ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that many security strategies of middle class whites are based on attempts to circumvent encounters with poor blacks. It shows that the preconceived categories of whiteness, blackness, poverty and wealth are generally not challenged, but further reinforced when encounters across lines of race and class do occur. This is because people repeatedly fall back on racialised and classed stereotypes about the 'suspicious body'. By demonstrating the negative impact of encounters between fearful and fearsome bodies in Cape Town, the chapter focuses on work that has troubled the assumption that encounters with difference automatically translate into respect and tolerance. It concentrates on photo-elicitation interviews with 78 middle class whites in two privileged neighbourhoods of Cape Town. The chapter concludes that the feeling of safety from bodily harm is a conditio sine qua non for encounters to have positive effects.
