Globally, we are seeing a resurgence of white nationalism and white supremacist extremism that is becoming more mainstream, such as in recent European election results. In schooling, this has been seen in the voting against Critical Race Theory informing curriculum or being taught in schools in the USA and the UK (Gatwiri & Anderson, 2021). And at the same time interconnected movements for Indigenous sovereignty, Black Lives Matter, refugee justice and anti-racism offer a reckoning with multiple forms of racial domination and injustice. In the project from which this paper is drawn (Sriprakash et al, 2022) we aimed to understand how contemporary white domination is part of a long and enduring system, rather than something new or just recently noticed.

This paper takes as its focus the relationship between the settler colonial state and education (both formal education institutions and informal education practices). While focused on the context of Australia, we see this paper as connected to analyses of colonial orders globally. Indeed, our paper is premised on the need for dialogue across contexts on questions of colonialism and race and informed by Goldberg’s (2009) notion of racisms as related and reliant on each other across the globe.

The processes and practices of the settler colonial state are steeped in racial hierarchies, inherited from colonialism and racial capitalism. Taking as a starting point Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s (2015) analysis of the settler colonial state as invested in patriarchal white sovereignty, we examine the efforts made by the settler state to create and uphold Australia as a white possession in the face of unceded Indigenous sovereignty.

Importantly in this project we understand whiteness to be a structural formation, shaped by material interests of racial domination under colonialism and capitalism and constantly negotiated and enlivened through the governance of social and political life (Sriprakash et al, 2022, 14). Thus whiteness in Australia and other British settler colonies is formed through settler colonial networks of social and cultural power. Understanding whiteness in these material, social and cultural terms and as part of a power hierarchy enables awareness of the mutability and contingency of whiteness, that it is not something reducible to a fixed identity or even a physical appearance. 

In this paper we present a theoretical framework we have developed to investigate and understand racial dominance in settler colonial contexts and the role of and implications for education. The framework brings together racial capitalism (see Melamed, 2015), epistemologies of white ignorance (see Mills, 2007) and feeling-states (drawing on Ahmed 2004; Kenway & Fahey, 2011; Boler, 1999; Attwood, 2017) along with the theorising of the white possessive (Moreton-Robinson, 2015).

This is a theoretical paper, grounded in post-colonial, de-colonial and critical approaches to theory and theoretical writing. Specifically, our approach is informed by the idea of ‘the otherwise’, as developed for instance by Stein and Andreotti (2018), in that we see the purpose of theoretical work as opening the conditions of possibility for understanding – and responding to – racial dominance in education. In addressing race and racism in education, this has involved the generation of conceptual tools to help understand the construction of dominance. Our approach is premised on the need to build these conceptual resources as a means to then redress white control and power in education. Drawing significantly from Moreton-Robinson (2015) our methodology has involved deep engagement with existing theory alongside cultural and historical analysis. We use a range of examples from the Australian context and connect these to other British settler colonial contexts, to demonstrate how ‘pedagogies of the state’ (Pykett, 2010) are employed to benefit the settler colonial fiction of white possession and continue a project of racial injustice. Through this we reflect on the international racial relationality (see Goldberg, 2009) between British settler colonial contexts such as Aotearoa New Zealand, Canada, the United States of America and Britain itself in the production of racial domination.

The outcome of this paper is the generation of a conceptual framework that can address racial dominance in education. In the context of Australia, the production of ‘white colonial paranoia’ (Moreton-Robinson, 2015, xxiii) through the unresolved tension of settler colonial governance on unceded Indigenous land engenders, we argue, both formal and informal education practices that bolster white racial dominance. In presenting this multifaceted analytical framework for understanding racial domination in settler states, we show how education operates beyond knowledge and curriculum and how 1) materialities, 2) knowledge and 3) feelings are interdependent in producing and upholding white dominance in settler colonies. While focused in this work on racial dominance in British settler colonies, the three-pronged framework developed has relevance for understanding racial dominance in other contexts, including Europe and its (former) colonies. Building from this, in the conclusion of this paper we suggest that possibilities for divesting from racial domination could benefit from a reparative justice approach (see Sriprakash 2022). Such an approach, we argue, needs to consider the material, epistemic and affective dimensions of domination in order to divest from domination and work towards educational justice.

Ahmed, S. (2004). Affective economies. Social Text, 22(2), 117–139. Attwood, B. (2017). Denial in a Settler Society: The Australian Case. History Workshop Journal, 84, 24–43. https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbx029 Boler, M. (1999). Feeling power: Emotions and education. Routledge. Gatwiri, K., & Anderson, L. (2021, June 22). The Senate has voted to reject critical race theory from the national curriculum. What is it, and why does it matter? The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/the-senate-has-voted-to-reject-critical-race-theory-from-the-national-curriculum-what-is-it-and-why-does-it-matter-163102 Goldberg, D. T. (2009). Racial comparisons, relational racisms: Some thoughts on method. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 32(7), 1271–1282. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870902999233 Kenway, J., & Fahey, J. (2011). Public pedagogies and global emoscapes. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 6(2), 167–179. Melamed, J. (2015). Racial capitalism. Critical Ethnic Studies, 1(1), 76–85. Mills, C. W. (2007). White ignorance. In S. Sullivan & N. Tuana (Eds.), Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance (pp. 13–38). State University of New York Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unimelb/detail.action?docID=3407494 Moreton-Robinson, A. (2015). The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty. University of Minnesota Press. Pykett, J. (2010). Citizenship Education and narratives of pedagogy. Citizenship Studies, 14(6), 621–635. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2010.522345 Sriprakash, A. (2022). Reparations: Theorising just futures of education. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 0(0), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2022.2144141 Sriprakash, A., Rudolph, S., & Gerrard, J. (2022). Learning, Whiteness: Education and the Settler Colonial State. Pluto Press. Stein, S. & Andreotti, V. (2018) What does theory matter?: Conceptualising race critical research. In G. Vass, J. Maxwell, S. Rudolph & K. Gulson (eds.) The Relationality of Race in Education Research (pp. 156-169). London & New York: Routledge