Abstract
In the first part of this chapter, I begin by discussing three forms of reactionary multicultural education in the US identified by Peter McLaren. I go on to analyse McLaren’s advocacy, in his postmodern phase, of ‘critical resistant multiculturalism’, a form of multiculturalism favoured by Critical Race Theorist Gloria Ladson-Billings. I conclude the section of the chapter on the US by appraising McLaren’s promotion, since he returned to the Marxist problematic, of ‘revolutionary multiculturalism’.
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Notes
- 1.
Atkinson identifies specifically with postmodernism; Baxter identifies with feminist poststructuralism and Lather describes herself both as a ‘postmodern materialist feminist’ (e.g. 1991, p. xix) and as a feminist poststructuralist (e.g. 2001). This is not of concern here, since I am interested in their common claim that poststructuralism and postmodernism can be forces for social change and social justice. For a discussion of the origins and theoretical distinctions between poststructuralism and postmodernism, see Cole (2008a, chapters 4 and 5).
- 2.
According to Baxter (2002), poststructuralism may ultimately promote social and educational transformation because it listens to all voices, and because it deconstructs. However, as she acknowledges, it is unconvincing in practice and can only (possibly) become convincing if more feminist researchers take it up. No indications are given of how the promotion of transformation might occur. For a further defence of poststructuralism against Marxism, see Baxter (2009). For my reply, see Cole (2009a).
- 3.
In so doing, she makes the claim that CRT does ‘not necessarily [privilege] race over class, gender, or other identity category’ (Ladson-Billings, 2005, p. 57). In chapter 3 of this volume, I have argued that, in fact, such privileging is a defining feature of CRT. Having said that, as recorded above (endnote 4 of the chapter 1 to this volume), there are a number of offshoots from CRT which deal with various identities, though not, crucially, social class. As we shall see below, the revolutionary multiculturalism of McLaren and others, while centering on class, also encompasses other forms of oppression and exploitation. Later in this chapter, I will note how this has always been the case with antiracist education in the UK.
- 4.
- 5.
For a recent critical Marxist analysis of Schooling in Capitalist America, see Rikowski (2005b).
- 6.
Ladson-Billings, though a Critical Race Theorist, draws at times on poststructuralism and postmodernism and also on Marxism. As I argued in chapter 4, her writing often shows sympathy for Marxist theory and concepts.
- 7.
A turning point was a conference he and I both attended in Halle, in the former DDR in 1995. McLaren has written of our time in Halle:
My time spent with you was a profound step in getting my work back on track to Marx. No question about that…listening to your talk in Halle, spending time with you, experiencing East Germany with you, that really shook me…it was a major moment, perhaps the key single moment; then, of course, the next step was reading over the criticisms of my work by you, Dave [Hill] and Glenn [Rikowski]…and then the correspondence among us by e-mail…and I began to reeducate myself with the help of comrades such as yourself, reading Capital, and a half dozen other books of Marx, Marx and Engels, and also Hegel (via the Marxist humanist tradition of News and Letters/Dunayevskaya) putting myself on a program of study and dialogue with other Marxists, working with Ramin [Farahmandpur] and other Marxist students…and I began reading the Open Marxist folks via Glenn, getting into Glenn’s work on the labor theory of value…and reading major Marxist journals like Science and Society, and then finally meeting Peter Hudis of News and Letters and hanging out with him in LA and learning a lot. (personal correspondence 2002, cited in Cole 2005. Cole 2005 contains an analysis of McLaren’s trajectory from postmodernism to Marxism: see pp. 108–114).
- 8.
- 9.
For an analysis of racism and education from the days of the British Empire up to the present, see, for example, Cole and Blair (2006).
- 10.
In 1979, the nomenclature ‘black’ in the UK was generally a term that applied to all people of color and indeed, as a political statement, also used by some South (Mediterranean) Europeans such as Cypriots.
- 11.
The National Front was the UK’s biggest fascist political party at the time, with as many as 20,000 members in the mid-1970s. It declined after 1979 with the advent of the Thatcher Government and the subsequent lurch to the right in British politics.
- 12.
- 13.
It should be recorded that there was one mainstream exception. The Left-wing Inner London Education Authority (ILEA), eventually abolished by Thatcher in 1988, published a number of equality documents in the 1980s, including Race, Sex and Class: 4. Anti-Racist Statement and Guidelines (ILEA 1983), and distributed the pamphlets to all of its schools. For an analysis of the political climate in the years of the Radical Right, see, for example, Hill (1989, 1997); see also Jones (2003), Tomlinson (2005).
- 14.
This was all part of a concerted Radical Right attack on Teacher Education which was assumed to be a hotbed of Marxism (see Hill 1989, 1994, 2001a, b, 2007; see also Cole 2004, pp. 150–163). This legacy continues to this day. For example, the term ‘trainee’ rather than ‘student teacher’ relates to the Radical Right notion that teacher training is not a theoretical enterprise, but a combination of love of subject and practical skills. For similar reasons it is the Training and Development Agency that oversees teacher education. However, progressive equalities legislation (see Nixon 2008) has required departments of education in universities, university colleges and colleges to verse their student teachers in equality issues (for detailed suggestions as to how the current QTS standards can be used to have equality and equal opportunities at their forefront, see Cole (ed.) (2008d); for suggestions on promoting equality in the primary/elementary school, see Hill and Helavaara Robinson (eds) (2009), and for ideas for the secondary/high school, see Cole (ed) 2009b.
- 15.
‘PC’ or ‘Political correctness’ is a pernicious concept invented by the Radical Right, which, to my dismay, has become common currency in the UK. The term was coined to imply that there exist (Left) political demagogues who seek to impose their views on equality issues, in particular appropriate terminology, on the majority. In reality, nomenclature changes over time. Thus, in the twenty-first century, terms such as ‘negress’ or ‘negro’ or ‘coloured’, nomenclatures which at one time were considered quite acceptable, and are now considered offensive. Egalitarians are concerned with respect for others and, therefore, are careful to acknowledge changes in nomenclature, changes which are decided by oppressed groups themselves, bearing in mind that there can be differences among such oppressed groups. Thus, for example, it has become common practice to use ‘working class’ rather than ‘lower class’; ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender’ rather than ‘sexually deviant’; ‘disability’ rather than ‘handicap’, ‘gender equality’ rather than ‘a woman’s place’. Using current and acceptable nomenclature is about the fostering of a caring and inclusive society, not about ‘political correctness’ (Cole 2008b, pp. 142–3).
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Cole, M. (2017). Multicultural and Antiracist Education in the US and the UK. In: Critical Race Theory and Education. Marxism and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95079-9_5
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