Racism, Education and the State

Barry Troyna, Jenny Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136506413
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The education system should be in the forefront of the battle to combat racial inequality. The contributors to this book, however, argue that, far from reducing racial inequality, the education system in the UK systematically generates, maintains and reproduces it. Through careful consideration of the complex and pervasive nature of racism (and the practices it gives rise to) the contributors draw attention to the failure of the contemporaneous multicultural education theories and policies. The contributors' concerns are with: the role of the state in sustaining and legitimating racial inequalities in education; black students' experiences of racism in schools and post-school training schemes; and proposals for the realization of genuine and effective antiracist education principles.

Chapter One

Discrimination by Proxy: The Deracialisation of National Education Policy and Discourse (1960–1980)

Before turning to LEA policies it is necessary to set the national context of debates concerning ‘racial’ issues in education from 1960–1980. In our introduction we drew attention to David Kirp’s important contribution to understandings of how policy-makers and others in the UK education system, both nationally and locally, have perceived, defined and responded to those issues conventionally designated as ‘racial’. It would be misleading, however, for us to give the impression that Kirp has been the only contributor to this debate. On the contrary, the writings of Eric Bolton (1979), Hazel Carby (1982), Chris Mullard (1982) and Barry Troyna (1982) have helped to enhance an understanding of the way in which educational policy and ideology has developed in this area since the 1960s. Their specification of ideological and policy approaches in terms of assimilation through integration to cultural pluralism provides a framework upon which our analysis will build. The point we want to stress is that Kirp’s analysis has been largely unchallenged and has attracted considerable attention and support on both sides of the Atlantic. It is now time to take his analytical framework seriously and deconstruct its ideological and political foundations.

‘Racial Inexplicitness’ Revisited:

Briefly put, Kirp argues that at least until 1981 these policies could be conceived of in terms of their ‘racial inexplicitness’, a term which comprises descriptive and evaluative dimensions. Firstly, he argues that the term has descriptive power in that it allows a distinction to be drawn between the ways educationists in the UK and USA have engaged in policy formulation. In the USA, for instance, ‘race’ has figured prominently on the educational policy agenda at least since 1954 when the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional. As Kirp put it in his more recent book, Just Schools, the central tenet of the Supreme Court’s decision was that ‘individuals deserve to be treated as persons, not as members of a caste or class’ (1982, p.12). Since then, the divisiveness of racial inequality has been an important focus of social policy intervention in the USA where in Kirp’s words ‘racial fairness and educational equity’ have been seen as ‘tightly linked’ (1982, pp.32–33).

In the UK, however, Kirp argues that ‘race’ did not figure openly as a basis for policy interventions; rather, race-related concerns were embedded in a range of ‘racially inexplicit’ educational categories. Kirp also imposes an evaluative dimension to the term when he writes: In the usual instance, inexplicitness implies doing nothing concerning race. The term may also mean doing good by stealth’ (1979, p.2). And later in the book Kirp reaffirms what he sees as the benefits of this ‘doing good by doing little’ approach: ‘…one helps non whites by not favouring them explicitly. The benefits to minorities from such an approach are thought to be real if invisible – or better, real because invisible’ (1979, p.61. Original emphasis). In the distinctive, almost idiosyncratic manner in which Kirp defines and operationalises the term, ‘racial inexplicitness’, it is both inappropriate and misleading. As such it should be discarded and replaced by more precise and analytical concepts. Now this is not simply a matter of semantics. Rather, it allows for a more accurate political account. This is because the concepts we shall use to analyse the development of educational policies on racial matters will convey more precisely the ways in which ideological and political imperatives determined which of the demands arising from the black communities and antiracist pressure groups were met by policymakers and which of these demands were excluded routinely from the agenda. In short, they have a superior descriptive and explanatory power.

The concepts we want to use were referred to in the introduction and derive from Frank Reeves’ study of British Racial Discourse (1983) They are (discoursive) deracialisation and (benign) racialisation.

From the definitions of these terms it should be clear why our reformulation of the ‘racially inexplicit/explicit’ designation of educational policies into the ‘deracialised/racialiseď categorization is of ideological and political significance. The educational policies which comprised race-related elements in the 1960s and ‘70s were unable to satisfy the demands of the black communities precisely because they were deracialised and did not engage with the issue of racism. Despite Kirp’s claim that they did ‘good by stealth’ they did not, indeed could not, conceive the educational system as a site in which the reproduction of racism in Britain is confirmed and achieved. As such they failed to meet the most basic demands of the black communities and anti-racist groups: namely, that the perpetuation of racial inequality in the school needed to be undermined by forceful policies and practices.

The concept of deracialisation therefore provides the framework for a reconstituted analysis of the thrust and tenor of educational policies in the period discussed in Kirp’s book. It allows us to see that the most dramatic change in the way such policies have been structured is not in their move away from inexplicitness to explicitness, as Kirp’s account would have us believe, but in what they have been explicit about. ‘Culture’ and ‘language’ were two of the categories which dominated educational discourse and policy; let us now turn to the way these and associated themes resonated with the prevailing political and educational ideologies during this period.

Discrimination by Proxy:

It was during the early 1960s that black students began to make some impression on the schools and classrooms in the UK’s major industrial centres. These were the children of black migrants who as a reserve army of labour to the UK economy had been encouraged to leave the Caribbean and South Asia to fill the low status jobs made available in a period of economic growth and acute labour shortages. Conventional interpretations of educational policies for this period specify two main trends; first, that the goals of policy were primarily assimilationist: second, as we have seen, that in rhetoric and ideological terms these policies were racially inexplicit. Now, it may be correct to say that this is how educationists and politicians described their goals and policies; it is also true that the rhetoric of assimilation reverberated around local and national debating chambers at the time. What is most striking about the 1960s, however, and what compels our attention is the divorce of this educational rhetoric from policies and provisions in almost every other arena of social life. After all, as a number of writers have illustrated this was an era when other state policies were becoming increasingly ‘race specific’ (see, Carby 1982: Gilroy, 1982; Sivanandan, 1981/2). A brief summary of contemporary events and developments should be sufficient to demonstrate this point here.

The 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act began the process of limiting the inflow specifically of black labour. Politicians and academics may have talked about New Commonwealth migrants (or just plain ‘immigrants’) but this did not disguise the focus of their concern: black migrants. The key political issues at national and local level throughout the ‘60s crystallized around ‘race’ and the imposition of a colour bar, in particular, was a salient concern in areas up and down the country. For instance, studies in different parts of the country showed the extent of local political concern about colour bars in housing, in clubs and in dance halls. More generally, the extent of racial discrimination in housing and labour markets was detailed in the empirical studies summarized by William Daniel (1968) and E.J.B. Rose and his colleagues (1969). The important point here is that as citizens, as workers and as consumers of housing and leisure facilities skin colour was a defining factor for Blacks and one which emerged as a central political issue for both Blacks and Whites. The political focus upon numbers in this period made even more explicit the relationship between the migration of Blacks and the resources available to Whites.

This contrast between racially explicit policies, everyday practices and ideological assumptions, on the one hand, and the supposed inexplicitness of ‘race’ in educational orientations, on the other, therefore requires more careful consideration than it has usually been accorded. What might assimilation entail in this context’ At a commonsense level (and often in academic treatments of the notion) assimilation is taken to mean the total absorption of one population by another, physically and/or culturally. In the 1950s and ‘60s it clearly did not mean physical absorption, however, as the 1949 Royal Commission on Population and various contemporary opinion polls (cited in Rose, et al 1969) testify. Intermarriage, for example, was largely discouraged by and seen as unacceptable to the white indigenous population. Similarly, there was little attempt to disrupt the residential and occupational segregation of groups designated racially different. Even in the education sphere, the growth of black school student populations and the allegedly extra pressures this placed on teachers and LEAs highlighted the ‘racially-explicit’ dimensions of the debate.

In this context then, several different and complex matters, generally overlooked in the extant literature, must be addressed. Was it simply the rhetorical justifications for education policies which merited the label, assimilationist, rather than the policies, per se? In the education sphere, what did assimilation denote and connote? Why did rhetorical, ideological and policy emphases in education contrast so sharply with other aspects of state policies and political emphases? And, what were the contradictions between education and other state policies? These questions, and their resolution, are of central concern in this book. Let us begin, however, with a clarification of the term, assimilation.

One of the more common ideological interpretations of this concept stresses cultural rather than physical assimilation. From this perspective, Blacks would not be seen by others or perceive themselves as a discrete group, except in terms of skin colour. This interpretation has rested on the belief that the society should be politically and culturally indivisible and that black migrants and their children should be compelled to accept established values, norms and mores. In this scenario, the educational system was necessarily ascribed a principal role in ensuring that the potentially disruptive influence of the settlement of culturally and linguistically different groups on British institutions and ways of life was minimalised swiftly. The message conveyed by governmental and advisory group documents in these years was clear: there is no place in the formal educational system for such differences and as they are dysfunctional to the smooth operation of the system they must be eradicated. Nowhere was this message stated more bluntly than in the second part of the Commonwealth Immigrants Advisory Council report:

… a national system of education must aim at producing citizens who can take their place in a society properly equipped to exercise rights and perform duties which are the same as other citizens. If their parents were brought up in another culture or another tradition, children should be encouraged to respect it, but a national system cannot be expected to perpetuate the different values of immigrant groups (1964, p.7).

In the words of Gordon Bowker the school had a dual function, ‘that of transmitting the culture to and resocialising the immigrant child’ (1968, p.82).

Although the prevailing political dogma of assimilation as cultural resocialisation played a major part in defining the relationship between the educational system and black students it is important to recognise the confluence of this ideology with extant educational theories and ideologies. It was these latter theories which allowed policy-makers and practitioners to legitimate their approaches in educational terms. Of course, educational theories and ideologies are closely linked to the broader political contexts in which they are generated (Halsey, 1974), and it is important that we do not lose sight of them entirely for they provide an interpretive and legitimating framework for the translation and integration of political ideologies into educational settings.

On the face of it, cultural resocialisation is problematic in educational terms. This is partly because of the contradictions between political and educational rhetoric and the concerns we have already outlined; but also because cultural differences need to be interpreted in a way which justifies educational intervention and presents this intervention within a consensus framework of educational activity and teacher competence. An ideal way of achieving both aims is to predicate the need for assimilation on an interpretation of differences as deficits. From this stance, the processes of resocialisation, language tuition and correction, and dispersal could be argued for on the seemingly ‘good’ educational grounds that the culture, language and spatial concentration of black students not only impeded their educational advancement but also had the potential to affect negatively the educational progress of their white classmates.

Of course, this kind of reasoning was not new. To a greater or lesser extent it had been used to account for the relatively poorer academic performance and commitment to schooling shown by working class students in comparison with their middle class counterparts (see Baron, et al 1981). As Flude indicates, this ideologically inspired interpretation of differences allowed policymakers to avoid questions about the legitimacy of the educational enterprise or about the structural inequalities which lead to the development of distinctive socio-cultural environments. Instead, it advances a normative conception of culture – which is White and middle class – and all other cultures are valued according to the extent to which they approximate to this social ideal. Any deviation from this norm is then designated inferior, a barrier to educability and put down to inadequate socialization. Flude goes on to say:

The assumption is made that what goes on in school, particularly the knowledge, skills and attitudes that schools transmit, has some intrinsic value and those social class or ethnic cultures which are characterised as “deprived” do not have what it takes to adapt to the school’s academic culture and values (1974, p.23).

The means by which the cultural practices and traits which deviated from this social ideal were designated deficient and inferior is clearly illustrated in the contemporary UK and USA literature of the 1960s. Here it was the family rather than the structure of opportunities available to working class Blacks and Whites which was seen as the site of oppression and the cause of educational problems. As a result, there developed a number of interventionist policies which were oriented toward alleviating the alleged cultural/linguistic deficiencies in the (black) working class and their families. Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues, amongst others, provided the intellectual lead for such interventionist policies, of which Operation Headstart in the USA was probably the most infamous. The following passage taken from their book, Compensatory Education for Cultural Deprivation gives a clue to the type of pathological approach which they, along with Moynihan, Coleman and Passow, provided in this period:

In the present educational system in the United States (and elsewhere) we find a substantial group of students who do not make normal progress in their school learning. Predominantly, these are the students whose early experiences in the home, whose motivation for school learning and whose goals for the future are such as to handicap them in their schoolwork (1965, p.4).

Prescriptive analyses such as these avoided as a matter of routine the problematical and ideological nature of concepts such as ‘normality’ and laid the blame for any deviation from the (middle class) ideal fairly and squarely in the Black and/or working class home. This pathological interpretation was, moreover, adopted almost uncritically by urban educationists in the UK and provided the backcloth to the interventionist programmes advocated by Newsom, Plowden and others. But as critics of compensatory education pointed out, the cultural deprivation theorists succeeded in performing a significant ideological manoeuvre. By stressing the role of the family in the educative process they preserved as unproblematic the educational system and the economic, political and social context to which it both served and contributed. The name of the game in enhancing educability was attitude change either in the children (as the Newsom report suggested in 1963) or the parents (which the 1967 Plowden report emphasized).

Black students and their families in the UK were, of course, key targets for change in this ideological scenario. The pedagogic, curricular and organisational practices and orientation of the educational system were not open to debate. Instead, as the DES informed schools in 1965, the educational success of black migrant students was entirely dependent on the ‘realistic understanding of the adjustments they (i.e. the students) have to make’ (DES, 1965). Coming at a time when the cultural deprivation thesis was the fashion in the framing of UK social policy the DES advice to schools appeared to make ‘sound educational sense’ and as Jenny Williams found, schools adhered closely to the advice conveyed by central government. Teachers conceived the role of the school as a facilitating mechanism for the assimilation of black students, ‘putting over a certain set of values (Christian), a code of behaviour (middle class) and a set of academic and job aspirations in which white collar jobs have higher prestige than manual, clean jobs than dirty…’ (1967, p.237).

The point we want to stress here is that the translation of assimilationist imperatives into educational prescriptions and practices did not require the explicit use of ‘racial’, or more accurately, racist categorizations or concepts. Rather, non-racist (or deracialised) criteria were invoked as the legitimating grounds for action. Covertly, however, derogatory evaluations and classifications of groups ascribed in racial terms were made, as indeed they needed to be if assimilationist ideas were to be seen to ‘work’. And these allowed for the differential and discriminatory treatment of black students.

The key to this version of assimilationist ideology and an integral constituent of the nascent resocialisation programme was language tuition. As Bowker wrote in 1968: ‘“Linguistic integration”, it is accepted, is a necessary precondition of social integration. Certainly a child’s inability to speak English presents any school with a major obstacle, not only to the transmission of culture but to resocialisation as well’ (1969, p.75). His comments certainly reflected the propositions advanced regularly by Schools Council and DES documents and research reports of the period. In 1967, for instance, the Schools Council maintained that the teaching of English was important not only to enable the student ‘to communicate satisfactorily and adequately in an English-speaking community’ but also and ‘equally important … to provide through language the means whereby the child becomes part of his (sic) community – to provide the key to cultural and social assimilation’ (1967, pp.3–4). Nor did the DES dissent from this position. Reporting in 1971 it suggested that black students were at a continual disadvantage because their homes did little to ‘reduce the adverse effects of inadequacies of language. Many children go home to hear either their native tongue spoken or a form of pidgin English. Against a background of this kind the best intentions of the schools can easily be almost nullified’ (1971, p.65). Unless, of course, the intentions of the school had been geared toward bi-lingualism. Faced with a growing number of students who spoke either no English or a variant of Standard English distinguished by its own distinctive grammar and phonetics, the establishment ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Discrimination by Proxy: The Deracialisation of National Education Policy and Discourse (1960–1980)
• 2. Multicultural Education in Action: The Deracialisation of Policies in Inner London and Manchester
• 3. Institutional Racism: The Racialisation of Political and Educational Issues
• 4. The Origins of Antiracist Education in the UK
• 5. Local Education Authority Antiracist Policies
• 6. Antiracist Education Policies: A Critical Appraisal
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Author Index
• Subject Index