This assertion is just plain wrong and obviously so.
One of the core defining features of CRT is the central role that it accords racism: I
note this in the 2005 paper that Cole quotes (Gillborn 2005: 492) and it is the first
defining element of CRT that I discuss in my book (Gillborn 2008: 27). The word
‘racism’ appears around 270 times in that book, clearly denoting that far from being a
concept that I want to erase, it occupies a central role in my work.
Put simply, the idea that I, or any other critical race theorist, want to ‘replace the
concept of racism’ is absurd.
The fact that Professor Cole can make such a statement betrays a failure to engage
seriously with the real work of critical race scholars.[5] But what of the quotation
which allows Cole, apparently using my words, to say that ‘The concept of “racism”
thus “risks obscuring a far more comprehensive and subtle form of race politics” (p.
491)’. In fact, the words he quotes are aimed, not at the concept of racism, but
specifically at the limited commonsense understanding of ‘White Supremacy’ which
equates the term with obviously extremist far right groups (such as the British
National Party and the Ku Klux Klan) and eugenic pseudo-science such as Herrnstein
& Murray’s (1994) The Bell Curve. The words in question come from a section of the
paper called ‘Seeing supremacy’. It is instructive to quote the section at some length:
Critical race theory promotes a different perspective on white supremacy than
the limited and extreme understandings usually denoted by the term in
everyday language. ‘White supremacy’ is a term usually reserved for
individuals, organizations and/or philosophies that are overtly and self-
consciously racist in the most crude and obvious way (...) Such extreme and
obviously racist positions are highly dangerous but they are by no means the
whole story. Indeed, there is a danger that their influence on debate risks
obscuring a far more comprehensive and subtle form of race politics—one that
actually exerts a more powerful influence. (Gillborn 2005: 490-491:
underlined text denotes the sections quoted by Cole).
To equate this critique of mainstream notions of White Supremacy with a critique of
‘the concept of “racism”’ requires an act of bad faith or sloppy scholarship. To
selectively lift words and phrases, and then substitute a different object for the
sentence, is not worthy of the serious antiracist intent that I genuinely believe
Professor Cole brings to his work. I trust that any future comradely engagements with
CRT will do greater justice to the object of criticism.
In conclusion, I hope that this brief reply places Professor Cole’s article in a wider
context that readers will find both helpful and constructive.
References
Allen, R.L. (2006) The Race Problem in the Critical Pedagogy Community, in Cёsar
Augusto Rossatto, Ricky Lee Allen & Marc Pruyn (eds) Reinventing Critical