a desperate reaction to desperate living conditions which was inarticulate and inconsequential as long as it was left alone. Things began to happen only with the arrival of the British, who showed little interest in their newest colony which in 1849 was still called a military station (as opposed to either a colony or a plantation). But their mere presence—that is, their contrasting attitude toward the natives whom they did not consider a different animal species, their later attempts (after 1834) to abolish slavery, and above all their efforts to impose fixed boundaries upon landed property—provoked the stagnant Boer society into violent reactions. It is characteristic of the Boers that these reactions followed the same, repeated pattern throughout the nineteenth century: Boer farmers escaped British law by treks into the interior wilderness of the country, abandoning without regret their homes and their farms. Rather than accept limitations upon their possessions, they left them altogether. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 509

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes ‘authentic’ lived racism from ideological racism — a conceptual distinction central to how the colonizer psyche is theorized.
• SHARE: The detail that British attempts to impose fixed property boundaries provoked the Boer treks — a specific historical mechanism someone studying enclosure, property, or settler adaptation would relish.
• XREF: connects to: Anticipatory threat of mixture forged Afrikaner ethnic mobilization and racial theology. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1383; Threatened privilege drove Dutch colonists into a homogenizing white Afrikaner identity — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1382; Afrikaner religious intensification tracked Dutch imperial decline and economic depression. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1389 (+1 more)