‘You are not born being racist,are you?’ Discussing racism with primary aged-children

Ethnic-racial socialisation is broadly described as processes by which both minority and majority children and young people learn about and negotiate racial, ethnic and cultural diversity. This article extends the existing ethnic-racial socialisation literature in three significant ways: (1) it explores ways children make sense of their experiences of racial and ethnic diversity and racism; (2) it considers ways children identify racism and make distinctions between racism and racialisation; and (3) it examines teacher and parent ethnic-racial socialisation messages about race, ethnicity and racism with children. This research is based on classroom observations, semi-structured interviews and focus groups with teachers, parents and students aged 8–12?years attending four Australian metropolitan primary schools. The findings reveal that both teachers and parents tended to discuss racism reactively rather than proactively. The extent to which racism was discussed in classroom settings depended on: teachers’ personal and professional capability; awareness of racism and its perceived relevance based on student and community experiences; and whether they felt supported in the broader school and community context. For parents, key drivers for talking about racism were their children’s experiences and racial issues reported in the media. For both parents and teachers, a key issue in these discussions was determining whether something constituted either racism or racialisation. Strategies on how ethnic-racial socialisation within the school system can be improved are discussed.     

Living with racism in education and society: Derrick Bell’s ethical idealism and political pragmatism

Derrick Bell’s pronouncement and challenge that racism is likely permanent has captured the imagination of Critical Race Theorists in education. Equally important are his ideas about living with the concrete conditions of racism. This article focuses on a tension within Bell’s work. On the one hand, his writings are characterized by a certain ‘racial realism.’ In this perspective, Bell encourages race scholars and activists to abandon notions of one day ending racism. On the other hand, Bell also retains a certain idealism, most evident in his appeal to the ethical dimensions of critical race work. He invites intellectuals to join him in fighting racism even if the prospects for change are sometimes bleak. In his life as well as his work, Bell willingly sacrificed prestige and financial security for his ideals, and seemed puzzled when his friends and colleagues were reluctant to do the same. Bell’s racial realism and ethical idealism comprise two – sometimes warring – moments that permeate his work.     

‘Let’s make a little drum’: limitations and contradictory effects of cultural approaches in Indigenous education

Initiatives to improve low levels of educational attainment amongst Indigenous students in the Canadian Prairies have long emphasized cultural approaches and ignored how racism affects achievement. Taking up the debates offered by critical race theory, and utilizing post-structural theorizing of knowledge and subjectivities, this article provides a discourse analysis of educators’ contradictory deployments of cultural discourses. The analysis highlights the inadequacy of cultural narratives for explaining the inequality experienced by Indigenous students. I show how naming racism in schools is difficult for teachers because cultural integration efforts are taken as evidence that equality is being achieved, and I trace the ways in which this leads to the naturalization of schooling exclusions and unequal subjectivities. Readers are brought to rethink the integration of Indigenous culture in schools as a singular pathway to student success, and the importance of centering race and racism.     

Racism and linguicism: engaging language minority pre-service teachers in counter-storytelling

Abstract

This study examines how language minority pre-service teachers engaged in the discussion of racism and linguicism through counter-storytelling informed by Critical Race Theory (CRT). Counter-stories can act as a medium through which minority students can unpack the power relations embedded in academic learning. This study also explores ways in which having a language minority teacher educator with a similar background facilitated the discussion of race and native speaker status. Drawing on co-teaching experience with a white teacher educator, I suggest that the teaching of race and language be not only about racialized and linguistic identity of instructors, but pedagogical approaches and strategies through counter-stories that actively foster critical reflection on power imbalance inherent in schools.     

Encounters between the ‘oppressed’ and the ‘oppressor’: rethinking Paulo Freire in anti-racist feminist education in Sweden

With the aim of rethinking Paulo Freire’s theory and its practices in race/ethnicity and education, this article uses intersectionality to deepen our understanding of differences among the oppressed and break the opposition between the oppressed and oppressor. Based on an ethnographic study carried out at a feminist adult educational institution in Sweden, the author examines the positionality of migrant students and feminist teachers and how they react to othering in the educational process and in Swedish society. The author also argues for the importance of intersectionality as a way to help both the conscientization of the oppressed and the radical task of the liberatory teachers. It is crucial to untangle gendered and sexualized racism, especially in specific contexts where race and gender intersect to construct a binary between a ‘superior us’ and a ‘barbaric Other.’ Conscientization and intersectionality are particularly useful for probing the complicated processes of othering and combating different forms of oppression and racism in an era of globalization in Western countries.     

Youth sport and community segregation: a study of kids’ participation in Australian rules football and soccer clubs in an Australian community

ABSTRACT

This research addresses the appeal for more empirical-based research on exclusionary practices in local community sport that often go unchallenged within dominant discourses. By examining how organised community sport clubs can uphold systemic segregation of various ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious and socioeconomic groups, this study also draws attention to the importance of research on race, ethnicity, and education in primary school age children; a population group often ignored in both racism studies and studies of sport. Using interview and focus group data from school principals and students (aged 9–12), including students from refugee and asylum seeker migrant backgrounds, collected over 3 years from two schools in the same multicultural community in Melbourne, Australia, this paper challenges the depiction of sport as an uncontested inclusive space in national and educational discourse, and instead demonstrates the continued existence of exclusion through systemically mediated segregation in organised community youth sport.     

西方族性与多元文化主义原理初探

族性理论是民族理论的外延性概念,与以往西方民族理论既有相似之处,又有显著的不同点。批判种族主义和同化主义对族性所强加的片面性,同时以生物学原理去思考它所包含的本质特征,诠释人们对它执着性的自然原理,并将其视为可变的概念来置于多元文化主义原理中,试图揭示其合理性和适用性内涵。进而对多元文化主义原理的普遍性和合理性作为伸展理由,又以实证的办法对它的可能性和限界性较为详述的同时,罗列出多元文化主义制度的各种模式,并把它们视之为解决种族、民族、族性问题的理想方案。     

The Quality of Data on “Race” and “Ethnicity”: Implications for Health Researchers,Policy Makers,and Practitioners

Implicit assumptions about the quality of data on “race” and “ethnicity” underlie the design of much of today’s research on health disparities. Health researchers, policy makers, and practitioners tend to take it for granted that racial/ethnic categories are clearly and consistently defined; that individual race/ethnicity can be easily, validly, and reliably determined; and that categories capture population groups that are so inherently different from each other that any reported racial/ethnic difference can automatically be generalized to the US population as a whole. This article outlines a series of issues that challenge these assumptions about the quality of race/ethnicity data. While race/ethnicity classifications can approximate socially constructed identities for some groups of people under some circumstances, these classifications are inherently too imprecise to allow meaningful statements to be made about underlying biological or genetic differences between groups. Findings of racial/ethnic differences should be reported with appropriate caveats and interpreted with caution. Particular caution should be exercised in hypothesizing genetic differences between groups in the absence of convincing genetic evidence.     

‘Gone,leave, go,move, vanish’: race,public space and (in)visibilities

This chapter is a discussion of the various ways Canadian-born young men of colour (aged 17–26) experience (in)visibilities in the public spaces of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). I begin this chapter by analyzing the different ways ‘visibility’ and ‘invisibility’ have been conceptualized in the scholarly literature, including literatures on homelessness, public space, and race. Invisibilities include ‘invisible homelessness’ as well as material invisibilities in which young men of colour both purposefully and accidentally navigate public spaces in ways that affect whether they are seen or unseen and by whom. This research emphasizes the contingency and indeterminacy of varying (in)visibilities. Despite the various ways they move between visibility and invisibility in public spaces, young men of colour experiencing homelessness maintain an explicit presence in urban street spaces. Understanding their experiences of (in)visibility in urban space helps us understand the geographies of race and racism in the GTA and in North American cities more broadly.     

‘I was forced here’: perceptions of agency in second generation ‘return’ migration to Tonga

Migrants’ adolescent children sometimes live for periods of time in their parents’ homeland; however, little attention has been paid to this in the literature on ‘return’ migration and transnationalism. This paper explores the experiences of overseas born Tongan youth spending time in high schools in Tonga, whether by choice or because they have been taken or sent due to concerns about their behaviour. The importance of these young people’s perceptions of agency in relation to their move is considered as a factor in their responses to their experiences in Tonga. Other factors shaping those experiences include their family situation, the school they attend and the wider attitudes in Tongan society towards these young people. The paper also considers the question of agency in relation to the cultural expectations these overseas born youth must learn to meet, which entail significant restrictions on their behaviour yet are also a means of strengthening their cultural identity and sense of belonging.     

Colorful Reflections: Skin Tone,Reflected Race,and Perceived Discrimination among Blacks,Latinxs, and Whites

Race and Social Problems - How do Black, Latinx, and White people who believe they are mistaken as a member of another racial group perceive the amount of racial discrimination they experience, and...     

Thinking through the flesh: a critical autoethnography of racial body politics in urban teacher education

Although the ubiquitous nature of whiteness has been scrutinized in research on teacher preparation in the United States, scholarship on how this concept impinges upon the field’s overall culture, as well as on pedagogy, is scarce. Thus, I perform a critical autoethnographic study on the relationships among whiteness, pedagogy, and urban teacher education. The inquiry threads Critical Race Theory and feminist theorizing on (Black) bodies, affects, and assemblages, and extends from extant literature illustrating that the dichotomous thinking characteristic of whiteness undergirds the disembodied approaches to teaching and learning prevalent in teacher education programs. This, I discover, leaves one White pre-service teacher ill-equipped to discern and disrupt the materialization of whiteness in an (inter)corporeal encounter with a Black youth in an urban classroom. Additionally, a pedagogy of disembodiment hinders this pre-service teacher from developing robust understandings of how latent within his lived-in, socio-historically situated White body is the potent potential to exacerbate the psychic pain that racism inflicts upon the racially othered children and youth who navigate urban classrooms under the scorching glare of whiteness. These findings underpin my call for urban teacher educators to embrace a pedagogy of embodiment in order to build pre-service teachers’ capacities to teach racially marginalized children and youth in ways that broaden the boundaries of the human beyond the scope of whiteness.     

Unpacking internalized racism: teachers of color striving for racially just classrooms

Within racial inequitable educational conditions, students of color in US schools are susceptible to internalizing racism. If these students go on to be teachers, the consequences can be particularly detrimental if internalized racism influences their teaching. Framed in Critical Race Theory, this article investigates the process pre-service teachers of color took in unpacking their internalized racism as they strive for racially just classrooms. In-depth interviews and focus groups were conducted with black (four) Latina (four) and Asian American (four) women enrolled in a social justice-oriented urban teacher education program in California. Data revealed that participants in this study: (1) had experienced racism and internalized racism in their K-12 education; (2) had done self-work prior to enrolling in their teacher education program to begin the process of unpacking internalized racism; and (3) felt that critical dialogues about internalized racism within teacher preparation was essential to develop pedagogy that challenges racial inequality. This study adds to the field by taking a cross-racial approach to understanding the struggles of teachers of color with internalized racism in their own lives. It additionally outlines an important process many teachers of color go through to develop racially just classrooms.     

The legacy of Derrick Bell and Latino/a education: a critical race testimonio

In this article, we trace Bell’s influence in our lives from graduate students to teacher educators and engaged scholars, and note how we have always read Bell alongside and inseparable from Latino/a Studies and Latina/Chicana feminist thought. We highlight the powerful and fruitful tensions of these interconnections in addressing our curricular struggles and innovations, professional identities and scholarly trajectories. We address Bell’s theory of interest convergence to discuss the tensions and possibilities of personal ‘success’ in the academy by interweaving our testimonios with Critical Race and Latino Critical Race (LatCrit) scholarship in Latino/a education. Latina feminist scholars have re-worked the Latin American tradition of testimonio as a way to link individual stories to a collective story of Latina/o racialization in the US, and to epistemological racism in the academy. Our collective story centers the intersections of race with indigeneity, class, citizenship, language, gender and sexuality. We begin from the earliest influence of Bell’s counterstorytelling method for examining Latino/a students’ racializing experiences in higher education and move through other critical race work in Latino education that both directly and indirectly addresses Bell’s scholarship as these intersect with our intellectual journeys. Finally, we offer a story of the complex legacy of Bell’s anti-subordination and social justice scholarship for intellectual alliances, coalition building, and inter-, multi- and trans-disciplinary engaged scholarship.     

An exploration of the relationships between student racial background and the school sub-contexts of office discipline referrals: a critical race theory analysis

A growing body of research indicates that exclusionary school discipline practices disproportionately impact students of color. Some scholars have theorized that racial disparities likely vary across school sub-contexts, as implicit bias in perceptions of student behavior may be more influential in locations where students and adults have weaker relationships (e.g. bathrooms and hallways, compared to the classroom). Guided by Critical Race Theory, this study used administrative data from a large urban school district (n = 20,166 discipline incidents, 9,170 students, and 185 schools) to consider the relationship between student race and the locations where youth are disciplined. Results indicate that Black, Latino/a, and Multiracial youth were no more likely than White students to have a discipline incident take place outside the classroom. These findings suggest attention is needed to the role of systemic bias and colorblind policies and practices in discipline disparities.     

‘Colour-evasiveness’ and racism without race: the disablement of asylum-seeking children at the edge of fortress Europe

This article explores discriminatory discourses articulated by Italian professionals operating in educational, health and social services for refugees in Rome, in relation to the educational and social inclusion of unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee children. It locates such narratives within the historical ‘concealment and invisibilisation of race and racism’ that have characterised Italy particularly since the end of the Second World War, while showing how they legitimate contemporary processes of disablement and over-representation of forced migrant children in the category of Special Educational Needs. A theoretical framework influenced by Dis/ability Critical Race Studies, Italian postcolonial studies, and Judith Butler’s notions of subjectivation and performative politics is used to discuss how a ‘colour-evasive’ racial ideology has seeped into various institutions in Italian society, and importantly into education policies and practices.     

Under the cloak of professionalism: covert racism in teacher education

This study focuses on manifestations of racism and colonialism in teacher education. I build on the theoretical framing of Critical Race Theory and decolonization in order to expose racist and colonial assumptions at the core of teacher education. I highlight in particular the work of covert racism under the cloak of teachers’ professionalism. I focus on what I call ‘professional microaggressions’: subtle forms of racism and colonialism hidden beneath professional definitions. By interviewing graduates of a well-established Indigenous teacher education program in British Columbia, Canada, I examine the mechanisms that still hinder the success of Indigenous teacher candidates in teacher education and in the school system. The study highlights the resilience, resistance, and strategic planning that Indigenous teachers use to challenge the system while advancing their position within it. Lastly, I suggest ways to support Indigenous teacher candidates in teacher education.     

The vicious circle: effects of race and class on university entrance in Brazil

Brazil has high levels of socio-economic inequality and an inequitable distribution of access to higher education. How much of this inequality is associated with race or class is an important question in light of the current debate over affirmative action and the suitability of race and social targeted policies. There are those who claim that racial disparities in the educational system are a result of students’ social status and not a result of racism, while others believe race is an important factor that superposes the effect of class. This study uses national survey data from Brazil’s Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio (National Secondary Education Exam [ENEM]) to examine the relationship between race and access to higher education of high school students between 2004 and 2008. The results document a vicious circle which connects the schooling of the young with their race, socio-economic status, and university attendance.     

Humour in the Ancient World

Since the ending of the Second World War and the establishment of the United Nations, the international concept of racism, first initialised in the 1930s, has been inscribed in an unacknowledged conceptual double bind. Western political culture has inherited a hegemonic concept of racism that foregrounds those meanings associated with the anti‐fascist critiques of the Jewish Holocaust, while foreclosing subaltern anti‐colonial critiques centred on Western Imperialism. This can be taken to suggest a divergence within a western tradition of critical thought that in one of its guises occurs between the view that ‘‘race’ thinking’ resembles ideological exceptionality and the contrary view that ‘race relations’ approximates colonial conventions. The present essay explores the extent to which these views are constituted conceptually and dialogically in opposition and divergence. This is defined as racism's conceptual double bind. In other words, the international concept of racism is doubly bound into revealing its imprints in nationalism and concealing its anchorage in liberalism; or recognising extremist ideology while denying routine governmentality. The essay, therefore, asks the following: is it im/plausible to deny that there is an inescapable conceptual double bind between these differing conceptualisations of racism that has been ignored by the dominant social science traditions in the West? The idea of a double bind in the concept of racism, reiterated throughout this essay, is not to be confused with the proposition that there are two concepts of racism. On the contrary, during the twentieth‐century conceptualisation of racism, there have rather been two distinct orientations, the hegemonic Eurocentric and the subaltern De/colonial, based on conflicting yet dialogical paradigmatic experiences of the referent of racism.     

British Critical Theorists: The Production of the Conceptual Invisibility of the Irish Diaspora

There is a long historical narrative of the relations between Britain and Ireland in which images of the Irish have been mobilised as major changing representational resources for the making of the British nation, identity and culture. Presently, the Irish diaspora in Britain is a major racialised ethnic group. However, it is absent from contemporary British theorists' representations of race and ethnicity. The paper critically explores the dominant racial regime of representation and this accompanying conceptual absence, as illustrated in anti-racist and new cultural theory texts. There is a need to rethink the histories and geographies of social closure and cultural exclusion as defining elements of the politics of race and nation. The paper argues the need to move beyond the Americanisation of British race-relations - the colour paradigm - to a critical engagement with European explanations, focusing on questions of nation, nationalism and migration. This is not an argument for the inclusion of the Irish in the current model of British race relations, but rather seeks to investigate the denial of difference with reference to Irish ethnic minority status and the specificity of anti-Irish racism. I conclude by looking at the question of self-representation in relation to Irish cultural formation and subjectivity, suggesting that in terms of a traditional racial dichotomy of domination/dominated, the Irish are not either/or but both/and.