Blog Post 4- South Africa Post Apartheid and How this Relates to the US

Most of South Africa's problems were blamed on the Apartheid system, and introducing a new democratic government with Nelson Mandela as the president would help take care of the racial conflict that plagued South Africa. The results were not as great as everyone hoped they would be. South Africa had experienced a spike in population post apartheid, but the income inequality grew instead of shrank. The black population had a very slight increase in income, but the white population had a more significant increase in income. The asian population had a huge spike after Mandela stepped down as president, and the mixed race only slightly increased its wage. Blacks made up 79.2% of the country’s 51.8 million people, according to the 2011 census, up from 77.4% in 1996; whites were 8.9% of the population, down from 11% in 1996. There were more black leaders and black individuals in positions of power post-Apartheid, but the racial socioeconomic gap was still as big as ever. This then made me question what hope the USA has in decreasing the socioeconomic gap between races, as we have never even experienced apartheid. After slavery was abolished everything seemed well, and we as a country choose to only briefly speak about slavery in our history classes, but the long term effects of slavery are still in effect. Just like the articles in class that we read about how the war on drugs is like the new Jim Crowe, we are still experiencing racism that is cleverly covered up by our government.