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Abstract
In the context of the ongoing debate between critical race theory (CRT) and Marxism, I begin in this paper by examining the origins of CRT in Critical Legal Studies (CLS) in the United States. I go on to describe CRT's entry into education, first in that country, and then in the United Kingdom. I move on to a discussion of current debates between critical race theorists and Marxists, focusing on an analysis of arguments for the existence of abstract racial domination.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Thandeka Chapman, Richard Delgado, Dave Hill, Curry Malott and Glenn Rikowski for their helpful comments on this paper. As always, any inadequacies in the argument remain mine and mine alone.
Notes
1. For a more detailed analysis of CRT’s origins, see Cole (Citation2009a, chapter 1).
2. CRT is geographically limited. While Ladson-Billings (Citation2006, xii) states that ‘[i]n its adolescence CRT … takes on an international dimension‘, the only examples she gives, apart from the United States, are the United Kingdom and the suburbs of Paris. Gillborn (Citation2008, 1) has argued that, in addition to the United States and United Kingdom, CRT has relevance to Canada, Europe and Australasia, but that there is no reason why it cannot be adapted for other countries.
3. While the liberal paradigm has been, and remains, multicultural education, the hegemonic form of education in the United Kingdom has traditionally been monocultural education, an education that stresses so-called ‘British values’. For an analysis of monocultural, multicultural and antiracist education in the United Kingdom, see also Cole (Citation2011a, chapters 4 and 6); see also Grosvenor (Citation1997).
4. I hope that it goes without saying that the critique that follows is fully intended as a comradely engagement in our ongoing joint struggles against racism.
5. Such a designation follows the US tradition of the use of subdivisions of CRT, such as ‘LatCrit’ (to identify racism directed at Latina/Latino Americans) and TribalCrit (that directed at Native Americans).
6. I am using ‘social class’ here in its Marxist sense. A distinction needs to be made between Marxist and sociological and usages of ‘social class’. Sociologists such as Max Weber use the term to describe people according to status, occupation, and earnings. For Marxists, the working class consists of all those who need to sell their labor power to survive rather than living off the labor power of others (see Marx 1887 [1965]; see also Cole 2011a, chapter 1, Appendix 1). Both Weberian and Marxist definitions have their advantages. For example, the Weberian definition allows us to differentiate between the working conditions, including income, of those working in a given society at a given time, or over time. The Marxist definition reminds us that those who sell their labor power are all workers, even though within a given society and from one capitalist society to another, some are more privileged than others.
7. Timothy Brennan (cited in Postone Citation2009, 309–310) has asked of Postone: ‘[a]re we to take Time, Labor, and Social Domination as a work of philosophy … which both centrally concern economic issues of labor, inequality, civil society, and bourgeois property relations while never leaving the terrain of the necessary abstractions of speculative thought as such?’. Postone’s response is to recall Georg Lukàcs, one of the founders of western Marxism (a form of Marxism that gives primacy to abstract and philosophical areas of Marxism, as opposed to economic analysis). As Postone (2009, 310) puts it, Lukàcs, ‘appropriated and analyzed philosophic questions with reference to a theory of capitalist social forms that made them plausible, historically and culturally’, and ‘opened the possibility of viewing philosophy neither idealistically – as the result of some mysterious act by which great minds catapult themselves out of the ephemera of their own time and space – nor, however, in reductionist material terms’.
8. Preston’s degree of abstraction, as with Postone, renders his arguments difficult to follow. I will interpret them as best and as honestly as I can.
9. Thandeka Chapman (her comments on this paper) has stated that Preston’s listed activities describe ‘US culture’ in general, rather than class-specific activities. As far as the United Kingdom is concerned, the activities do describe, I would argue, predominantly working-class pursuits. Here I am using ‘working class’ in its sociological sense.
10. In Preston’s text this appears as ‘(Cole, 2007, p. 127)’. In fact, the book in question was published in 2008. It is listed in the References at the end of this paper as Cole (2008).
11. I have added ‘overwhelmingly’, since racism can entail the ascription of ‘seemingly positive’ attributes to a given ‘ethnic group’. Such ascription will probably ultimately have racist implications. For example the subtext of describing a particular group as having a strong culture might be that ‘they are swamping our culture’. This form of racism can be directed at people of South Asian origin in the United Kingdom who are assumed to have close-knit families and to be hard working, and therefore in a position to ‘take over’ our neighborhoods. Frank Wu (cited in BAMN 2001) makes similar comments with respect to the ‘model minority’ myth as applied to Asian Americans. He argues that ‘model minority’ is a false stereotype and one should be suspicious of any stereotype no matter how positive because of what it can conceal. For example, the myth causes a backlash for Asian Americans. Describing Asian Americans as hard working very quickly becomes ‘unfair competition’. Also Wu notes that when Asian Americans are praised for having strong families and strong family values – nuclear families that stay together – they are then criticized for being ‘too clannish, too ethnic, too insular, not mixing enough, self-segregating’ (cited in BAMN 2001). Robert Chang (2000, 359) notes another negative response that results from the ‘model minority’ myth: ‘when we try to make our problems known, our complaints of discrimination or calls for remedial action are seen as unwarranted and inappropriate’. As Chang (2000, 360) concludes, ‘the danger of the model minority myth [is that it] renders the oppression of Asian Americans invisible’. Benji Chang and Wayne Au (2007–2008, 15–16) summarize the racism inherent in the ‘model minority’ myth, giving a number of examples. The myth masks: the diversity and ethnic inequity within the Asian American communities; the class divide, sometimes rooted in specific immigration histories; economic circumstance, such as larger household size and residence in high-cost parts of the United States; racism and class exploitation; and attributing success and failure of other minority ethnic groups to cultural or ‘racial’ weaknesses. With respect to this last point, other minority ethnic groups are interpellated on the lines of Asian Americans made it, why cannot you (BAMN 2001). In addition, attributing something seemingly positive – ‘they are good rappers’ or they are good at sport – might have implications that ‘they are not good’ at other things. In education this is something that facilitates the underachievement of working-class UK African-Caribbean boys and US African-American boys who are thought to be (by some teachers) less academically able, and ‘problems’. Stereotypes and stratifications of ethnic groups are invariably problematic and, at least potentially, racist.
12. It should be pointed out that Preston has advocated the abolition of whiteness elsewhere (for example, Preston 2007).
13. I am not making the case that CRT per se is counter-productive as an educational tool. In putting anti-racist issues squarely on the table, it implicitly and explicitly commends antiracist educational practice. The problem, however, is that, unlike Marxism, CRT provides no specific solutions (see Cole 2009b, 117–118).
14. For an extended analysis, see Cole (2011a, chapter 6).