report now stands as a landmark publication: a brave attempt to move beyond simple
binary oppositions and push antiracists to confront the complexity of life in school,
where issues of social class, sexism and able-ism interact in an unpredictable and
sometimes deadly combination of oppressions.
Sivanandan, one of the single most important writers on race and racism in
Britain, made a simple but vital observation writing in the midst of the Burnage
controversy. He noted that the biased and caricatured attacks in the media served to:
... still the voices of those, like myself, who tried to say that there was no body of
thought called anti-racism, no orthodoxy or dogma, no manual of strategy and tactics, no
demonology. What there was in our society was racism, in every walk of life, and it had
to be combated—in every conceivable way. (Sivanandan, 1988, p.147)
The absence of an antiracist orthodoxy can be a source of strength. Racism takes
many forms and so antiracism must be flexible and constantly adapt. However, the
absence of a dogmatic “manual” of antiracism does not require that we avoid all
attempts to systematize our critical approaches and conceptual starting points.
Unfortunately, in many ways, antiracism has fallen into this trap: our awareness of the
multifaceted and constantly changing nature of racism may have led inadvertently to a
failure properly to interrogate our conceptual history and theoretical frameworks. This
does not mean that antiracism has been atheoretical: there have been several attempts
to take forward antiracist analyses of education in general, and of schooling in
particular, that have sought to engage explicitly with new developments in social
theory (see, for example, Bhavnani, 2001; Bonnett, 2000; Dadzie, 2000; Gillborn,
1995; Mac an Ghaill, 1999; Mirza, 1997 ; Rattansi, 1992). Nevertheless, none of this
work has yet managed to elaborate an appropriately critical yet accessible conceptual
map that can do two simple yet vitally important tasks:
• first, describe what is characteristically antiracist about an “antiracist”
analysis; and
• second, offer a suitable starting point for further explorations in educational
theory, policy and practice.
A way of addressing both these issues may lie in the work of North American
educationists (mostly scholars of colour) who draw inspiration from a branch of legal
studies known as Critical Race Theory. Before examining CRT in greater detail,
however, it is worth considering why such an approach is necessary. After all, the lack
of an elaborate theoretical schema may not necessarily be a bad thing, especially for
those activists and practitioners seeking to bring about change in the real world
beyond the walls of the academy. I am certainly not advocating theory for its own
sake. In the following section, therefore, I consider some of the reasons why
antiracists need CRT (or something like it).
Dangers of the Current Situation
There are numerous problems that arise from the absence of a clear conceptual map of
antiracism. Here I will touch on two: first, the need to counter the use of antiracism as
an empty rhetorical device in educational policy, and second, the need to strengthen
the critical character of scholarship that addresses racialized inequalities in practice.
These are by no means the only relevant issues but they are among the most important
and are sufficient to illustrate some of the dilemmas that could usefully be addressed
through a more systematic approach to antiracist theory and practice.