Liberal anti-apartheid scholarship rested on faith in modernization theory, not demonstration

Evidence

John Lonsdale points out that while the earlier cohort of liberal scholars writing about segregation in South Africa (pre-1948) were more concerned with issues of “political morality than economic efficiency,” much of the liberal writing on apartheid was profoundly shaped by the principles of modernization theory gaining intellectual prominence globally at the time (Lonsdale, 1983:69), in terms of which the racist fetters imposed by apartheid on the country’s labor markets would be eroded by the “colorblind” logic of economic growth. Exactly how this was expected to happen was not clearly specified; much of the liberal analysis of apartheid was more an expression of faith in the “modernization” thesis than a demonstration of these forces at work within the society at that time. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 562

Categorization

• QUESTION: The liberal faith that markets are ‘colorblind’ despite being embedded in racist structures — a claim worth testing against modern examples of markets reproducing rather than eroding discrimination.
• XREF: Connects to broader critiques of modernization theory and economistic optimism about growth curing discrimination — parallels the arguments about markets not automatically producing justice in the law-merchant readings.