Economic white privilege persisted undiminished after 1994.

Evidence

Whiteness, on the other hand, still affords access to power and privilege. While political power is no longer the privilege of white South Africans, economic privilege continues. Although major strides have been made towards equity in the middle class, little has changed at the economic extremes. For example, black representation at top management level has only reached 22.2 percent. At the other extreme of the job market, 27.9 percent of black South Africans are unemployed compared to just 4.6 percent of whites. Meanwhile, there were approximately 5,863 white households living in informal ‘squatter’ settlements in 2007, compared to 1,179,006 black households in similar circumstances, underlining the extent to which white families have access to economic and cultural capital compared to black families. — Cornel Verwey and Michael Quayle, Whiteness, racism, and Afrikaner…, 145

Categorization

• QUESTION: Data are from 2007-8; merit checking whether these racial economic gaps have since narrowed, which would test the pragmatic rationale participants gave for clinging to whiteness.
• XREF: connects to: Neoliberalism functioned as a defense against perceived erosion of white privilege — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1764; Black economic inequality relative to whites remained structurally fixed across multiple decades — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 3351; The value gap persists even where explicit white supremacist attitudes have faded (+2 more)

Related

• South African whites lost political power but retained economic privilege after apartheid. (similarity 0.83)
• Black economic inequality relative to whites remained structurally fixed across multiple decades (similarity 0.80)
• Post-apartheid growth produced extreme racial wealth stratification despite formal color blindness (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Black economic inequality relative to whites remained structurally fixed across multiple decades #corroborates (0.95) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3351
• The value gap persists even where explicit white supremacist attitudes have faded #corroborates (0.90)
• Neoliberalism functioned as a defense against perceived erosion of white privilege #expands (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1764
• Jim Crow racism had largely vanished among Whites by the 1990s #qualifies (0.80)
• Color-blindness rhetoric was used to preserve white privilege #expands (0.80)