1. SOCIOL 316: Critical Theories of Schooling
Week 9: Critical Race Theory
Lecturer: Dr Bruce Cohen

2. Females outperforming males at (almost) every level of education…
BUT such achievement does not translate into economic success in the same way as it does for males….
Arnot: environment has changed, yet male power is maintained.
Critical feminism (e.g. socialist, radical): schools a site of patriarchal power, perpetuating sex-gender ideology and reproducing the division of labour.
Last Week

3. This Week Evidence Traditional explanations Critical Race Theory
Group work: De Lissovoy reading
‘The New IQism’
Capital and Racial Domination

4. Under-achievement?
Source: UK Youth Cohort Study (Strand 2015)

5. Under-achievement? NZ school leavers with NCEA Level 2 or higher (2009-2015)
Source: NZ Stats (2016) (see

6. 25-34year olds with NZQF Level 4 or higher (1991-2014)

7. NZ school exclusions by ethnic group (2001-2015)
Source: Statistics NZ (2016) (see

8. Traditional Explanations
IQ differences
Single parent families
Language
Cultural deprivation
Social class and poverty

9. Background: Critical Race Theory (CRT)
Influences: Frantz Fanon, W. E. B. Du Bois, Antonio Gramsci, Jacques Derrida; Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Black Power and Chicano movements, and radical feminism.
Emerged from Critical Legal Studies (CLS) in the 1980s.
CRT challenges both the ‘reformist’ liberal approaches and ‘color-blind’ critical theories of schooling.
CRT focuses on the reproduction of white authority and racial power in schooling as well as the potential for the fundamental redress and racial emancipation.
Background: Critical Race Theory (CRT)

10. Small group work (20 minutes)
For De Lissovoy, what is ‘violation’ and why is it important for understanding colonial and racist practices?
Identity some of the ways in which the education system can disadvantage pupils on the basis of ethnic (or ‘racial’) difference.
In what ways does De Lissovoy suggest that students can potentially challenge such ‘violation’ in schools?
Small group work (20 minutes)

11. Critical Race Theory: Main Conceptions
Questions liberal notion of incremental (rather than sweeping changes) to address inequities;
Questions dominant ‘colour-blind’ ideology as the refusal to acknowledge race, racial differences, and racism.
‘Race’/’ethnic’ identities are social constructed yet made ‘real’ through institutions and discursive practices;
Racism is endemic in western society;
Racism has contributed to all contemporary manifestations of group advantage and disadvantage (including in education).

12. ‘The New IQism’ (Gillborn and Youdell 2001)
“You can’t give someone ability can you? You can’t achieve more than you’re capable of can you?”
(School teacher cited in G&Y’s study)
“‘[A]bility’ has come to be understood … as a proxy for common sense notions of ‘intelligence’ … ‘[A]bility’ is constituted in ways that provide for the systematic disadvantaging of particular socially defined groups, especially children of working-class and Black/African-Caribbean heritage. In this way the discredited and abhorrent ideologies of hereditarian IQism have come to exercise a powerful influence on the realities of contemporary education.”

13. Capital and Racial Domination
Racism and class hegemony have been renewed in line with the needs of neoliberal capital (De Lissovoy 2008). I.e.:
Highly standardized curriculum promotes a “business model” of education and preserves white, middle class privilege;
“Hyper-disciplinarity” within schools criminalizes (especially) minority youth;
Schools have been “re-segregated”, further isolating minorities;
Increased privatization of schooling has changed the general conception of the purpose of education.
Capital and Racial Domination

14. Abolitionist Approaches
Selected Bibliography:
De Lissovoy , N. (2008) Power, Crisis, and Education for Liberation: Rethinking Critical Pedagogy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gillborn, D. (2008) Racism and Education: Coincidence or Conspiracy? New York: Routledge.
Gillborn, D. and Youdell, D. (2001) ‘The New IQism: Intelligence, “Ability” and the Rationing of Education’, in in Demaine, J. (Ed.) Sociology of Education Today (pp ). Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Leonardo, Z. (2009) Race, Whiteness, and Education. New York: Routledge.
Next Week:
Abolitionist Approaches