Racism, Identity and Modernity: Pluralism, moral antiracism and plastic ethnicity

Abstract

Liberal pluralism and moral/symbolic antiracism suggest very different approaches to the questions posed by racial and ethnic diversity in education. Unfortunately, neither adequately address the consequences of the decentring of the racist subject. Familiar, stable conceptions of race, class, gender and sexuality are no longer tenable in the context of a rapidly changing and cross-cutting interplay of fluid and contingent subject positions. The plastic ethnicity of contemporary social relations is no less deeply felt but it can take novel and unpredictable forms. If antiracism is genuinely to engage with the dynamics of identity and racism in education it must build on conceptual critiques of previous approaches while simultaneously addressing the lived experiences of teachers and students. © 1995, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.