John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

Convergences, 3: South Africa's Poor Whites & the Color of Poverty

I've been thinking about two remarkably similar photos, one made by Contance Stuart Larrabee, in 1947 or '48, and the other by Finbarr O'Reilly, in 2010.  (Scroll down to see them.)  They've got me wondering:  What is the color of poverty?

Ask Americans, and they'll probably tell you that poverty is black.  For many Americans -- perhaps most -- blackness and poverty seem to go hand in hand.  It's an old story.  Nearly 15 years ago, Martin Gilens was already showing how "the black urban poor have come to dominate public images of poverty."  The association of blackness with poverty is even stronger, of course, when it comes to Africa.

 

Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters:  A man receives a monthly supply of food aid donated to residents of a squatter camp for poor white South Africans, at Coronation Park, in Krugersdorp, on March 6 2010.  (Click directly on any of these photos to see larger versions.)

Can poverty be white?  We associate whiteness with many things, but poverty generally isn't one of them -- wealth is.  When confronted with the existence of impoverished whites, Americans tend to see them as anomalies -- among whites, who aren't supposed to be poor, and among the poor, who are supposed to be black.  (For good measure, we label them "trailer trash" or "hillbillys" and blame them for the own misery.)  Once again, the association of whiteness with wealth is even more powerful when we think about Africa, especially South Africa.

The ways in which we connect color to poverty and wealth help to explain why a recent photo essay by Finbarr O'Reilly about poor whites in South Africa has gotten so much attention.  The subject clearly fascinates us.  In different forms, it's shown up on the Reuter's new agency's photographers' blog, the New York Time's Lens Blog, and the Boston Globe's popular Big Picture photo blog.  I've referred to it here and here.  The photo above from O'Reilly's essay.  Without reading the caption, it's hard to know what's going on.  Blacks helping whites?  That can't be right.

But, in fact, that's exactly what's happening.  It's happened before, and Constance Stuart Larrabee was there to capture the moment.

 

Constance Stuart Larrabee:  Johannesburg (South Africa) social welfare, poor relief, 1947-48.  (Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution.)

What accounts for our fascination with South Africa's poor whites?  Many people who commented on the Lens Blog and the Big Picture expressed surprise.  They hadn't known -- couldn't have imagined -- that there are poor whites in South Africa, given the country's history of colonialism and white supremacy.  The surprise in these two photos isn't simply about white poverty, however.  It's also about black empowerment -- in 2010, the power of blacks, in a democratic South Africa, to succor whites; in 1947-48, the vastly more limited power of a black worker.

More importantly, I think, O'Reilly's and Larrabee's photos upset our notions about the nature of the world, about hierarchies, and about the roles people of different races are destined to play.

In truth, there have always been poor whites, even in South Africa.  During the more than three centuries of colonialism and apartheid, South African governments and white public opinion viewed poor whites as anomalies, just as in the United States.  Their very existence threatened the ideological structure of white supremacy.  They were a political issue -- poor whites had the vote.  Within the world of white politics, that made them either a problem to be solved or a constituency to be courted.  When Larrabee made the photo above, she was documenting the efforts of governmental agencies to aid impoverished whites, during the run-up to an election in which the opposition party was furiously courting poor white voters.

 

Constance Stuart Larrabee:  Johannesburg (South Africa) social welfare, food line, 1947-48.  (Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution.)

Given the stark facts of life in South Africa, we might like to believe that this second Larrabee photo is truer than the first.  It certainly reinforces conventional notions of black-white hierarchies.  At the same time, it reflects the reality that the vast majority of poor South Africans have been black or brown.  Even today, 60% of Africans and 38% of Coloureds live below the poverty line.  But if we leave it like that, we're dealing with stereotypes.  We're ignoring not only the social significance of poor whites, but also the historical importance of an older black middle class, to which so many early African political activists belonged (including the founders of the African National Congress), as well as the rapid growth of a self-confident and assertive black middle class, in the new democratic South Africa.

Poverty and wealth have no true color -- as O'Reilly's and Larrabee's photos remind us -- not in South Africa and not in the United States.

* * *

I've avoided the temptation to say that, in the United States, poverty is white.  It's true, however, that there are twice as many poor whites as there are poor blacks.  While a larger percentage of the African-American population lives in poverty, the sheer number of poor whites -- 24.1 million -- overwhelms the number of poor blacks -- 12.1 million.  (Interestingly, there are also more poor Hispanics than there are poor blacks -- 14.5 million.)

Nevertheless, Americans insist on associating poverty with blackness.  According to the influential study by Gilens that I mentioned above, the fact that blacks "dominate public images of poverty" is the result of "network TV news and weekly news magazines [that] portray the poor as substantially more black than is real the case."  This needs to change, and photography can play a role.  There are plenty of American Finbarr O'Reillys; maybe I'll write about them someday.  I've already written about our own Constance Stuart Larrabees.  They worked for the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s and '40s.  You can read about them, here.

Convergences, 2: Finbarr O'Reilly, Constance Stuart Larrabee, & South Africa's Poor Whites

Africa's exotic species -- giraffes, rhinoceros, mountain gorillas -- have always fascinated outsiders.  And none has been more exotic and unexpected, more scandalous and titillating than South Africa's poor whites.  After all, wasn't apartheid -- South Africa's particularly vicious system of white supremacy and black subjugation -- supposed to ensure that no white could possibly be poor?

On the other hand, the existence of poor whites has never surprised South Africans.  It has, however, often worried and annoyed them.

These two reactions to white poverty -- fascination and worry -- came together for me recently in a wonderfully unexpected way.  A few months ago, I wrote a about a fine photo essay by Reuters photographer Finbarr O'Reilly about Coronations Park, a poor white community near Johannesburg.  Here's one of O'Reilly's photos -- poor white boys playing with a old tire.

Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters: Children play on a tire being used to block the entrance to a squatter camp for poor white South Africans at Coronation Park in Krugersdorp, March 6, 2010.  (Click directly on either of these photos to see larger versions.)

One of the points that I made in my comments about O'Reilly's work was that poor whites have been a favorite subject for photographers for a very long time.  O'Reilly responded to my comments, and that led to a friendly exchange of emails.  In one of them, he mentioned South African photographer Constance Stuart Larrabee, who had done a series on poor whites in the late 1940s.

I'd known about Larrabee, but had never studied her work.  What O'Reilly had to say about her intrigued me, and got me digging around in her online archive at the Smithsonian Institution.  And what did I find?  A photo of a poor white boy playing with an old tire.

Constance Stuart Larrabee.  Children in Johannesburg (South Africa) slum streets.  1947-48.

According to the Smithsonian, Larrabee photo's was part of a series about a social welfare system that "had been established for poor white South Africans in the Johannesburg area after the end of the Second World War."  It reflects official concern about poor whites -- the sense that they urgently needed to be lifted out of poverty, not so much for their own sake, but because their very existence poked holes in the edifice of white supremacy.  (Larrabee's photos have gotten under my skin.  I'm currently writing an article about the social welfare series.)

This set of convergences really isn't surprising.  Both O'Reilly and Larrabee were doing the same thing -- documenting the lives of poor whites.   (White supremacy is dead in South Africa -- politically, at least, but poor whites continue to fascinate.  They remain anomalous in a country where poverty is overwhelmingly black.)  And, in the age of Google, it wasn't hard for O'Reilly to discover that someone was writing about him.  We know, as well, that poor children will make toys out of whatever is at hand, and old tires are rarely in short supply.

So, the convergence is no surprise, but it's still wonderful to see.  The photos are beautifully evocative, and they remind us that what seems new is often very old.

PS, 20 November 2010:  Larrabee was one of the first photographers to examine the lives of South Africa's poor whites.  (She was almost certainly the first professional photographer to do so.)  I talk about her pioneering work, here.

* * *

I should have mentioned this in my earlier posts...  Anyone interested in the history of poor whites in South Africa might want to look at White But Poor:  Essays on the History of Poor Whites in Southern Africa, 1880-1940, edited by Robert Morrell and published in 1992 by the University of South Africa.

Poor Whites in South Africa: Deja Vu (All Over Again), Part 2

Here we go again...

The New York Times is the latest foreign media outlet to discover, as if for the first time, that there are (shockingly!) poor whites in South Africa.  The paper's Lens Blog has just posted an interview with Reuters photographer Finbarr O’Reilly (see below) and a gallery of his photos from the Coronation Park, home to many impoverished white families.  O'Reilly's comments are fascinating, but he and the Times do leave the impression that poor whites are a recent phenomenon.  In a comment that he made about an earlier post I wrote about this subject, O'Reilly correctly points out that he did say, in the Times interview, that poor whites are not new, "but the numbers seem to be more apparent than they were in the past.”

Agreed (as long as we stipulate that we're talking about the most recent past).  Poor whites are indeed nothing new.  But their's is still a compelling story.

 
   Photo: Finbarr O'Reilly, Reuters.

As I wrote several months ago... 

Every few years, the media rediscovers South Africa's most exotic species -- "poor whites."

White people, after all, aren't supposed to be poor, especially not in Africa.  The white South Africans of our imagination are privileged -- each and every one of them -- and spend most of their time braaing boerewors by the pool, while their maids do the dusting and gardeners trim the hedges.  When we discover that's not always true, it comes as a real surprise.  It shouldn't...

You can read the rest of the story (poor whites have a heck of a history) and see photos from a much earlier period, here.

Rediscovering Poor Whites in South Africa: Deja Vu (All Over Again)

Update, 23 October 2010:  I've just posted a longer look at the poor white phenomenon in South Africa, and, especially, at the way that they've been photographed.  You can read "Poor Whites and Photography in South Africa, the Backstory," here.

Update, 25 June 2010:  The New York Times is the latest media outlet to discover, as if for the first time, that there are (shockingly!) poor whites in South Africa.  The paper's Lens Blog has just posted an interview with Reuters photographer Finbarr O’Reilly (see below) and a gallery of his photos from the Coronation Park, home to many impoverished white families.  O'Reilly's comments are interesting, but he and the Times do leave the impression that poor whites are a recent phenomenon.  In a comment that he just made about this entry, O'Reilly correctly points out that he did say, in the Times interview, that poor whites are not new, "but the numbers seem to be more apparent than they were in the past.”

We agree.  Poor South African whites are nothing new.  It's a long and fascinating story.  Read on.

Update, 5 April 2010:  The murder, last weekend, of Eugene Terre'Blanche, long-time leader of South Africa's Afrikaner Weerstandbewging [AWB=Afrikaner Resistance Movement], a small but violent neo-Nazi group, made headlines all over the world.  It's also increased interest in the country's "poor whites."

It's worth making a couple of points about the AWB.

First, most of its members are not "poor whites."  They tend to be lower middle class and solidly working class.  Terre'Blanche himself was a relatively prosperous commercial farmer.  (His murder was almost certainly not politically motivated.  Police have arrested two suspects, both of whom are African workers on his farm, and say that killing came after Terre'Blanche and the men argued over unpaid wages.)

Second, the AWB was formed in the mid-1980s, a decade before majority rule came to South Africa, in response to the white minority government's tepid moves toward reform.  Few blacks benefited from the reforms, but they were enough to frighten unskilled and semi-skilled white workers and farmers who relied on racial legislation for job security or control over their worker force.  Some of these whites found strength and comfort in Terre'Blanche's mesmerizing rhetoric.

At its height, in the late 1980s, and early 1990s, the AWB claimed to have 15,000 members, a number which is probably much too high.  The group's reputation for drunkenness and ill-discipline limited its appeal.

While the AWB was responsible for several murders and bombings, it had little impact on the movement toward democracy in South Africa.

* * *

Every few years, the media rediscovers South Africa's most exotic species -- "poor whites."

White people, after all, aren't supposed to be poor, especially not in Africa.  The white South Africans of our imagination are privileged -- each and every one of them -- and spend most of their time braaing boerewors by the pool, while their maids do the dusting and gardeners trim the hedges.  When we discover that's not always true, it comes as a real surprise.  It shouldn't -- we've learned this lesson more than once -- but, in the western imagination, whiteness is so firmly associated with affluence (and blackness with poverty) that we have to relearn it time and again.

Children walk through a squatter camp for poor white South Africans at Coronation Park in Krugersdorp, March 6, 2010.  REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly

Last week, it was Reuter's turn to explore the lives and habitat the South African "poor white."  The catalyst was a visit by President Jacob Zuma to a whites-only squatter camp, during which he pledged to ensure that its residents received their fair share of government services.  Zuma first visited the camp in 2008, during his campaign for office, and said, at the time, that he was "shocked and surprised" by what he saw.  (For him, too, whiteness and poverty were an unlikely combination.)

 

 
 
A family smokes together during a quiet moment at a squatter camp for poor white South Africans at Coronation Park in Krugersdorp, March 13, 2010.  REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly

Reuter's photographer Finbarr O'Reilly made these photos in Coronation Park, a former holiday caravan [trailer] park west of Johannesburg, that has become a refuge for impoverished whites.  (This is not the site of Zuma's visits.)

In a post on Reuter's excellent photographers' blog, "Hardship Deepens for South Africa's Poor Whites," O'Reilly writes that, while "most white South Africans still enjoy lives of privilege and relative wealth, the number of poor whites has risen steadily over the past 15 years."  He explains this increase by mentioning both "affirmative action laws that promote employment for blacks" and "the fallout from the global financial crisis."

That's certainly true, as far as it goes, but it's worth pointing out that poor whites, in South Africa, are nothing new.  They were part of the social landscape long before affirmative action and the recent economic meltdown.  White society in South Africa has always been stratified by class, no matter how strenuously those who promoted white supremacy and those who denounced it insisted otherwise.

 

Friends talk through the window of a one-room hut at a squatter camp for poor white South Africans at Coronation Park in Krugersdorp, March 6, 2010.  REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly

During the first two centuries of colonialism in southern Africa, the poor white settlers who attracted the most notice were the trekboers, semi-nomadic farmers who raised cattle and other livestock for the market.  To many wealthier whites and European travelers, they were dirty, lazy, and racially degenerate, having adopted a mode of living that was indistinguishable from that of blacks.  (It's a view that's had a very long shelf life, in both print and images.)

By the beginning of the twentieth century, poor whites were both an embarrassment and a threat, at least as far as their social superiors were concerned.  The expansion of commercial farming in rapidly industrializing South Africa drove many whites off the land and into the cities, where they found work (or failed to find it) in mines, shops, and factories.  Elites feared that they would combine with black workers to threaten capitalist development.  A good deal of subsequent legislation was designed to make sure that would never happen, by offering whites access to jobs, education, housing, and political rights that were denied to blacks.

 

Family at lunch, 1962.  David Goldblatt.

The policies of the segregationist governments, before World War II, and the apartheid government, after it, reduced white poverty, but didn't end it.  Anomalies within a system of white supremacy, poor whites have been endlessly worried over, written about, and photographed, with various mixtures of curiosity, compassion, contempt, and concern.

No photographer has depicted poor white South Africans with more clarity and insight than David Goldblatt.  His 1975 book, Some Afrikaners Photographed, while not specifically about poor whites, is nevertheless full of them.  The photos, made during the decade of the '60s, are tough, where they need to be, and lyrical, where it suits.  They refuse to condescend, and they rarely judge.  When they celebrate, it's through moments of ordinary grace, as in the photo below.  He understood that it was perfectly possible to be both a beneficiary of racial injustice and the victim of class exploitation.

 

Ella, daughter of Freek and Martjie Marais, in the children's bedroom, Gamkaskloof, Cape Province December, 1967.  David Goldblatt.

By embracing complexity and respecting his subjects, Goldblatt found ways to get around and beyond conventional image-making.

If there's a man-bites-dog quality to most reporting about poor whites -- and there is -- the same can be said about reporting on rich blacks, especially, again, in Africa.  Rich blacks fascinate us (western viewers and western media) for the same reason that "poor whites" do.  They contradict our expectations of the way the world is "supposed" to be.

 

 

Durban, South Africa.  July races, 2005.  Martin Parr/Magnum.

Slate, the online magazine, recently published this photo from Martin Parr's series Luxury.  In introducing the series, the magazine said that "Traditionally, the portrayal of poverty has been the domain of the 'concerned' photographer, but Martin Parr has photographed wealth in the same spirit, believing that when people of the emerging upper-middle classes around the world demand and receive the luxury goods that are taken for granted in the West, the pressure on the world’s resources will be considerable."

It's not entirely clear what Slate's editors mean by "in the same spirit."  The spirit of exoticism and wonder with which poverty, particularly African poverty, has been approached?  A spirit that sees "emerging upper-middle classes" as being as threatening as the poor, but in a different way (threatening to deprive us of the resources we need to sustain the western way of life)?  Who knows?  It's a statement that's illuminating partly because of its incoherence.

None of this, of course, is what Parr, elusive trickster and satirist that he is, would have had in mind.  But, like all photographers, he has little control over how people interpret his work.

 

 

Charles Kapié with his partner in the street close to their office.  At 30 years old he has created and runs a consulting firm in agronomy and a cyber café.  He used to be a civil servant and he invested his "rappel" (first year of salary paid at once) in his activity and resigned after one year.  He was paid $400/month. He situate himself in the middle of the Middle Classes.   Joan Bardeletti. 

Like Goldblatt's photos of impoverished whites, Joan Bardeletti's series Middle Classes in Africa is an antidote to the sort of nonsense that I've been talking about.  Bardeletti says that he wants to present "a new but realistic vision of Africa to the public of developed countries."  He hopes that his photos will lead people to question their preconceived ideas about Africa, "rather than inspire... pity about the continent."

This is some of the most original and challenging photography to come out of Africa in a very long time.  You can see more of it, here.