Contracting race: writing, racism, and education

Abstract

This article presents the main terms of the racial contract, as they appear in the subcontracts of Mills’ theory, such as the spatial, epistemological, cognitive subcontracts. It is important to keep in mind that these subcontracts are by no means separate and represent analytical moments of the main contract. Furthermore, other than its institutional form, education is not a separate sphere from the racial contract. Finally, I end with the racial contract’s gaps to determine the possibility of its own demise, which requires the active signing off from the terms of the contract. That is, I sketch ideas about ways to counteract (i.e., counter-write) the racial contract as part of a corrective to the history that interpellates people of color as its targets. Both Whites and people of color have a stake in the rewriting of the contract, where in the end they are imagined as neither Black nor White but free. In this last portion, I spend some text on what Whites’ role may look like in signing off the contract, such as the case of white ‘race traitors’ within the white abolitionist proposal, recast as the ‘epistemological traitor’ in education.

Keywords:

• critical race theory
• multiculturalism/multicultural education
• philosophy of education
• poststructural/postmodern/critical theory
• urban education

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zeus Leonardo

Zeus Leonardo is Professor of Education and Affiliated Faculty of the Critical Theory Designated Emphasis at the University of California, Berkeley. He has produced several dozen articles and book chapters on critical educational theory, particularly around issues of race and class politics. His articles have appeared in the journals, Educational Researcher; Teachers College Record; and Discourse. Some of his essays include ‘The Souls of White Folk’, ‘Critical Social Theory and Transformative Knowledge’ and (with Ronald Porter) ‘Pedagogy of Fear: Towards a Fanonian Theory of “Safety” in Race Dialogue’. He is the author of Race Frameworks; Race, Whiteness and Education; and with Norton Grubb, Education and Racism. He has received several recognitions, including the Early Career Award from AERA’s Division G, the American Educational Studies Association’s R. Freeman Butts Endowed Lecture in 2011, and the Barbara Powell Humanities Lecture at the University of Regina, Canada, in 2014. He has delivered keynote lectures domestically and internationally, including England, Sweden, Australia, and Canada.