Flame or Lily? Revisited: A Response and Elaboration of Rhodesian Racial Attitudes

My book Flame or Lily?' was written out of my enthusiasm for the potential insight provided by the white press into white Rhodesian culture, although I was aware that such data do not provide ‘perspectives on the society as a whole, nor the white elite in general’ (p.2). Rather, these editorials provide ‘a restricted definition of Rhodesian culture . . . which may very well reflect the white elite in general’ (p.6). Instead of attempting yet another interpretation of Rhodesian history, I was concerned with presenting the views of white editors over time in order to gain some insight into how these particular Rhodesians defined their situation over time as participants in the society’s major media institution. My focus, then, was on their social definitions of Societal reality rather than my interpretation of these situations for them.

A Zambezia essay review on racial artitudes in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the early part of the 1970's.