Dave Hill is Professor of Education Policy at the University of Northampton, also at Middlesex University as well as Chief Editor, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies www.jceps.com . He has written this piece of which I am publishing the introduction and conclusion. The theoretical and Policy/ Political Implications section is only briefly developed. He develops this more in `A Marxist Critique of Culturalist/Idealist Analyses of ‘Race’, Caste and Class’ in the Indian Marxist online journal Radical Notes, at http://radicalnotes.com/content/view/68/39/.
Dave is interested in readers’ comments.
Summary
In this paper I critique what I analyse as the misuse of statistics in arguments put forward by some Critical Race Theorists in Britain showing that `Race’ `trumps’ Class in terms of underachievement at 16+ exams in England and Wales.
I ask two questions, and make these two associated criticisms, concerning the representation of these statistics:
1. With respect to `race’ and educational attainment, what is the validity of ignoring the presence of the (high achieving) Indian/ Indian heritage group of pupils- one of the two largest minority groups in England and Wales? This group has been ignored, indeed, left completely out of statistical representations- charts- showing educational achievement levels of different ethnic groups.
2. With respect to social class and educational attainment, what is the validity of selecting two contiguous social class/ strata in order to show social class differences in educational attainment?
At a theoretical level, using Marxist work (2) I argue for a notion of `raced’ and gendered class, in which some (but not all) minority ethnic groups are racialised or xeno-racialised) and suffer a `race penalty’ in, for example, teacher labelling and expectation, treatment by agencies of the state, such as the police, housing, judiciary, health services and in employment.
I critique some CRT treatment of social class analysis and underachievement as unduly dismissive and extraordinarily subdued (e.g. a critique I make of Gillborn, 2008). I offer a Marxist critique of Critical Race Theory from statistical and theoretical perspectives, showing that it is not `whiteness’, a key claim of CRT, that most privileges or underprivileges school students in England and Wales.
This analysis has policy implications regarding school/ school district/ national education policies, and also wider social and economic policies such as social cohesion, exclusion/ inclusion, and addressing wider economic and power inequalities in European societies (Booth, 2008; Toynbee and Walker, 2008; Hill, 2009a, 2009b; Hill and Kumar, 2009).
Accepting the urgent need for anti-racist awareness, policy and activism- from the classroom to the street- I welcome the anti-racism that CRT promulgates and analyses, while criticising its over-emphasis on `white supremacy’- and its statistical misrepresentations.
Expected Outcomes
This paper is a contribution to a Europe wide debate about race and class exclusion from educational success and alienation from/ integration into school success, entry to higher education, and social cohesion and stability. It also relates to the political debate about whether a focus on anti-racism is enough, for anti-racists, or whether (as Marxists argue) the focus should also be on creating class unity, similar to the `Black and White, Unite and Fight’ anti National Front activism of the 1970s, which focussed also on class politics. The debate will continue. It is a debate among academics, equality activists and governments concerned about `social cohesion’. It is also a debate among political groups in the UK, and elsewhere, today.
The findings of this paper are that `white supremacy’ as a CRT form of explaining inequalities is not only not supported by statistics, but that in terms of theorising and deriving policy from theory, such a term is too blunt, ignores xeno-racism, and the racialisation of the poor white working class (as, for example, `chavs’- a perjorative term used to describe and vilify unskilled and poor sections of the white working class-) and downplays social class factors in educational and social alienation.
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