experiences they have outside of their home areas. Nevertheless, some people who use the term "white privilege" describe it as a worldwide phenomenon, resulting from the history of colonialism by white Western Europeans. One author states that American white men are privileged almost everywhere in the world, even though many countries have never been colonized by Western Europeans. In some accounts, global white privilege is related to American exceptionalism and hegemony. Africa Namibia The apartheid system in Namibia created the legal environment for establishing and maintaining white privilege. The segregation of peoples both preserved racial privileges and hindered unitary nation building. In the period of years during the negotiation of Namibian independence, the country's administration, which was dominated by white Namibians, held control of power. In a 1981 NYT analysis, Joseph Lelyveld reported how measures which would challenge white privilege in the country were disregarded, and how politicians, such as Dirk Mudge, ignoring the policy of racial privilege, faced electoral threats from the black majority. In 1988, two years before the country's independence, Frene Ginwala suggested that there was a general refusal to acknowledge the oppression of black women in the country, by the white women who, according to Ginwala, had enjoyed the white privilege of apartheid. Research conducted by the Journal of Southern African Studies in 2008 has investigated how white privilege is generationally passed on, with particular focus on the descendants of German Namibians, who arrived in the 1950s and 1960s. In 2010, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies further analyzed white privilege in post-colonial Namibia. South Africa White privilege was legally enshrined in South Africa through apartheid. Apartheid was institutionalized in 1948 and lasted formally into the early 1990s. Under apartheid, racial privilege was not only socially meaningful—it became bureaucratically regulated. Laws such as the 1950 Population Registration Act established criteria to officially classify South Africans by race: White, Indian, Colored (mixed), or Black. Many scholars say that 'whiteness' still corresponds to a set of social advantages in South Africa, and conventionally refer to these advantages as "white privilege". The system of white privilege applies both to the way a person is treated by others and to a set of behaviors, affects, and thoughts, which can be learned and reinforced. These elements of "whiteness" establish social status and guarantee advantages for some people, without directly relying on skin color or other aspects of a person's appearance.