'I was amazed that there are still people like this': first-year students' reflections on experiences of racial discrimination at the University of the Free State

摘要: Using CMM (the co-ordinated management of meaning approach), this article investigates differences between white and black first-year students’ interpretations personal experiences racism, emphasising the degree to which respondents construct these as linked past systems oppression, specifically apartheid. In narratives thus collected, students racialised focus on encounters with restitution, while relate personal, face-to-face confrontations racism in public spaces. themes that emerged from participants’ reflections factors such motives/causes prejudicial treatment, restitution institutionally-sanctioned racism. Black participants link perpetrators’ motives directly apartheid, but concurrently resist interpreting symptoms a pervasive culture among whites. Examining results for correlations Steyn Foster’s (2008) work talk much older journalists, suggests discursive repertoires mark discourses impact efforts both (born or shortly before 1994) negotiate their experiences. As such, findings offer insights into some prevailing beliefs circulate sample under study, are liable affect at social cohesion country where university spaces considered increasingly telling barometers transformation (Soudien 2010).