(African Sun Media, 2020) Swartz, Leslie; Bantjes, Jason; Lourens, Heidi; Watermeyer, Brian
The impetus for this book was an article, the first line of the abstract of which
reads: “Colored women in South Africa have an increased risk for low cognitive
functioning.”1 There is no question that the article reproduces racist ideas, and
we are in agreement with the authors of the other chapters in this book. There
is, however, another side to this article that has been less discussed. What does
it mean to describe a group of people as having “increased risk for low cognitive
functioning”? In much that has been written about the article, there has been almost
no discussion of the social context in which the idea of somebody having, or being at
risk of, “low cognitive functioning” is seen, automatically, as a form of insult.