Liberal apartheid scholarship treated racism chiefly as instrumental to Afrikaner nationalist power

Evidence

Liberal scholars of apartheid were primarily concerned to debunk these ideas as nationalist myth-making, by exposing the politics of racial discrimination. The liberal critique of apartheid emphasized the connection between racial discrimination and political power, invoking an understanding of power as a party political project (launched by the National Party) to use the apartheid state as an instrument for promoting Afrikaner interests within the framework of white supremacy (de Villiers, 1971). … But in the main, liberal scholarship dealt less with the sociology of race and racism than with an analysis of the politics of Afrikaner nationalism, showing how the ideology of apartheid served as a tool of what Heribert Adam and Herman Giliomee (1979) called “ethnic mobilization.” — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 558

Categorization

• DEFINE: Frames the ‘ethnic mobilization’ account of apartheid, distinguishing instrumentalist from sociological readings of race.
• XREF: Parallels vault claims that both liberal and Marxist analysts of apartheid subordinated race to other categories — feeds racialization-vs-ethnicity distinctions. — connects to: Liberal apartheid scholars reduced race to a tool of Afrikaner ethnic factionalism; Marxists read apartheid’s racism as instruments of class domination — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 564; Marxist scholars constructed the liberal position on apartheid as a rival to critique — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 557 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Liberal apartheid scholars reduced race to a tool of Afrikaner ethnic factionalism #corroborates (0.95)
• Marxists read apartheid’s racism as instruments of class domination #contradicts (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 564
• Marxist scholars constructed the liberal position on apartheid as a rival to critique #qualifies (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 557
• Apartheid historiography sidestepped the theoretical question of what race actually is #expands (0.72)