Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Anti-Black Racism as Fluid, Relentless, Individual and Systemic

ABSTRACT

Derrick Bell's thesis, that racism is a permanent feature of society, is frequently misrepresented by detractors as signaling a view of racism as monolithic—bold, obvious, and unchanging. This paper argues that critical race theory reveals a very different understanding of racism as relentless, yet fluid, and quick to morph depending on current circumstances. In this way, CRT offers a new perspective on the view that the more things change, the more they stay the same, the central theme for this issue of the Peabody Journal of Education. This paper focuses on two key issues where the last quarter century has seen considerable superficial change that appears progressive but masks a deeper reality of continued racial injustice: first, the changing contours of the black/white achievement gap in England, and, second, the continuing fascination on both sides of the Atlantic with notions of genetics and intelligence.

Notes

1 In a single paper, it is not possible to address the numerous ways in which different ethnic groups are positioned in relation to racist policies and practices over time. Elsewhere, for example, I have examined the idea of “model minorities” and the positioning of Indian and Chinese students in English education (Gillborn, 2008, Chapter 7). For more on the significance of anti-black racism see Dumas & ross (2016).

2 The concept of an “achievement gap” has been rightly criticized for the potentially negative and stereotyping effects of a language that can seem to identify a deficit in the people experiencing the inequity rather than a deficit of social justice itself. Gloria Ladson-Billings (2006) has argued for the term “education debt” as a means of highlighting the historical and structural forces that lie behind attainment inequities. Alternatively, it has been argued that “opportunity gap” is more appropriate (Carter & Welner, 2013; Milner, 2012). These are important criticisms, but I retain the original terminology to link with the historic debates over the 25-year time span of the analysis.

3 The accepted terminology has changed over the decades, as has the specificity of the data gathering. The first official inquiries, for example, spoke of “West Indian” children, but this later changed to “Black,” to “Afro-,” “African-Caribbean,” and “Black Caribbean.”

4 An odds ratio of 1 would indicate that white and black students were equally likely to achieve the benchmark, an OR greater than 1 shows that white students are more likely to achieve the benchmark, and an OR less than 1 shows that white students are less likely than their black peers to attain the benchmark.

5 This may sound like an absurd suggestion to some, but it is a little-known fact that a lower pass rate was set for boys to ensure their equal representation alongside girls when IQ tests were widely used to select children for entry to higher status “grammar” schools in post-WW2 England. Although such an adjustment was judged permissible in favor of boys, no such measures were taken in the interests of equity by race, class, and dis/ability (see Gillborn, 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This article builds on an analysis discussed previously in the Journal of Education Policy (Gillborn, 2016) and research conceived and conducted as part of a major two-year project, funded by the Society for Educational Studies, with my colleagues Sean Demack, Nicola Rollock, and Paul Warmington (Gillborn et al., 2016).

Notes on contributors

David Gillborn

David Gillborn is a professor of critical race studies and the director of the Centre for Research in Race & Education (CRRE) at the University of Birmingham, UK. He is founding editor of the peer-reviewed journal Race Ethnicity and Education and twice winner of the Society for Educational Studies' Book of the Year award. David received the Derrick Bell Legacy Award, from the Critical Race Studies in Education Association (CRSEA), for career accomplishments that demonstrate “personal courage and professional commitment to supporting and advocating race equality in education,” and was recently named to the Laureate Chapter of the Kappa Delta Pi international honor society.