Talk:Apartheid/Archive 2

message: Somewhat amazingly very little of what follows is about South Africa.  Paul Beardsell 04:01, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

message: I feel the present article is lacking in only describing aparthied and what was wrong with it and failing to present the arguments for Aparthied.  While we live in a world where most of us hopefully find such policies abhorent, it would be much more interesting for the article to go into what moved the policy makers and what view of the world was held by the countless number of otherwise reasonable people to justify such discrimination (a bit like the slave owners who claimed to be christians).  I do not have the material to add, but I am sure it exists and think for completeness the article needs it.
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Well, what were the "justifications"?  People did things for their own reasons, in their own self interests.  As such their actions are understandable.  Maybe it is "understandable" you mean, rather than "justifiable"?  Paul Beardsell 22:36, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Justifications For Apartheid

message: I have returned to this article for the first time in quite a while, and have found it to be VERY POV.  Now, I hasten to add that I mostly agree with the POV expressed, but I don't believe it is appropriate for an encyclopedia to be taking sides, no matter how "obvious" the morality of one side may be.  At any rate, Wikipedia policy requires, I think rightly, a neutral point of view.
I have therefore edited the article to make it more neutral.  The following sentences have been deleted and/or substantially rewritten:
:Many dry treatments of apartheid miss the point. The tragedies of apartheid were not just Sharpeville and an unpopular language policy in the schools.  Apartheid was a policy which blighted the lives of millions every day.  Lest we forget, this is what it was like for the ordinary South African day to day until at least the mid-1980's:
:But that was just legal apartheid. Informally apartheid was cruelly practised on a one to one basis by a much larger number of whites than most now admit.  Power corrupts and whites had power over blacks
:While we live in a world where most of us hopefully find such policies abhorent, it is interesting to examine what moved the apartheid policy makers and what view of the world was held by the countless number of otherwise reasonable people to justify such discrimination.
:The intellectual elite cannot escape criticism by virtue of their supposedly good intentions.
:But to allow rank and file "White" South Africans this defence is patronising.  All should have known better - one does not have to be a member of any elite to know it is evil to bulldoze huts on good land, forcibly removing the inhabitants to unimproved bad land. "White" South Africans imposed apartheid (often at the point of a gun) on "Black" South Africans and the "Whites" are responsible therefore for the evils of apartheid.  By contrast, the dreadful conditions of the starving Ethiopeans lacking fresh water and basic health care is not something for which residents of Europe voted or which is caused by them. Or did they? And is it?  
Notice the words like unfortunately, and dreadful and a host of other POV words.  I repeat: I AGREE with this anti-apartheid POV, but as I said, I don't believe an encyclopedia that glories in its NPOV should be taking sides.  Therefore, I cannot allow this POV to stand, no matter how strongly I agree with it. David Cannon 22:40, 9 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: POV

message: I disagree with the idea that an encyclopedia (or any text) can be NPOV.  All historical writing is POV by nature, and I believe it would be more accurate to argue over whether the current contextualization is palatable to Wikipedia readers.  
"While North American colonists committed genocide against the indigenous population and avoided the complications of living with a majority underclass, the South African colonists used apartheid to maintain white minority privilege without committing genocide against the native people."
I believe this is accurate, but it puts apartheid in a relatively positive light and therefore would be considered POV. - Frida
I find that by omitting significant amount of information pertaining to South Africa such as its history and demographics you guys are not following the neutral point of view .On the contrary it seems that the article expresses the POV similar to UN and that means condemning SA policy of separate development. You are omitting alot of significant facts that may be crucial to the whole story. For example in the article on Mandela it is not mentioned at all that he was a communist party member, and author of the "how to be a good communist" pamphlet, that he was responsible for the acts of violence against civilians and an organiser of the guerilla camps funded by the Soviets. Even though ANC is still in formal alliance with SACP!  That is unforgiving and hardly neutral. If you wish to be neutral you ought to include all the relevant facts and not just ones that flatter your POV. - someone else
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Just edit the articles!  It is difficult to strike the correct balance.  But when you use the term "separate development" instead of "apartheid" then it is possible to see your POV too!  Just as the POV is apparent of a UK Conservative Party supporter (and I am one) who refers to the "poll tax" by its official name, "community charge".  You weren't responsible for the recently reverted "purpose" of black ambulances edit were you?  Separate but equal was the public relations goal, not the actuality.  I think the more facts are written about Mandela and about apartheid the weaker your position will look.  Edit away, if you keep to the facts and to neutral language then it will not be reverted.  Paul Beardsell 18:03, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  more POV 

message: The article does say, at the moment:
:Apartheid's most important role was to generate economic growth while satisfying the expectations of South Africa's white minority
No.  Restricting movement, denying education, preventing entry to the professions, none of these generates economic growth.  Paul Beardsell 16:24, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Your quotation marks are around the wrong word.  Surely you meant Do we have any literature that gives the official take on apartheid's "benefits"?  I can scarcely believe that we can talk of apartheid in these terms:  We should be talking of its costs.  When we talk of the benefits of farming we do not consider the slaughter of animals as a cost:  That is indeed a benefit of farming.  By analogy South African's black population is once again reduced to 2nd class citizenship (at best) when the "benefits" of apartheid are discussed.  Black labour was treated almost as it it were merely a natural resourse.  Not your words, I know.  Paul Beardsell 01:33, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aftermath 

message: Recently the following anonymous rant was added to the "Motivations behind Apartheid" section.  I have some sympathy with the sentiment expressed, the paragraph just isn't encyclopaedic so I have removed it to here.
:Please remove this insulting and condescending article that almost seems to justify apartheid in South Africa. The use of the word aborigine to describe indigenous africans is provocative to say the least. I wonder which editors read and felt that the logic of this article makes sense. If you came to africa in the last 400/500 years you can coin a hypenated name. We refuse to end up like native americans who are the ones with the hyphenated names rather than the settlers. If indeed the whites created apartheid because they didn't want to lose their identity why were the whites elsewhere racist. Perhaps it all stems from the same instinct they all possess i.e. that they are better than everyone else afterall their race was not being swamped in America or Australia or all those other places where they were creating or re-inventing new ways to discriminate against people of colour.
As I said, I find myself agreeing in part with this.  On the other hand:  
* Aborigine is a flat descriptive word with no negative connotation in my mind.
* We are all of us editors.  Edit boldly, fix the article, don't complain.
* What "hyphenated name" is this anonymous contributor going on about?
* The anonymous contributor surely does not only think whites can be racist?
I think that this sentence in the article
:Many sociologists find it interesting to examine what moved the apartheid policy makers and what view of the world was held by the many otherwise fair-minded people to justify such discrimination.
is an example of several which go too far.  How do we know they were "otherwise fair-minded"?  We would surely hesitate to say the same of the Germans who persecuted the Jews?  (Or of the Israelis attitude to the Palestinians.)  (Or of Rwanda.) (insert your favorite example here)  
Paul Beardsell 13:43, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rant removed from article 

message: Of course NPOV must be strived for.  Where factual errors are made these must be fixed.  But an apology for apartheid is not called for.  And it cannot be justified by comparing it against perceived or real injustices perpetrated by the successor regime.  But plainly many of the comments in the square brackets are explicitly false or are designed to give a wrong impression.  I intend to remove the square bracketed comments and to adjust the article to be more factually correct.  This will take some time and the only non-controversial way of doing so will be to provide facts and figures.  So, to give but two examples, the Baragwanath point made in the square brackets will fall away when the number of beds per 100,000 populations is compared between White Johannesburg and Black Soweto.  Similarly, the number of arrests under the pass laws and the proportion of urban blacks arrested under pass law legislation will destroy the pass law enforcement point. 
Paul Beardsell 12:14, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Latest [square bracketed] version