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Even South Africa Thinks America is Racist

William Spivey
The Polis
Published in
4 min readMar 15, 2025

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Eugene Kim from San Francisco, USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Not very long ago, South Africa was the prima facie example of a racist nation. Though slavery there ended in theory in 1834, the enslaved africans simply became apprentices for four years until that program was ended in favor of migrant and forced labor which was slavery by another name. One might compare it to the United States which ended slavery in 1865, immediately transitioning to the Black Codes and then Jim Crow on 1877. In both countries, slavery continued long after it supposedly stopped.

America was heavilly invested in South African racism. Major American colleges and universities poured money into supporting apartheid with billions from their endowments. Between one-half and one-third of the S&P 500 did business in South Africa at one point in the ’80s, placing these companies among the best investments at the time. These were blue-chip stocks and steady earners that were key to the success of endowment funds. U.S. schools invested in the companies that invested in South African apartheid. It took student protests worldwide to shame corporations and nations to divest themselves of South African investments.

Nelson Mandela led the resistance to apartheid and was jailed in 1962, serving 27 years before his…

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The Polis
The Polis

Published in The Polis

Thought-provoking articles on politics, philosophy, and public policy

William Spivey
William Spivey

Written by William Spivey

I write about politics, history, education, and race. Follow me at williamfspivey.com and support me at https://ko-fi.com/williamfspivey0680