Reappraising Ethnicity in the Fight against Critical Race Theory and Affirmative Action
26 July 2025
By Dr Adi Schlebusch
Over the past few months, South Africa’s laws that unjustly discriminate against white people on the basis of race, have constantly been in the spotlight, especially thanks to the fact that President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have succeeded in placing it on the international agenda.Various organizations, among others the Solidarity Movement, have seized this opportunity to continue their years-long struggle against state abuses by means of affirmative action legislation and other similar discriminatory actions aimed at Afrikaners and other whites in South Africa, with renewed zeal. To be freed from the “burden of race” is one of the most well-known slogans often employed in campaigns to promote the idea that Afrikaners, as South Africans, ought to be liberated from a race-obsessed government’s race laws. Similarly, in America Critical Race Theory (CRT) is often criticized for its foundational assumption that race is a central, immutable category shaping social dynamics, which is then countered by the argument that race is really just a socially constructed.
The South African government's affirmative action or "Black Economic Empowerment" laws in question are undoubtedly tyrannical in nature, especially in light of the fact that they unjustly discriminate against peoples who have no other country of their own where they could claim full civil rights, but also simply because they are in conflict with the most basic task of the government, namely to maintain law and order so that people are granted the necessary space and freedom to live out their talents to the benefit of all.This of course naturally implies equality before the law, but does not imply that every distinction ought to be abolished, because to create such a space it would be necessary that the government recognizes the existence of certain natural societal bonds, rather than simply reducing all people to atomistic individuals who together form a monistic whole.
The British philosopher Roger Scruton (1944–2020) explains that since civil society is not a product of the government, part of the government’s task includes recognizing those bonds from which civil society is composed (such as the family, kin, community, neighborhood, city, church, school, and club) and granting these bonds the necessary freedom and space to flourish in an organic manner. Scruton points out, however, that such organic development can only occur within a framework where ethnicity takes its rightful place. He uses the example of Britain itself:
[T]he idea of a British national identity makes sense only because of the other and more deeply rooted identities that it subsumes. The Scots continue to describe themselves as Scots; the Irish as Irish—or, if they reject the Republic, as ‘Unionists’, meaning adherents to the strange legal entity described in their passports. The Welsh, who provided us with our most determinedly English kings, the Tudors, are still, in their own eyes, Welsh. The English remain English, and in their hearts it is England that secures their loyalty; not Scotland, Ireland or Wales. Only one group of Her Majesty’s subjects sees itself as British, but not English, Scottish, Irish or Welsh—namely, those immigrants from the former Empire who have adopted British nationality while retaining ethnic ... loyalties forged far away and years before.1
Scruton thus points to the importance of recognizing people’s ethnic identity in order to achieve peaceful coexistence and socio-political harmony on a federal basis. The British identity can only exist when the constituent parts of that identity, also in terms of their unique ethnic character, are recognized and valued for what they truly are. In contrast to the modernist theory according to which nationhood or peoplehood is understood in terms of a commitment to a common idea or ideal, the Afrikaans philosopher H.G. Stoker (1899–1993) writes that “the foundational function of a people is its biotic (its lineage relationship, its blood bond),”2 that is to say, a people exhibits the characteristics of an extended family rather than those of an extended club, company, or church.
The recognition of the ethno-racial nature and character of a people is essential, not only for that people’s survival as such, but, as Scruton points out by way of the example of Great Britain, also for that people’s interaction with other peoples. In the South African context, former president Jacob Zuma’s recognition of the Afrikaner as a “white tribe in a black continent,” for example, was a noteworthy affirmation of a reality that can ultimately only be denied at the expense of all. The fact that the Afrikaner is a people of European descent gives its ethnic identity, on so many levels, a certain uniqueness within the context of Southern Africa that should not be relinquished, even in the name of a (neo-)conservative “non-racialism” trying to oppose affirmative action or critical race theory.
The fact that justice demands that everyone ought to have equal opportunities in terms of living out their calling and talents, and that race laws in South Africa currently stand in the way of this, should also not be used to declare every reference to ethnic differences, even when racial differences or the different people-families are at issue, taboo. It is simply the case that Afrikaners, despite the geographical distance, still share a cultural and historical bond with the Dutch and Flemings as brother peoples, similar to the one that binds the various British peoples together into a common identity. Afrikaners, as the name indicates, are indeed a Southern African people, but also a Dutch people with European roots.
The Afrikaner’s unique ethnic identity is in practice also a determining factor for interaction with other communities and peoples in Southern Africa. It is true that conversations around ethnicity (especially when a biotic concept like race is at issue) are often emotionally charged. My plea, however, is precisely that we liberate the concept of ethnicity from this and reassess it with renewed sobriety as something that can be of inestimable value for the harmonious coexistence of peoples with all their distinct backgrounds not only in Southern Africa but all over the world.
For this, it is necessary that certain presuppositions and prevailing narratives around this topic be transcended, so that we can avoid falling into the gnostic trap of denying realities simply because they can be abused. As the Dutch Reformed philosopher Bart-Jan Spruyt recently wrote in an opinion piece in the Nederlands Dagblad, when it comes to identity definition, “I still simply use the word ‘white,’”3 without any negative connotations or antagonism towards other peoples and their collective identities.
The recognition of nations’ unique ethnic characteristics, as in the case of the recognition of the Afrikaner by leaders such as Jacob Zuma and more recently also on the international stage by Donald Trump, especially in an era where liberal multiculturalism is clearly failing all across the globe, is something that ought to be embraced as of essential importance for ongoing conversations around this important topic.4
1. Scruton, R. 2004. England and the Need for Nations. Civitas: London, p. 20-21.
2. Stoker, HG. 1954. “Afrikaanse volkswording en Suid-Afrikaanse nasievorming. Koers 21(6): 243.
3. https://www.nd.nl/opinie/columns/956762/het-n-woord#/reader/2020-02-28?page=13 
4. This article is an adapted version of one originally published on my Afrikaans substack.