This study investigated changes in the content and favourability of South African
racial stereotypes over the past fifty years, with van den Berghe’s (1962) study
providing baseline data. The scope of the current investigation was expanded to
include investigations of stereotype uniformity, differences between personal and
cultural stereotypes, and the degree to which racial subtypes overlap with global racial
categories.
The findings reflected an interesting change in the descriptive language used by the
respondent groups between the two studies. At the same time, many trends observed
in the van den Berghe (1962) study have persisted today. Stereotypes appear to be at
least as (if not more) negative now than in 1962, with the exception of ‘English
whites’ and ‘city blacks’, which were described more favourably in the present study.
A significant difference between cultural and personal stereotypes was found for the
global racial categories (black, white, Indian, coloured), but not for the two subtype
groups (English and Afrikaans white; city and rural black). Thus there was only
partial evidence to support Devine and Elliot’s (1995) hypothesis, which proposes that
cultural stereotypes may remain relatively stable over time while personal stereotypes
may undergo revision.
The rural black subtype was most evidently reflected in the global black category,
whereas the white global category seemed to be more of an aggregate of the English
and Afrikaans white subtypes.
Through investigating stereotypes using various methods outlined in this thesis, it was
possible to assess shifts in people’s perceptions in response to sociopolitical change in
South Africa over the past 16 years.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ukzn/oai:http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za:10413/5153 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Talbot, Kirsten. |
| Contributors | Durrheim, Kevin. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en_ZA |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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