This paper presents key issues in post-structural and critical race theory and links them to white domination and institutional racism in education. It subverts the knowledge-power nexus that permits certain truths and establishes norms that are necessarily exclusionary. These theories are placed beside research from primarily the US and UK examining the experiences of minority ethnic groups in education systems and highlights the need for the Irish education system to begin to genuinely grapple with issues of race and the experiences of minority ethnic groups in a critical manner. It questions the motives of anti-racist and intercultural education, given the inequalities that persist despite the rhetoric of diversity and inclusion in other western countries.If we examine how research/policy in the UK has developed, we can see that the spectre of assimilation remains ever-present. Explanations of black underachievement have changed over the years, but the hierarchy of achievement created by policy and practice has not changed. Differential intelligence and IQ explanations were relied upon in the 1960s, inability to assimilate was seen as the dominant cause in the 1970s, multicultural education programmes focused on the low self esteem and feelings of negative self worth among Black pupils in the 1980s, and the ability of colour-blind policies to mask institutional racism were addressed from the 1990s on (cf. Reay and Mirza, 2003). The chronological 'progression' of thought in relation to underachievement is misleading, not least because it does not fully address the silent hegemonic discourse that refuses to let go, and re-invents itself through political correctness in schools. For example, raced notions of ability are now coded as 'cultural difference', and deficit thinking still permeates US education (Yosso, 2005). Neo-conservatives have been criticised for de-politicising multicultural education to focus on human relations: celebrating diversity as opposed to examining educational inequality (Gorski, 2006). Until the dominant group's position is considered, multiethnic and anti-racist education is still regarded as a problem to be tolerated. Policy needs to be viewed in radical as opposed to reformist terms, where a politics of interrogation builds upon intercultural/multicultural politics of recognition and forms of anti-racism (Gillborn, 2004, Lentin, 2001). The paper argues that it is time the Irish education system did a number of things: learns from the material experiences of minority ethnic groups and theory-practice insights of educationalists internationally; questions the very nature and dominance of 'Irishness' and considers the implications for bland plurality therein, and takes courage in developing 'radical' rather than reformist policy.This is a discussion paper. Deconstruction and performative politics are used in an analysis of Irish education policy. N/A Sample ListButler, J. (2004) Undoing Gender, New York: Routledge. Derrida, J. (1988) Limited Inc, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Gaine, C. (2005) We're All White, Thanks: the persisting myth about 'white' schools, Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books. Gillborn, D. (2005) Education Policy as an act of white supremacy: whiteness, critical race theory and education reform, Journal of Education Policy, Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 485 - 505.Kitching, K. (2006) Teaching Reading to Pupils Learning English as an Additional Language in Hickey, T. (ed.) Literacy and Language Learning, Dublin: Reading Association of Ireland, pp. 85 - 98. National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (Ireland) (2005) Intercultural Guidelines for Primary Schools, Dublin: National Council for Curriculum and Assessment.