This paper argues that race and class inequalities cannot be fully understood in isolation: their intersectional quality is explored through an analysis of how the White working class were portrayed in popular and political discourse during late 2008 (the timing is highly significant). While global capitalism reeled on the edge of financial melt-down, the essential values of neo-liberalism were reasserted as natural, moral and efficient through two apparently contrasting discourses. First, a victim discourse presented White working people, and their children (...) in particular, as suffering educationally because of minoritised racial groups and their advocates. Second a discourse of degeneracy presented an immoral and barbaric underclass as a threat to social and economic order. Applying the 'interest-convergence principle', from Critical Race Theory, the discourses amount to a strategic mobilisation of White interests where the 'White, but not quite' status of the working class (Allen, 2009) provides a buffer zone at a time of economic and cultural crisis which secures societal White supremacy and provides a further setback to progressive reforms that focus on race, gender and disability equality. The existence of poor Whites, therefore, is not only consistent with a regime of White supremacy — they are actually an essential part of the processes that sustain it. (shrink)

Multicultural education is a thriving – though sometimes controversial and increasingly contested – field of study and research. Its major aim and purpose has been described as to create equal educational opportunities for students from diverse racial, ethnic, social, and cultural backgrounds to help them acquire the knowledge, aptitudes, and skills needed to function effectively in a pluralistic democratic society. Multicultural education draws its content, concepts, paradigms, and theories from specialized interdisciplinary domains such as ethnic and women’s studies, as well (...) as by interrogating, challenging, and reinterpreting the work of other established disciplines and applying it to pedagogy and curriculum development in educational settings. As academic thinking about and around multicultural education continues to develop, this new title in the Routledge series, Major Themes in Education, meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of the field’s vast literature and the continuing explosion in research output. Compiled by David Gillborn, editor of the leading international journal, _Race, Ethnicity, and Education_, this new collection of major works brings together in four volumes the canonical and the best cutting-edge scholarship. The editor has drawn on the most important and influential research to create a one-stop ‘mini library’ which describes and analyses the nature, scope, and principal issues of global multicultural education today. Multicultural Education is fully indexed and has a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. It is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by scholars and students – as well as by educational policy-makers – as a vital research and pedagogic tool. (shrink)

The phrase ‘the edge of race’ can be used both as a description and as a response to two key concerns. The first of these is that while race is increasingly on the periphery of education policy – with a growing disregard shown for racist inequities, as education systems become dominated by market-driven concerns – it is important that we map the shifting relations of race in neoliberal politics and policies. The second concern is that at this time, within and (...) outside the spaces of the academy, even to mention race equity is to risk condemnation, marginalization, and ridicule. The authors in this collection use ‘the edge of race’ as a provocation in order to examine the concepts, methodologies, policies, politics, processes, and practices associated with race and racism in education. The chapters offer empirical examples of the perpetuation and perniciousness of racism that point to the continued salience of research about race. Additionally, the chapters make contributions to conceptual and methodological understandings of race and racism. The contributors illustrate the contingency, productivity, and fragility of race as a concept, and point to how educational research continues to be a contested site in, and from which to study, race and education. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. _. (shrink)

The emergence of Critical Race Theory marked an important point in the history of racial politics in the legal academy and the broader conversation about race and racism in the United States. More recently, CRT has proven an important analytic tool in the field of education, offering critical perspectives on race, and the causes, consequences and manifestations of race, racism, inequity, and the dynamics of power and privilege in schooling. This groundbreaking anthology is the first to pull together both the (...) foundational writings in the field and more recent scholarship on the cultural and racial politics of schooling. A comprehensive introduction provides an overview of the history and tenets of CRT in education. Each section then seeks to explicate ideological contestation of race in education and to create new, alternative accounts. In so doing, this landmark publication not only documents the progress to date of the CRT movement, it acts to further spur developments in education. (shrink)