Critical Race Theory and Education: Racism and antiracism in educational theory and praxis David Gillborn*



Antiracism versus empty policy rhetoric

Perhaps the most pressing reason for developing a more systematic approach to
antiracist work concerns the problem of antiracism being reduced to a meaningless
slogan that is evacuated of all critical content. Until 1999 antiracism was widely
portrayed in Britain as a dangerous and extreme political ideology—usually
associated with the so called “looney left” of socialist councils who took seriously
issues like race and gender equity (see Gillborn, 1995; Richardson, 2002; Troyna
1993). This situation changed, virtually overnight, with the publication of
the Stephen
Lawrence Inquiry Report
(Macpherson, 1999).

Stephen Lawrence was 18 years old when, as he waited for a London bus, he
was attacked and stabbed to death by a group of white youths. The police inquiry
generated no arrests. Stephen’s parents, Doreen and Neville, were treated more like
troublemakers than grieving parents and they became convinced that the case was
being mishandled because, as a black young man, Stephen’s death was a not a
sufficient priority for the investigating officers nor the Metropolitan Police Force
itself. After years of campaigning the Lawrences’ demands for a public inquiry were
finally met by an incoming Labour government in 1997.
The Stephen Lawrence
Inquiry Report
, and the consequent public debates, provided the closest British
parallel yet to the kinds of national furore over racism that were sparked in the US by
the Rodney King affair and the O.J. Simpson trials. The Inquiry Report stated
categorically that institutional racism was a routine and pervasive factor in many of
the key agencies of society, including the police, education and the health service. The
Government, the Conservative opposition and even the Metropolitan Police were
forced to accept the inquiry’s findings of institutional racism, so great was the moral
authority of the Lawrence family’s case, and so damning was the meticulously logged
evidence of police incompetence and racism. Suddenly antiracism came in from the
cold. As Sivanandan noted:

... the unrelenting struggle of the Lawrences has put institutional racism back on the
agenda . they changed the whole discourse on race relations and made the government
and the media and the people of this country acknowledge that there is a deep, ingrained,
systematic racism in the institutions and structures of this society. (Sivanandan, 2000, p.
7)

Predictably, the charge of institutional racism was met with horror and outrage by
right wing commentators keen to defend the traditional “tolerance” of the British
people and to fight the forces of “political correctness” (see Gillborn 2002 for an
account of these debates). In addition to this backlash, however, a somewhat more
subtle development can also be identified, namely, antiracism has been tacitly
redefined so that it can mean almost anything:
if you are against racism (and who
isn’t?) then you are an antiracist. Yes?
No. This approach reverts to a characteristic
white assumption that racism is simple and crude and obvious. The whole thrust of the
Lawrence Inquiry’s analysis of
institutional racism (as being frequently unintended
and hidden) has been lost amid a self-congratulatory glow of liberal righteousness.
Most important of all, this tendency seems to support the illusion that something
meaningful has actually changed in the way that public services were delivered. The
language has changed but not the reality of race inequality. Speaking at a central
London conference attended by around 2000 Black parents and educationists, for
example, the then Under-Secretary of State with responsibility for “School Standards”
rejoiced in the fact that:



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