David Gillborn

Education policy as an act of white supremacy: whiteness, critical race theory and education reform

The paper presents an empirical analysis of education policy in England that is informed by recent developments in US critical theory. In particular, I draw on ‘whiteness studies’ and the application of critical race theory (CRT). These perspectives offer a new and radical way of conceptualizing the role of racism in education. Although the US literature has paid little or no regard to issues outside North America, I argue that a similar understanding of racism (as a multifaceted, deeply embedded, often taken‐for‐granted aspect of power relations) lies at the heart of recent attempts to understand institutional racism in the UK. Having set out the conceptual terrain in the first half of the paper, I then apply this approach to recent changes in the English education system to reveal the central role accorded the defence (and extension) of race inequity. Finally, the paper touches on the question of racism and intentionality: although race inequity may not be a planned and deliberate goal of education policy neither is it accidental. The patterning of racial advantage and inequity is structured in domination and its continuation represents a form of tacit intentionality on the part of white powerholders and policy‐makers. It is in this sense that education policy is an act of white supremacy. Following others in the CRT tradition, therefore, the paper’s analysis concludes that the most dangerous form of ‘white supremacy’ is not the obvious and extreme fascistic posturing of small neo‐nazi groups, but rather the taken‐for‐granted routine privileging of white interests that goes unremarked in the political mainstream.

Race, Ethnicity and Education : Teaching and Learning in Multi-Ethnic Schools

Series Editors Preface Preface Key to Transcripts Race, Ethnicity and Education: some key concepts and ideas Part I: City Road Teaching and learning in a multi-ethnic comprehensive Discipline and control: the myth of an Afro-Caribbean challenge to authority Resistance and Accommodation: Afro-Caribbean pupils in City Road South Asian Pupils: differentiation and polarization in a multi- ethnic setting Part II: Beyond City Road Issues for Education in a multi-ethnic society Achievement and Opportunity: controversies in the measurement and meaning of educational achievements Race, Ethnicity and the Curriculum: towards anti-racist schooling Language Issues: English as a second language, bidialectism and the mother tongue debate Race Matters: Conclusion Guide to further reading References Index

Critical Race Theory and Education: Racism and anti-racism in educational theory and praxis

What is Critical Race Theory (CRT) and what does it offer educational researchers and practitioners outside the US? This paper addresses these questions by examining the recent history of anti-racist research and policy in the UK. In particular, the paper argues that conventional forms of anti-racism have proven unable to keep pace with the development of increasingly racist and exclusionary education polices that operate beneath a veneer of professed tolerance and diversity. In particular, contemporary anti-racism lacks clear statements of principle and theory that risk reinventing the wheel with each new study; it is increasingly reduced to a meaningless slogan; and it risks appropriation within a reformist “can do” perspective dominated by the de-politicized and managerialist language of school effectiveness and improvement. In contrast, CRT offers a genuinely radical and coherent set of approaches that could revitalize critical research in education across a range of inquiries, not only in self-consciously “multicultural” studies. The paper reviews the developing terrain of CRT in education, identifying its key defining elements and the conceptual tools that characterize the work. CRT in education is a fast-changing and incomplete project but it can no longer be ignored by the academy beyond North America.

Rethinking White Supremacy Who Counts in ‘WhiteWorld’

The article addresses the nature of power relations that sustain and disguise white racial hegemony in contemporary ‘western’ society. Following the insights offered by critical race theory (CRT), white supremacy is conceived as a comprehensive condition whereby the interests and perceptions of white subjects are continually placed centre stage and assumed as ‘normal’. These processes are analysed through two very different episodes. The first example relates to a period of public crisis, a moment where ‘what really matters’ is thrown into relief by a set of exceptional circumstances, in this case, the London bombings of July 2005. The second example relates to the routine and unexceptional workings of national assessment mechanisms in the education system and raises the question whether assessments merely record educational inequity or actually produce it. These apparently divergent cases are linked by the centrality of white interests and the mobilization of structural and cultural forces to defend white power at the expense of the racialized ‘Other’.

Citizenship education as placebo ‘standards’, institutional racism and education policy

Citizenship education is now a required component of the national curriculum that must be taught by all state-funded schools in England. It is constantly highlighted by policy makers as a major innovation that promotes social cohesion in general, and race equality in particular. At the same time, however, the government has continued to pursue a so-called ‘standards’ agenda that emphasizes a hierarchy of schools based on their students’ performance in high stakes tests and promotes increased selection that is known to disadvantage Black students. Consequently, the principal education policy strategies are themselves revealed as potentially racist by the governments own definition. It is in this context that the promotion of citizenship education can be seen as a public policy placebo, that is a pretend treatment for institutional racism that gives the impression of action but is, in fact, without substance or effect.

‘You got a pass, so what more do you want?’: race, class and gender intersections in the educational experiences of the Black middle class

The article discusses the findings of an ESRC funded project (RES-062-23-1880) which used in-depth interviews to explore the educational experiences and strategies of 62 Black Caribbean parents; the biggest qualitative study of education and the Black middle class yet conducted in the UK. The article focuses on the parents’ interactions with their children’s teachers and, in particular, their experience that teachers tend to have systematically lower academic expectations for Black children (alongside a regime of heightened disciplinary scrutiny and criticism) regardless of the students’ social class background. The parents’ accounts highlight the significance of a cumulative process where a series of low level misdemeanours sometimes build into a pattern of seemingly incessant and unfair criticism that can have an enormously damaging impact on their children. Although our data suggest that these processes can involve children of both sexes and of any age, the parents report a particular concern for Black young men, whom they perceive to be especially at risk. Our findings demonstrate the continued significance of race inequality and illuminate the intersectional relationship between race and social class inequalities in education. This is particularly important at a time when English education policy assumes that social class is the overwhelming driver of achievement and where race inequity has virtually disappeared from the policy agenda. Our findings reveal that despite their material and cultural capital, many middle-class Black Caribbean parents find their high expectations and support for education thwarted by racist stereotyping and exclusion.

The white working class, racism and respectability: victims, degenerates and interest-convergence

ABSTRACT This paper argues that race and class inequalities cannot be fully understood in isolation: their intersectional quality is explored through an analysis of how the White working class were portrayed in popular and political discourse during late 2008 (the timing is highly significant). While global capitalism reeled on the edge of financial melt-down, the essential values of neo-liberalism were reasserted as natural, moral and efficient through two apparently contrasting discourses. First, a victim discourse presented White working people, and their children in particular, as suffering educationally because of minoritised racial groups and their advocates. Second a discourse of degeneracy presented an immoral and barbaric underclass as a threat to social and economic order. Applying the ‘interest-convergence principle’, from Critical Race Theory, the discourses amount to a strategic mobilisation of White interests where the ‘White, but not quite’ status of the working class (Allen, 2009) provides a buffer zone at a time of economic and cultural crisis which secures societal White supremacy and provides a further setback to progressive reforms that focus on race, gender and disability equality. The existence of poor Whites, therefore, is not only consistent with a regime of White supremacy – they are actually an essential part of the processes that sustain it.

The colour of numbers: surveys, statistics and deficit‐thinking about race and class

Drawing on the traditions of critical race theory, the paper is presented as a chronicle – a narrative – featuring two invented characters with different histories and expertise. Together they explore the strengths and weaknesses of quantitative approaches to race equality in education. In societies that are structured in racial domination, such as the USA and the UK, quantitative approaches often encode particular assumptions about the nature of social processes and the generation of educational inequality that reflect a generally superficial understanding of racism. Statistical methods can obscure the material reality of racism and the more that statisticians manipulate their data, the more it is likely that majoritarian assumptions will be introduced as part of the fabric of the calculations themselves and the conclusions that are drawn. Focusing on the case of recent national data on the secondary education of minoritized children in England, the paper highlights statisticians’ ability to define what counts as a ‘real’ inequality without public challenge or scrutiny; reflects on the dangers of statistical ‘explanations’ in the realm of public debate and policy outcomes; and questions quantitative assumptions about the intersectional relationships between different forms of oppression, including gender, class and race.

Being strategic, being watchful, being determined: Black middle-class parents and schooling

This paper reports on qualitative data that focus on the educational strategies of middle-class parents of Black Caribbean heritage. Drawing on Bourdieu’s key concepts of habitus, capital and field, our focus is an investigation of the differences that are apparent between respondent parents in their levels of involvement with regard to schools. We conclude that, within a broadly similar paradigm of active involvement with and monitoring of schools, nuanced differences in parental strategising reflect whether academic achievement is given absolute priority within the home. This, in turn, reflects differential family habitus, and differential possession and activation of capitals.

Coincidence or Conspiracy? Whiteness, Policy and the Persistence of the Black/White Achievement Gap.

Adopting an approach shaped by critical race theory (CRT) the paper proposes a radical analysis of the nature of race inequality in the English educational system. Focusing on the relative achievements of White school leavers and their Black (African Caribbean) peers, it is argued that long standing Black/White inequalities have been obscured by a disproportionate focus on students in receipt of free school meals (FSMs). Simultaneously the media increasingly present Whites as race victims, re‐centring the interests of White people in popular discourse, while government announcements create a false image of dramatic improvements in minority achievement through a form of “gap talk” that disguises the deep‐seated and persistent nature of race inequality. The paper concludes by reviewing the key elements that define the current situation and notes that they fit the essential characteristics used in law to identify the operation of a conspiracy. It is argued that conceiving the racism that saturates the system in terms of a conspiracy has a number of advantages, not least the insight it provides into the workings of “Whiteness” as a fundamental driver of social policy.