Dialectics of race criticality: Studies in racial stratification and education

Abstract

This chapter delineates the criteria for a critical study of race in education. In particular, it poses the central problem of whiteness in education within a general critical study of race. In doing this, the chapter does not engage race paradigmatically. It is an affirmation of criticality that does not locate it in any particular school of thought and subject to its assumptions but instead recruits multiple positions on the matter of race. It is guided by the spirit and claim that race in education is a complex issue that requires a critical framework that testifies to this very complexity. It is an attempt to build a project around race criticality that is less possessive and more dialogic. First, it introduces the main frameworks for a critical study of race, mainly Critical Race Theory, Critical Theory of Race, and Race Critical Theory. Second, it frames race work as the dialectic between explaining racial oppression and projecting racial utopia. Third, it presents a synthesis between particularities in racial experience and the universal features of racial oppression. Finally, it ends by arguing that race scholars immerse ourselves in critically understanding the racial formation as a prerequisite to any attempt to abolish it. As such, the ultimate sign of race criticality is imagining the disappearance of one's craft, the eventual obsolescence of one's racial interventions.