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



area in the legislation, even fewer schools (around one in three) have set any clear
goals for change (Schneider-Ross, 2003, p. 11). Schools also appear sceptical about
the value of any race equity work they have completed to date: school respondents are
among the least positive of all groups when questioned about the effects of the
changes that they have made: 65% of schools believe the work has produced positive
benefits, compared with 68% of local government respondents, 74% of those in
criminal justice and policing, 80% of Further & Higher Education, and 89% of
Central Government (Schneider-Ross, 2003, p. 8). Perhaps most worrying of all,
despite the relatively poor response to the other items, educationists are the least
likely to express a need for any further guidance on these issues (Schneider-Ross,
2003, p. 13)
. Put simply, early indications suggest that many schools are inactive on
race equality: at best they are too busy; at worst, they appear to be complacent about
their duties and uninterested in further progress.

Despite the rhetoric of antiracism that now features in a kind of “official” or
rhetorical multiculturalism in many policy pronouncements, therefore, it appears that
schools have a long way to go before they even comply with the basics of existing
race equality legislation. Antiracism has not failed—in most cases, it simply has not
been tried yet. In this new context (following the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry), a radical
perspective is required to cut through the superficial rhetorical changes and address
the more deep-rooted state of race inequality in the education system.

Antiracism as a radical, not reformist, perspective

In his critical work examining the literatures on school effectiveness and school
management, Martin Thrupp (1999) has attacked those he describes as “textual
apologists”. Among these he distinguishes between the “overt apologists”, who set out
explicitly to “sell” existing government policy as best practice, and the “subtle
apologists”, who make
reference to inequality and wider political and economic
structures, but then continue the detail of their work in a largely or entirely
decontextualised and uncritical way (Thrupp, 1999; Thrupp & Wilmott, 2004, pp.
228-229). Louise Morley and Naz Rassool (1999) have also noted the particular
impact that school effectiveness discourse has had upon the place of equity and social
justice as an increasingly marginal (even irrelevant) aspect of education. Several
authors have argued that a similar trend characterizes much of the British Sociology
of Education in recent years. Stephen Ball (1994, 2004), Roger Dale (1992, 2001),
and Rob Moore (1996) have argued that sociologists, often in a battle to demonstrate
their “relevance” within a new managerialist culture in the academy, have too often
come to concern themselves with reforming the system, while taking for granting the
essential shape and character of the system itself. Indeed, as Sara Delamont (2001)
notes, British sociologists of education have often been both exclusionary (especially
with regard to gender and internal colonialism) and excluded (by the mainstream of
their discipline).

The tendency to adopt a perspective that is reformist, rather than radical, is
already visible in work on race inequalities in education. A great deal of research on
race and education in Britain, for example, is concerned with mapping the scale of
inequalities and attempting to generate school-level approaches that will improve the
situation. This work is important but it is not sufficient and, in isolation, may have the
unintended consequence of limiting our vision to what seems possible within the
given constraints that have such a powerful determining effect on how minoritized
groups experience school and ultimately achieve (or not) within the institution.

Let me be explicit here, I am not criticizing research that focuses on the scale of
race inequality (this has proven to be an essential spur to even the most minimal of



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