Distancing the Past - by Chana Teeger

About the Book

Chana Teeger examines how young South Africans confront their country's racist apartheid past in high school history lessons, vividly chronicling how students learn that racism is a thing of the past even as they experience it in their everyday lives.

Book Synopsis

Winner, 2025 Gordon Hirabayashi Human Rights Book Award, Sociology of Human Rights Section, American Sociological Association

Winner, 2025 Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award, Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities, American Sociological Association

Honorable Mention, 2025 Bourdieu Best Book Award, Sociology of Education Section, American Sociological Association

Shortlisted, 2025 Barrington Moore Book Award, Comparative Historical Sociology Section, American Sociological Association

Shortlisted, 2025 Philip Abrams Memorial Prize, British Sociological Association

Shortlisted, 2025 MSA First Book Award, Memory Studies Association

Finalist, 2024 C. Wright Mills Award, Society for the Study of Social Problems

How are histories of racial oppression dealt with in contexts of diversity? Chana Teeger tackles this question by examining how young South Africans, born into democracy, confront their country's racist apartheid past in high school history lessons. Drawing on extensive observational, interview, and textual data, Distancing the Past vividly chronicles how students learn that racism is a thing of the past, even as they experience it in their everyday lives.

Teeger shows how teachers' desire to avoid conflict between students mirrors a national focus on racial reconciliation, leading to the historical distancing of the recent apartheid past. This historical distancing allows schools to present a façade of transformation. Beneath the surface, however, the lessons reproduce unequal power relations at school and legitimize inequality at the societal level. In documenting these processes, Distancing the Past illuminates the subtle reconfiguration of racism in the era of civil liberties. It shows how acknowledging the racist past is not enough. When the past is remembered--but its legacies ignored--racism can continue unabated in the present.

Distancing the Past is a timely account of the remaking of race and inequality in the aftermath of de jure discrimination. It offers vital lessons for other societies grappling with their own racist histories.

Review Quotes

Overall, this is wonderful research. By examining how classrooms function, Teeger presents an important corrective to the assumption that ideologies simply exist, something too often presumed in sociological work on the contemporary politics of race and inequality.-- "Contemporary Sociology"

The book is invaluable--precisely on point in elucidating not only the historical, but also the sociological and psychological anatomy of history teaching.-- "African Studies Review"

This well-written book emphasizes that history is not just a list of events but the foundation of our present.-- "Symbolic Interaction"

An illuminating and empirically thorough analysis of how the way in which histories of past injustice are taught shapes students' perceptions of social and political issues today. The book will be of great interest not only to scholars of education and racial socialization but also to those studying transitional justice and memory politics, as well as those who more broadly study the ways in which politics shape education and vice versa.-- "British Journal of Sociology"

An inviting reading that many - especially educators and young university students in South Africa and elsewhere - should engage with as an invitation to take a moment to reflect on how teaching makes history.-- "Ethnic and Racial Studies"

The book is beautifully written. The prose is deceptively simple and evocative; Teeger has produced a work of astounding clarity of both research design and analysis...Beyond its obvious suitability for the classroom in courses across sociology, history, and education, the book speaks, with ease, to broader publics.-- "Social Forces"

While engaging with scholarly conversations, Distancing the Past is a relatively quick and easy read, accessible to a general audience. This book shows that the work of teachers matters.-- "Harvard Educational Review"

Elegantly composed, concisely written, lively, and provocative, Chana Teeger's theoretically ambitious Distancing the Past examines education, collective memory, racial repression, and their intersection in post-apartheid South Africa. Based on impressive empirical research in two schools, the book provides crucial lessons on "color-blind" teaching for many contexts, including the United States.--Joachim J. Savelsberg, author of Knowing about Genocide: Armenian Suffering and Epistemic Struggles

In this brilliant ethnography Chana Teeger analyzes how young South Africans learn about apartheid and the history of the struggle to overthrow it in their high school classrooms. Expertly researched, beautifully written, and filled with deep insights into the nature of race relations and the teaching of history, this book should be widely read everywhere difficult histories need to be reckoned with.--Mary C. Waters, coauthor of Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age

Revealing how students are taught a color-blind perspective on race in history class just one generation after the end of apartheid, Teeger shows how any recognition of systemic racism is buried as historical artifact and viewed as "grudges" against white South Africans, despite evidence in students' own lives to the contrary. A must-read for anyone interested in the production of race frames in schools. Highly recommended!--Natasha Warikoo, author of Race at the Top: Asian Americans and Whites in Pursuit of the American Dream in Suburban Schools

Chana Teeger deftly shows that the past can be embraced or held at a distance, and there are complex reasons for both approaches. This book is a tour de force of ethnography and memory studies!--Jeffrey K. Olick, author of The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility

Distancing the Past unravels the subtle yet potent roles of schooling in sustaining social inequality. With persuasive clarity, Dr. Teeger exposes critical ways that educators shape students' perceptions by diluting their awareness of apartheid's enduring legacy. This book is a thought-provoking examination of educational socialization that sculpts social divisions for the next generation.--Prudence L. Carter, author of Stubborn Roots: Race, Culture, and Inequality in U.S. and South African Schools

About the Author

Chana Teeger is an associate professor in the Department of Methodology at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a senior research associate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg.