The now infamous article about the intelligence of coloured women published earlier this year wasn't an aberration, but rather the latest in a long line of negative research about coloured people conducted at Stellenbosch University (SU).

This was one of the viewpoints of Prof Jonathan Jansen, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Education Policy Studies at SU, in his inaugural lecture on Monday (16 September 2019). The topic of his address was From 'die sedelike toestand van die kleurling' to 'the cognitive functioning of coloured women': A century of research on coloured people at Stellenbosch University.

In his speech, Jansen said research on coloured people mostly painted them in a negative light.

He pointed out that a lot of the research had to do with the intimate relationships, particularly the sex lives, of coloured people; the idea that they're sick and weak; commit crimes; drink a lot; and are pitiful, sad and unable to help themselves. It was especially the latter that featured prominently in such research, Jansen said.

In his view, the continuation of this type of research shows that “the basic idea that you could measure racial differences has never gone away. The tradition of measuring people by race goes back a long way."

Jansen said one of the reasons why this type of research has been conducted for so long could be found in the notion that coloured people posed an existential threat to fragile and poor white people after the Boer War and threatened their “purity of race".

But, according to Jansen, there is another way of looking at it. He added that we have to understand the demeaning of coloured people in research against the backdrop of disgust.

“The function of disgust is to dehumanise an out-group in society. One of the main reasons is to keep people at distance."

Jansen said SU contributed to this dehumanisation through comparison.

“It's not enough to say coloured people are bad, you must say they are bad in relation to someone else. The point of comparison is to warn you that whites are better and coloured people are worse."

As to what SU can do to prevent this from happening in future, Jansen suggested a tightening up of the process of ethical review.

He said even though apologies are to be welcomed in the wake of such research, “they can also be tactical to get you out of a tight corner".

“You have to change the rules of the game by which people play this research. I think we need to address the problem of race essentialism." Racial essentialism is about dividing people into different racial categories and thinking of a race as being associated with certain kinds of behaviours or even certain kinds of health outcomes or certain kinds of intelligence.

Jansen also recommended a core curriculum to teach students about racial essentialism, adding that we can only solve this problem through education.

“We also need workshops for staff so that they can understand the dangers of all of this," Jansen said.

Photo: Prof Jonathan Jansen at the inaugural lecture. Photographer: Anton Jordaan