The canonical race-class debate on apartheid actually diverted attention away from race

Evidence

Students of apartheid are typically introduced to the academic literature on this subject by way of the so-called “race-class debate,” which dominated the historiography of apartheid throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It seems a promising route to go: the way the debate was construed suggests a head-on critical encounter with “race.” Yet one of the most striking features of this debate is the way in which it deflected attention from “race.” — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 556

Categorization

• QUESTION: How exactly did a debate framed as being about race end up deflecting attention from it — worth tracing the mechanism in chapter 3 of this book.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 556
• XREF: connects to: Anti-apartheid scholars displaced race with class precisely because race was so pervasive. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 577; Race-focused research on apartheid is recent and still early-stage — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 595