Whiteness Attacked, Whiteness Defended: White South African Rhetorics of Race in JULUKA Newsletter

This essay explores the rhetorical strategies employed when whiteness is challenged, questioned, or attacked and when whiteness is defended. It uses as a basis letters to the editor of a North American-based South African newsletter, JULUKA. The analysis suggests that when whiteness is critiqued, several rhetorical manoeuvres emerge-retaliatory rhetorical attacks, defensive rhetorical posturing, and rhetorical reversing/shifting of the critique. In JULUKA, these rhetorical responses, ultimately, limit the newsletter's ability to be, consistently, what it desires-a publication marked by a genuinely diverse exchange of ideas. By extension, one might argue that predominantly white spaces desirous of diversity and dialogue, particularly published venues, require constructive interventions and strategies to achieve such an environment.