Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

A Companion to Research in Education pp 247–257Cite as

Dialectics of Race Criticality: Studies in Racial Stratification and Education

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

Abstract

This chapter delineates the criteria for a critical study of race in education. In particular, it poses the central problem of whiteness in education within a general critical study of race. In doing this, the chapter does not engage race paradigmatically. It is an affirmation of criticality that does not locate it in any particular school of thought and subject to its assumptions but instead recruits multiple positions on the matter of race. It is guided by the spirit and claim that race in education is a complex issue that requires a critical framework that testifies to this very complexity. It is an attempt to build a project around race criticality that is less possessive and more dialogic. First, it introduces the main frameworks for a critical study of race, mainly Critical Race Theory, Critical Theory of Race, and Race Critical Theory. Second, it frames race work as the dialectic between explaining racial oppression and projecting racial utopia. Third, it presents a synthesis between particularities in racial experience and the universal features of racial oppression. Finally, it ends by arguing that race scholars immerse ourselves in critically understanding the racial formation as a prerequisite to any attempt to abolish it. As such, the ultimate sign of race criticality is imagining the disappearance of one’s craft, the eventual obsolescence of one’s racial interventions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   149.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   199.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   199.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Critical Race Theory is a specifically U.S. innovation (Peters 1995). As an intervention within legal studies, CRT responds with a particularly U.S.-based analysis of law, racial stratification, and methodology. Although CRT has been imported to explain other national contexts, by and large it has maintained a U.S.-centered analysis (see for example, Gillborn’s (2008) book-length use of the CRT framework to explain Great Britain’s racial contestation in education).

  2. 2.

    This position is not necessarily in opposition to Bell’s assertion of the “permanence of racism,” which is an empirical or descriptive statement and not a prescriptive one. In other words, Bell is not suggesting that racism should be permanent. Rather, based on historical evidence there is more reason to suggest that it will not whither away, thus achieving a permanent status in U.S. society. Alternatively, Bell may be spurring readers to disrupt racism by recognizing this apparently simple truth and absurd state of racial affair. Here, he resembles Roediger’s (1991) ironic appropriation of a problematic refrain from colorblind discourse: “Reverse racism!” Bell is not merely adopting a cynical position on racism, but a radical realism. Where Bell may be criticized is in his apparent lack of a utopian discourse that imagines an alternative state of affair, whether or not it may be realized.

  3. 3.

    Lewis Gordon delivered a keynote speech for the Latina(o) Academy of Science and Arts meeting on May 2, 2008. Berkeley, CA.

  4. 4.

    Here I am using “interest convergence” differently from CRT, and Derrick Bell particularly. I am using the phrase to suggest the idea that people of color have overlapping interests that converge during strategic moments in history, such as the Civil Rights Movements.

References

  • Althusser L (1971) Lenin and philosophy (trans: Brewster B). Monthly Review Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Amin S (1989) Eurocentrism. Monthly Review Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Balibar E, Wallerstein I (1992) Race, nation, class. Verso, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Bell D (1992) Faces at the bottom of the well: the permanence of racism. Basic Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Benhabib S (1987) The generalized and the concrete other. In: Benhabib S, Cornell D (eds) Feminism as critique. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp 77–95

    Google Scholar 

  • Bernasconi R, Lott T (eds) (2000) The idea of race. Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis

    Google Scholar 

  • Blauner R (1972) Racial oppression in America. Harper & Row, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Bonilla-Silva E (2005) “Racism” and “new racism”: the contours of racial dynamics in contemporary America. In: Leonardo Z (ed) Critical pedagogy and race. Blackwell, Malden, pp 1–35

    Google Scholar 

  • Cho S (2008) Politics of critical pedagogy and new social movements. Educ Philos Theory 42(3):310–325

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Churchill W (1995) Since predator came: notes from the struggle for American Indian Liberation. Aigis Publications, Oakland

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole M, Maisuria A (2007) ‘Shut the f*** up’, ‘you have no rights here’: citical race theory and racialisation in post-7/7 racist Britain. J Crit Educ Policy Stud 5(1). Online: http://www.jceps.com/?pageID=article&articleID=85

  • Darder A, Torres R (2004) After race. NYU Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Dixson A, Rousseau C (2005) And we are still not saved: critical race theory ten years later. Race Ethn Educ 8(1):7–27

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eagleton T (1991) Ideology. Verso, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Essed P, Goldberg DT (2002) Introduction: from racial demarcations to multiple identifications. In: Essed P, Goldberg DT (eds) Race critical theories. Blackwell, Malden, pp 1–11

    Google Scholar 

  • Fanon F (1967) Black skin white masks (trans: Markmann C). Grove Weidenfeld, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Fields B (1990) Slavery, race and ideology in the United States of America. New Left Rev I/181:95–118

    Google Scholar 

  • Freire P (1993) Pedagogy of the oppressed (trans: Ramos M). Continuum, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Gillborn D (2008) Racism and education: coincidence or conspiracy? Routledge, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilroy P (2000) Against race. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Giroux H (2008) Beyond the biopolitics of disposability: rethinking neoliberalism in the new gilded age. Soc Identities 14(5):587–620

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldberg DT (1990) The social formation of racist discourse. In: Goldberg DT (ed) Anatomy of racism. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp 295–318

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldberg DT (1993) Racist culture. Blackwell, Malden

    Google Scholar 

  • Grosfoguel R (2007) The epistemic decolonial turn: beyond political-economy paradigms. Cult Stud 21(2):211–223

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Habermas J (1994) Ideology. In: Eagleton T (ed) Ideology. Longman, London, pp 190–201

    Google Scholar 

  • Hirschman C (2004) The origins and demise of the concept of race. Popul Dev Rev 30(3):385–415

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ooks b (1993) bell hooks speaking about Paulo Freire – the man, his work. In: McLaren P, Leonard P (eds) Paulo Freire: a critical encounter. Routledge, New York, pp 146–154

    Google Scholar 

  • Huntington S (1998) The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order. Simon & Schuster, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Ignatiev N (1997) The point is not to interpret whiteness but to abolish it. Talk given at the conference on “the making and unmaking of whiteness.” University of California, Berkeley, Retrieved from http://racetraitor.org/abolishthepoint.html

  • Ignatiev N, Garvey J (1996) Abolish the white race. In: Ignatiev N, Garvey J (eds) Race traitor. Routledge, New York, pp 9–14

    Google Scholar 

  • Kant I (2000) The critique of judgment (trans: Bernard JH). Prometheus, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Ladson-Billings G (2004) Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education. In: Ladson-Billings G, Gillborn D (eds) The routledge falmer reader in multicultural education: critical perspectives on race, racism and education. RoutledgeFalmer, New York, pp 49–67

    Google Scholar 

  • Ladson-Billings G, Tate WF (1995) Toward a critical race theory of education. Teach Coll Rec 97(1):47–68

    Google Scholar 

  • Leonardo Z (2003) Reality on trial: notes on ideology, education, and utopia. Policy Futures Educ 1(3):504–525

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leonardo Z (2004a) The souls of white folk: critical pedagogy, whiteness studies, and globalization discourse. In: Ladson-Billings G, Gillborn D (eds) The routledge falmer reader in multicultural education: critical perspectives on race, racism and education. RoutledgeFalmer, New York, pp 117–136

    Google Scholar 

  • Leonardo Z (2004b) The color of supremacy: beyond the discourse of “white privilege”. Educ Philos Theory 36(2):137–152

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leonardo Z (2006) Through the multicultural glass: Althusser, ideology, and race relations in post-civil rights America. Policy Futures Educ 3(4):400–412

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leonardo Z (2007) The war on schools: NCLB, nation creation, and the educational construction of whiteness. Race Ethn Educ 10(3):261–278

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Martinot S (2002) The rule of racialization. Temple University Press, Philadelphia

    Google Scholar 

  • Miles R (2000) Apropos the idea of ‘race’… again. In: Back L, Solomos J (eds) Theories of race and racism. Routledge, New York, pp 125–143

    Google Scholar 

  • Mills C (2003) From race to class: essays in White Marxism and Black Radicalism. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham

    Google Scholar 

  • Nayak A (2006) After race: ethnography, race and post-race theory. Ethnic Racial Stud 29(3):411–430

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Omi M, Winant H (1994) Racial formations, 2nd edn. Routledge, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Outlaw L (1990) Toward a critical theory of “race”. In: Goldberg DT (ed) Anatomy of racism. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp 58–82

    Google Scholar 

  • Parker W (2005) Teaching against idiocy. Phi Delta Kappan 86(5):344–351

    Google Scholar 

  • Parker L, Stovall D (2005) Actions following words: critical race theory connects to critical pedagogy. In: Leonardo Z (ed) Critical pedagogy and race. Blackwell, Malden, pp 159–174

    Google Scholar 

  • Peters M (1995) Education and the postmodern condition. Bergin & Garvey, Westport/London

    Google Scholar 

  • Prashad V (2000) The karma of Brown Folk. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis

    Google Scholar 

  • Rawls J (2005) A theory of justice, Revised edn. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Ricoeur P (1986) Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, Ed. G. Taylor. Columbia University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Roediger D (1991) The wages of whiteness. Verso, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Said E (2000) Reflections on exile. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • San Juan E Jr (1992) Racial formations/critical transformations. Humanities Press, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Scatamburlo-D’Annibale V, McLaren P (2004) Class dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of ‘difference’. Educ Philos Theory 36(2):183–199

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Strain T (producer) (2003) Race: the power of an illusion, Part II (Video). California Newsreel, San Francisco

    Google Scholar 

  • Takaki R (1993) A different mirror. Little, Brown and Co., Boston

    Google Scholar 

  • Tate W (1997) Critical race theory and education: history, theory and implications. Rev Res Educ 22:191–243

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor E (1998) A primer on critical race theory: who are the critical race theorists and what are they saying? J Blacks High Educ 19:122–124

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vaca N (2004) The presumed alliance. Harper Perennial, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson WJ (1987) The truly disadvantaged. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Wu F (2002) Yellow. Basic Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Yosso T (2006) Critical race counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano educational pipeline. Routledge, New York

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Zeus Leonardo

Authors
  1. Zeus Leonardo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zeus Leonardo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia

    Alan D. Reid

  2. Faculty of Education, University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

    E. Paul Hart

  3. Hamilton Campus, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

    Michael A. Peters

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Leonardo, Z. (2014). Dialectics of Race Criticality: Studies in Racial Stratification and Education. In: Reid, A., Hart, E., Peters, M. (eds) A Companion to Research in Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6809-3_32

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation