South Africa’s post-apartheid transition aimed to secularize race outright

Evidence

The appeal to authoritative reason, the god of race, was to be replaced by the appeal to secular reason, to the racial equivalent of laicization. The arbitrariness of racial appeal was supposed to give way to the refusal to judge or assess people and their worth on the basis of morally inappropriate or irrelevant categories like race. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1587

Categorization

• XREF: The concept of racial laicization extends the secularization-of-recording theme from the chapter’s opening framing, and echoes Durkheim-style sacred/profane division as applied to race rather than religion. — connects to: Post-apartheid reconciliation inverted the theological frame of apartheid rule — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1573