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This paper argues that in order to understand the anti-Apartheid campaign in Portland, Oregon it must be located within the particular socio-historical context of race and racism in the city and state. Thus, Black people living in Portland had good reason to compare the Apartheid system in South Africa to their own experience. Therefore, the confluence of national and local issues that move the local anti-Apartheid campaign forward is examined; the paper documents the rise and development of critical organizations in the anti-Apartheid campaign in Portland; the paper focus on the closure of the Honorary South Africa Consulate in downtown Portland and the passing of South Africa divestment legislation at the state level which paralleled actions of the national movement. This study is based on an analysis of historical documents, and interviews with four prominent community activists and politicians regarding their participation. In conclusion, it is argued that this research is important because there is little scholarship of the anti-Apartheid movement in the Northwest region of the U.S., and even less on the role Black people in the state of Oregon played in the anti-apartheid movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a revised version of a paper prepared for the biennial conference of the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration and Management held in Durbin, South Africa - hence the initial choice of both American and South African contexts. The purpose of this paper is to argue that, although not a panacea, transformative leadership - with its emphasis on inequity, power and promise, and its reliance on dialogue and the explicit naming of difficult issues such as racism - holds considerable promise for ensuring that education is an important agent for societal change. The paper starts with the premise that although legal barriers to discrimination may have been overcome in both the United States and South Africa, the reality for many racialised individuals in both countries is quite different. The on going presence of disparity in educational achievement between white, middle-class students and their minoritised peers attests not only to inequitable access, but also to continued experiences of marginalisation, prejudice, discrimination and racism that lead inevitably to disparities in outcomes and in opportunities beyond school. Drawing on studies of schooling in both countries and of school leaders striving to use social justice to promote equity, this paper will demonstrate the need for educators to acknowledge issues of power and privilege, to create spaces in which difficult conversations may occur, and to become expert in bringing together, listening to and truly hearing the inevitably conflicting perspectives that arise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the politics of color-blindness in comparative perspective as its meaning has changed over the past half-century. Drawing on the cases of South Africa and the United States, I focus in particular on the socio-political and psychological functions that color-blind ideology performs for whites in defending white advantage in the present context. Although in the past color-blindness served as an effective rallying cry for the abolition of Jim Crow and the demise of apartheid, the very same principle serves in the post-segregation context to stall transformation of the racial order in the direction of greater equality. It is an irony that the principle of color-blindness that so effectively mobilized opposition to the institutionally racist order in both national contexts mutates at the very moment of apparent victory into one that radically limits the anti-racist imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]