(EDU4) Race, Class, and Contested Frameworks in Education: A Dialogic Project

Since the 1990s, educational debates among Marxists, critical race scholars, and other educational theorists who address questions of race and class in society and education have been particularly contentious and virulent. Consequently, scholars who lay claim to working for a more just and equitable world have been unable to engage effectively with one another’s differences, limiting our capacity to leverage more effectively the important places where our respective scholarships intersect. A new anthology On Class, Race, and Educational Reform: Contested Perspectives gathers over 20 scholars—aligned with critical race theory, Marxism, intersectionality, critical ethnic studies, and other frameworks—to engage in collegial dialogue and debate over vital questions of educational reform and more. In this session, four of the contributors reflect on the issues raised in the volume, insights gained by their participation, and what this publishing initiative may offer for the future of progressive scholarship and community building. In addition, two discussants connect the volume to a Canadian context where Indigeneity, as well as race and class, are forefronted.

Organizers: Terry Wotherspoon, University of Saskatchewan, Howard Ryan, West Virgina University, Antonia Darder, Loyola Marymount University ; Chair: Terry Wotherspoon, University of Saskatchewan; Discussants: Vanessa Watts, McMaster University, Alana Butler, Queen's University

Presentations

Howard Ryan, West Virgina University

Race, Class, and the Hidden Aims of School Reform

The ostensible purpose of school reform—e.g., to equip students with 21st century skills while holding teachers and schools accountable—is undermined by reform’s high-stakes testing regime that degrades schooling, discourages critical thought, and deepens inequities. Therefore, to make sense of reform and to effectively challenge it requires that we deconstruct the system and uncover its hidden aims. Here, progressive education scholars apply competing frameworks and analytic tools. So, those who embrace race-based frameworks see reform as “an act of white supremacy” (Gillborn 2005), whereas those embracing Marx’s class approach see reform as “part of the grander project of capitalism” (Maisuria 2010). This paper argues that a class analysis provides the most robust tools for identifying reform’s hidden aims, and then demonstrates through a political and policy history the specific role of capitalist actors in bringing test-driven schooling to its current dominance in the United States and globally. The paper also proposes how regressive curriculum, including the suppression of anti-racist pedagogy and programs, tie to larger conservative aims that benefit capitalist hegemony. Finally, the paper offers that clarifying and sharing our respective worldviews can be the starting point for deeper dialogues and the building of stronger, united communities in education and beyond.

Kevin Lam, Drake University

The Exigency of Radical Class Politics: A Personal Journey

This paper situates class struggle/conflict as the starting point of analysis. As such, it calls for a renewal of approaches founded in historical materialism and insists on the exigency of radical class politics for analyzing contemporary and historically marginalized and dispossessed communities across time. The paper makes the argument that it may be a worthwhile project for minoritized groups to return to the radical class politics of the late 1960s and 1970s, when issues of class were central to analyses of inequality. Mainstream understandings of class consider socioeconomic factors that include educational attainment, occupation, markers of income, cultural habits, and social status in order to then categorize individuals and groups within a taxonomy of upper, middle, or working class. In doing so, this model of class obscures economic interests and capitalist relations. On the other hand, liberal anti-racists, who reify skin color as the most active determinant of social relations, have “evacuated” the class content of American society, and in the process, addressed race and racism in a vacuum (Fields and Fields 2018), while reifying skin color as the most active determinant of social relations. The paper proposes that racism and school reform are most productively addressed in the context of politics, economics, and history.

Cleveland Hayes, Indiana University

A Pandemic Couldn’t Crumble the Wall of Whiteness and White Supremacy: A Critical Race Perspective

I use CRT as a response to the continued conversation about race in the United States. As the timeline, at the beginning of the chapter shows while race may not be the only factor it is never not a factor. I also want readers who will read this chapter 20 year from now to remember that in 2020 in the middle of a global pandemic the United States, whiteness and white supremacy received 72 million votes. That poor white people in this country chose white over their well-being and continued to support a President that was more concerned with his stock portfolio instead of those suffering and the number of poor white people in places like Texas who were in food lines for hours still supported his racist tirades.

Antonia Darder, Loyola Marymount University

From Race to Racism: A Reflection on the Problematics of “Race-based” Analysis

This presentation seeks to engage questions based on concerns, raised over the years, related to the focus and limitations of race-based analysis. In particular, this points to the weaponization of identity politics and race-based sectarianism, which can inadvertently obstruct necessary opportunities for political dialogues across different groups that should be natural allies, given their commitment to the struggle for social justice, human rights, and economic democracy. This discussion is grounded on works by Robert Miles, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Neville Alexander, Touré Reed, Arundhati Roy, and others who have posed counterarguments to problematize discussions that begin and end with the social construct of “race” as the major unit of analysis. This is an invitation to decolonize academic discourses singularly tied to race and to engage their implications on the streets. Key questions to consider: What has been gained by such an approach in the last 50 years? What has been lost or missed? How might we support greater solidarity and camaraderie across communities who are engaged in the larger struggle for liberation?