Introduction to the Politics of Anti-Racism Education: In Search of Strategies for Transformative Learning

Abstract

Politics of Anti-Racism Education is a book that engages the tough questions of anti-racism practice: How do we recognize anti-racism when there is no prescription or recipe for transformative practices? How does anti-racism resist the imperial divisive practices at various sites of difference while simultaneously amplifying the saliency of race? How do anti-racism educators challenge and support each other to do the ongoing work of anti-racism to guard our work from being consumed by hegemonic status quo agendas? What does it mean to name that which is incommensurable -- experiences of race and racism? These are among some of the questions the contributors in this book engaged both in dialogue in the classroom, as well as in the chapters presented here. In sharing our stories as framed through the counter-narrative of anti-racism, our purpose is threefold: to hold anti-racism policies, practices, and theorists accountable to the necessity for transformation in anti-racism work; to contribute to a community for those who want to do the tough work of anti-racism education; and to challenge the urge among those who want to move beyond questions of race to reconsider dismissing racism as a thing of the past. We argue that there is a need to retool anti-racism and challenge the epistemological gatekeepers who want us to confine anti-racism discourse to the trash bins of history. This book pursues a crucial search for strategies for engaging a critical anti-racism education for transformative learning. Contributors in this collection generate important enquiries into the praxis of anti-racism education, working through conversations, contestations, and emotions as present(ed) and live(d) in a year long graduate course, The Principles of Anti-Racism Education. The chapters present multiple journeys -- journeys of decolonization -- of those who are coming into a critical anti-racism praxis; they speak to the politics of anti-racism education as a dialectic of struggles and desires for transgressive learning spaces that are open to difference. Writing from various subject locations, authors come to engage anti-racism education in the discursive fields of Policy and Curriculum; Media Representations; Ally-ship, Coalition Building, and Representation; and Autoethnography. Throughout the collection, contemporary educational issues are situated within personal, political, historical, and philosophical conversations in relation to the challenges and possibilities for students, educators, staff, administrators, policy makers, and community members to engage in critical anti-racism work.