Interrupting the interruption: neoliberalism and the challenges of an antiracist school

Abstract

The article examines a US public elementary bilingual, multicultural school that attempts to interrupt the reproduction of existing relations of dominance and subordination across a variety of differences. The school’s experiences illuminate the complex reality of schools as a site of struggle and compromise between at times contradictory interests, agents, and ideologies and the powerful forces in the (racial) state and civil society that make educating for social equality and justice difficult to accomplish. The article considers the concessions the school has made, and how and why, even in this most antiracist of schools, issues of race and racism persist.

Keywords:

• antiracism
• democratic education
• neoliberalism
• bilingual education
• multiculturalism
• counter-hegemonic education

Notes

1. Despite the strong correlation between ‘race’ and class position, we stress that we are not essentializing all Spanish-speakers as lower class, but rather presenting the different ends of the spectrums: White and non-White, English-speakers and Spanish-speakers, middle class and working/lower class.