The Damaging Effects of Institutional Racism in Education

Author(s):

Vini Lander(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

07. Social Justice and Intercultural Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

07 SES 01 A, Teachers' Views on Social Justice

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-08

13:15-14:45

Room:

3001. [Main]

Chair:

Yvonne Leeman

Contribution

Context

The recent attacks in Paris on the offices of Charlie Hebdo and the associated Islamophobia as well as the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe lead us to question why and how such events come into being. Such events require reflection and within education as teachers and educators, as well as members of wider society we need to analyse the reasons why the young men are driven to such extreme acts. What are the antecedents that lead to the thoughts which give rise to such violent actions? Schools, teachers and teacher education have a part to play in ensuring that certain groups do not get marginalised by the education system and are enabled to become productive members of society.

Introduction

This paper is designed to be a theoretical “think piece” structured to initiate debate and discussion with conference participants on how teachers, schools and teacher education can better meet the needs of all children without marginalising those from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds who in many school systems across Europe are identified as underacheivers, form a large proportion of those who are unemployed and imprioned.

This paper draws on critical race theory (CRT), the construct of whiteness and Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic violence (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977) to provide a theoretical model to explain the persistence of racism in society in England despite the presence of equalities legislation and societal taboos related to overt racism.

Neither laws that exist to ensure equality for all, nor the discourse of liberalism based on meritocracy which prevails in the thinking of most teachers in the classroom have served to overcome the structural barriers of institutional racism. Critical race theory (CRT) identifies racism as an everyday aspect of society. CRT focuses solely on racism and how it manifests itself in the everyday acts of omission, exclusion, ignorance and inaction. Whilst overt acts of racism such as name calling and violence are publicly abhorred; silent everyday acts of racism continue unrecognised and unacknowledged by the majority but identified and deeply felt by minorities.

Whiteness as a social, political and cultural construct underpins the operation of structural racism (Garner 2010). Whiteness is associated with the maintenance of power, privilege and dominance. In the process of maintaining power and privilege others are rendered powerless. Whiteness operates through institutions and everyday interactions. But how is whiteness perpetuated? This paper argues that symbolic violence, defined by Jenkins (1992) as the imposition of a culture on groups in such a way that it is rendered legitimate, is perpetuated through misrecognition, or a form of forgetting. The dominant discourse of whiteness upholds White as a neutral identity so constitutes the misrecognition of the symbolic violence of whiteness which minoritized people experience through silent everyday racism. The neutrality of whiteness is so deeply embedded in the systems of society that its symbolic violence has become invisible and bearable. It is the maintenance of the neutrality of whiteness as well as the diametrically opposed notion of the aberrant “Other” that prevails silently, misrecognised which inflict the symbolic violence on those marginalised and labelled as “Others” that damages our wider multicultural societies in Europe. Is this damage irreparable or can education begin to redress the damage of symbolic violence?

The research examines three research projects to re-examine the findings with respect to the CRT/symbolic violence theoretical framework described above. The research questions are:

How is whiteness evident within each research study?
What are the outcomes of whiteness operating in the education environment of each study?
What factors constitute symbolic violence in each case? What, if any, are the effects of this symbolic violence?

Method

The methodology examines three separate research projects which were carried out by the author over the course of the last four years from 2010-2014. Each research project was sited within an educational setting two within university teacher education programmes and one in a school. The first study involved interviewing newly qualified teachers from one English university. These new teachers had been specialists in a citizenship course that had prepared them to understand the broad concepts and operation of a range of social justice notions including, but not limited to those of inequality, discrimination and racism. The course prepared this cohort of twelve new teachers to address such issues within their classrooms. Six of these new teachers were interviewed either by phone or in their home settings. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and a thematic analysis was conducted to reveal how these new teachers incorporated, or not, their training in social justice with specific reference to “race” and ethnicity within their new classrooms. The second study involved White student teachers on a postgraduate (PGCE) programme at an English university. The student teachers were interviewed after their first placement in school to ascertain their perceptions of the value of race equality training on their teaching and how well they thought they were prepared to teach children from minority ethnic backgrounds. The six semi-structured interviews with these students were recorded and transcribed. The transcripts were analysed to reveal emerging themes which were used to create typologies which depicted the student teachers’ stage or orientation towards race, ethnicity, racism and education. The third study involved the analysis of interviews with young people aged 13-14 years old in a secondary school which had recorded a rise in racist incidents in the first three months of a new school year. The school, with a predominantly White population of pupils and staff, selected the sample of youngsters to be interviewed and commissioned the research from me as an insider choosing not to invite outsiders to investigate why there was a rise in racist incidents. Six semi-structured interviews were conducted with three boys and three girls. Two were White British; two were from Black minority ethnic backgrounds and two were from Gypsy-Traveller backgrounds. The interviews with the pupils were short lasting 30-45 minutes and later formed the basis of a report to the school governors.

Expected Outcomes

In the conducting a re-analysis of the findings of the three research projects using the research questions given it is evident that the stubborn persistence of racism arises from institutional structures which fail to recognize the power and hold of whiteness within the fabric of those institutional structures and processes. Gillborn (2008) argues that institutional racism cannot be addressed until we recognize how the power of whiteness perpetuates and maintains structures which lead to racist outcomes. However, it is difficult for educators from all ethnic backgrounds to accept that they are part of institutions which are racist as this accusation is perceived as a harsh judgement. But the linkage of whiteness to the operation of symbolic violence provides a picture of how we all as members of institutions help to maintain the cultural arbitrary of whiteness as neutral that results in the symbolic violence of institutional racism. In the research studies which were analysed the operation of whiteness was evident in each case and served to illustrate how all people in each context were the victims of symbolic violence since Black and minority people are disadvantaged whilst White people are advantaged by the maintenance of the cultural arbitrary which deems whiteness as invisible and neutral. In order to halt the marginalization of Black and minority ethnic, or religious minority groups institutions would need to recognize the cultural arbitrary of whiteness as neutral; seek ways to dismantle it in order to overcome the White/Other; privileged/unprivileged binaries which operate in education and society to exclude those from Black, minority ethnic or religious backgrounds. It is only when we begin to address this and the marginalization of youngsters through education and schooling that we will really be attempting to halt the need for some to seek supposed glory through extremist acts.

References

Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J.C. (1977) Reproduction In Education, Society and Culture London: Sage. Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L. (2002) An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Garner, S, 2007. Whiteness an introduction. Abingdon: Routledge Garner, S. (2010) Racisms An Introduction London, Sage Gillborn, D. 2008. Racism and Education. Coincidence or Conspiracy? Abingdon: Routledge Jenkins, R. (1992) Pierre Bourdieu Abingdon, Routledge

Author Information

Vini Lander (presenting / submitting)

Edge Hill University, United Kingdom

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