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Five or more higher grade (A*–C) GCSEs (any subject) boys by ethnic origin and FSM status, England 2006. Source: DfES (2006a, table 32).
Source publication
Adopting an approach shaped by critical race theory (CRT) the paper proposes a radical analysis of the nature of race inequality in the English educational system. Focusing on the relative achievements of White school leavers and their Black (African Caribbean) peers, it is argued that long standing Black/White inequalities have been obscured by a...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... statistics reveal that most groups in poverty achieve relatively poor results regardless of ethnic background. As Figure 1 illustrates, the achievement gap between White students in poverty [in receipt of free school meals (FSMs)] and more affluent Whites [non-FSMs (N-FSMs)] is more than three times bigger than the gaps between different ethnic groups who are equally disadvantaged: there is a 32 percentage point gap between N-FSM and FSM White boys, compared with a 9.7 percentage point gap between FSM White boys and the most successful of the Black FSM boys (categorized as Black African). And yet it is the race gap that is highlighted both in the Daily Mail story (earlier), which warns of BNP mobilization, and in the attendant story in the Times Educational Supplement. ...
Context 2
... the previous section I noted how GCSE results for 16 year-olds were reported in the British media as revealing a situation where, in the words of the Daily Mail newspaper ''White, working-class boys have the worst GCSE results'' (13 January 2007, original emphasis). It is clear from the data summarized in Figure 1 that the inequality of attainment between ''White British'' boys in receipt of FSMs and their White peers who do not receive this benefit (N-FSMs) is considerably larger than the difference between White and Black FSM boys. Nevertheless the Daily Mail story accurately (if selectively) reported the statistics: ...
Context 3
... do not, however, call for the eradication of the gross inequalities that shape the US social and economic fabric; inequalities which would seem to lend empirical support to some of the most widely believed ''conspiracy theories'' in the study. Almost nine out of 10 respondents agreed that African Americans are harassed by police because of their race and that the criminal justice system is not fair (Parsons et al. 1999, table 1, 211-212). ...
Similar publications
This chapter is the first of two historical sociology chapters that use genealogy to historicize the meanings of freedom, Black British identity and Black womanhood presented in the previous chapters. As an ontology of the present, the aim of these two chapters is to identify the conjunctures informing the changing temporalities of what we have ide...
Adopting an approach shaped by critical race theory (CRT) the paper proposes a radical analysis of the nature of race inequality in the English educational system. Focusing on the relative achievements of White school leavers and their Black (African Caribbean) peers, it is argued that long standing Black/White inequalities have been obscured by a...
Citations
... Helga links difficulties in abstract thinking skills to the Arabic language, aligning with a "blaming the victim orientation", an important facet of deficit thinking (Davis & Museus, 2019). Helga's deficit thinking not only masks systemic racism by disregarding racist structures and policies (Gillborn, 2008;Moffitt et al., 2019), but also perpetuates racist ideologies related to language. Racialized hierarchies of languages represent manifestations of these ideologies, where languages and their speakers are assessed and valued based on their association with racially majoritized groups and/or whiteness (Von Esch et al., 2020). ...
... Boys of mixed heritage experience the same institutional racism in the criminal justice system that leads to disproportionally anomalous treatment and outcomes. In other words, they are similarly pathologised by many aspects of Whiteness and White society (Gilbourne, 2008;James, 2014). ...
... CRT starts with the premise that society is institutionally and structurally racist, that racism has a structural impact on Black people's lives and that White people and Whiteness are net beneficiaries of this (Gilbourne, 2008(Gilbourne, , 2015. This perspective presents key principles to provide a prism through which to understand and hear the experiences of Black people in society (Dixson, 2018). ...
... As in my main analyses, income and its square were not significant in these cases. 12 Alongside results pertaining to education and nonlinearity, these models also point to a higher prevalence of conspiratorial beliefs among African American respondents compared to white respondents-a pattern that aligns with some past findings (Oliver and Wood 2014) and that is likely tied to historical and contemporary processes of institutional exclusion, discrimination, and inequality (Burton 2023;Gillborn 2008;Guignion 2023;Jaiswal and Halkitis 2019). Focused and careful research regarding the ethnoracial dynamics of conspiracy beliefs unfortunately remains scarce, however, and sociological frameworks likely have much to offer in this regard (see Waters 1997). ...
Prior survey research has mostly centered on the psychological dispositions and political leanings associated with conspiracy beliefs rather than underlying and potentially consequential status dynamics. Drawing on prior scholarship and recent national survey data, I analyze the social patterning of conspiracy beliefs and their variations by several status attributes. Notably, and rather than the typical assumption that such beliefs are mostly held by those of lower education, my findings point clearly to a bimodal (U-shaped) distribution by socioeconomic status. Specifically, and unique to my results, there exists a cluster of graduate-degree-holding white men who display a penchant for conspiracy beliefs. Further analyses highlight important variation between specific beliefs, with distinctly taboo beliefs being exceptionally popular among those in this highly educated group—a pattern corroborated with additional data sources. I conclude by discussing potential mechanisms and avenues that future sociological work on conspiracy beliefs might consider.
... Academic achievement has been associated with a number of factors including schooling, students' personal traits, and the academic environment of tertiary institutions (e.g., departmental policies, staff attitudes and behavior). For this study, "Black students" are undergraduates who identified with family origins in Black Africa and/or the Caribbean (Gillborn, 2008). Our research question was: what are the qualitative differences in the ways Black students experience academic achievement? ...
Historically White universities in Britain have a long history of misrecognizing
the experiences of Black students and rendering their struggles and aspirations a matter of scrutiny. More recently an intense higher education policy focus has been placed on addressing outcome differentials between various ethnoracial groups. Little however is known about how minoritised groups of students experience and understand academic achievement. In our phenomenographic study Black students’ ways of experiencing academic achievement vary from broad expectations of gaining good grades to developing as a person and contributing to the society. Seen through a relational lens, the results can be utilized to identify the aspects of university life that warrant further attention to improve Black students’ experiences during their studies and achieve equitable outcomes
... Moreover, addressing systemic issues, such as redistricting policies and school zoning practices that perpetuate segregation, is imperative [69][70][71]. Ultimately, a comprehensive and collaborative approach involving policymakers, educators, and communities is necessary to dismantle the structural barriers contributing to the Black-White gap in school quality and ensure equitable educational opportunities for all students [72][73][74]. The observed disparities in the returns of educational attainment for racial and ethnic minorities can be attributed to the pervasive influence of racism and social stratification hindering the progress of racialized groups. ...
... The Lotus Flower is a "self-sacrificing, servile" Asian woman portrayed as innocent yet still hypersexual, a "prostitute with a heart of gold" (Shimizu, 2007, p. 59-60), while the Invisible Threat was constructed during the Vietnam War to represent Asian men as invisible yet everywhere and always threatening Western values (Lee, 1999). These stereotypes perpetuate the Orientalist myth that Asia is a particularly dangerous and sexually un-bounded place (Said, 2003) and invoke the specter of the foreign sex trafficker (Doezema, 2010). ...
Discourses surrounding similar forms of transactional sex in the United States and Europe, Africa, and East Asia exemplify the ways that sexual transactions serve as affectively charged inflection points at which gendered, racialized, and classed forms of power collide. Deconstructing academic discourses and affective strategies surrounding sugar arrangements in the United States and Europe, blessed relationships in Africa, and compensated dating in East Asia uncovers the ways that cultural norms surrounding sex, gender, and money serve to uphold imperialist, patriarchal, racist hierarchies. Outlying examples of intersectional discourses provide a roadmap for challenging these dominant power structures in the academic literature.
... Whereas relatively many studies exist on ethno-racial equality politics in the United Kingdom (e.g. Bleich 2003;Gillborn 2008;Solomos 1993), so far little work has focused on policymaking as regards ethno-racial (in)equality in continental Europe (see : Erel, Murji, and Nahaboo 2016). As a federal state, in which the competencies for employment policy are divided between the federal and regional levels of governance, Belgium makes for an interesting case to study within-state variation and the multilevel governance of ethno-racial inequalities. ...
This article analyzes the framing of ethno-racial inequalities within policy discourses. In particular, it sets out a typology to characterise different policy frames concerning ethno-racial (in)equality within Belgian employment policies. The typology conceptualises ‘ethno-racial (in)equality policy frames’ along two dimensions, distinguishing between colour-blind and colour-conscious policy frames, on the one hand, and redistributive and non-redistributive policy frames, on the other hand. By bringing these two axes together, the typology allows highlighting how policy frames combine distinct ideas about the recognition of race or ethnicity and economic redistribution. The article builds on empirical data from a study on Belgian employment policies. Through a critical frame analysis of policy documents, it shows how the prevailing representations of ethno-racial (in)equality in the policy discourses of the federal, Flemish, and Walloon governments in Belgium can be captured by diverging types of policy frames. In this way, the article demonstrates how the typology can serve as an analytical tool for understanding and comparing the framing of ethno-racial inequalities across political-institutional contexts and provide new insights into how policy frames are positioned with regard to two important dimensions of social justice: recognition and redistribution.
... These three factors (motherhood, tooth cavities, and lifestyles) allow us to think that the School Vulnerability Index imagines culture as a recognizable influence on those natural conditions a student is born into, and, at the same time, that nature sets a limit for cultural and social potentialities (Duster 2003;Gillborn 2008Gillborn , 2010Gillborn , 2016Roberts 2012;Riberi et al. 2021;Rosiek and Kinslow 2016). This way of thinking frames particular conditions to explain differences in school achievement, provides reasons to normalize behaviors, justifies discourses of intervention, and promotes neoconservative agendas about families and children (Matus 2015). ...
In this paper, we explore the active production of difference (as lacking) through the School Vulnerability Index and the School Inclusion Law in Chile. Through a diffractive reading, we present the contradiction between these two policies. While discriminatory knowledge about school subjects is produced in the School Vulnerability Index as truth and common knowledge for the school community, the School Inclusion Law is designed to solve practices of discrimination at school. We contend that, to address issues of segregation in school settings, we have to question the kind of knowledge we need for a more democratic and just future. As a result, we trouble the separation of biological, social, and cultural realms on which instruments are based to continue segregation practices as a natural way to frame inclusion policies in educational contexts. We argue that both policies and instruments play a decisive role in the continuity of a culture of segregation in a neoliberal school tradition.
... While statistics can be useful to understand the effects of policy, Gillborn (2008) warns against 'gap talk', which is discourse that makes assertions about policy success measures that mask deep seated racial inequality. This is relevant to the Closing the Gap policy agenda that currently prevails in Indigenous Affairs. ...
‘The numbers speak for themselves’ is a phrase often linked to statistics supporting claims about the success (or otherwise) of policies. Quantitative data are usually viewed as objective and somehow exempt from the same critique that qualitative data faces. QuantCrit theory challenges these assumptions by considering how structural racism impacts on the use of statistics in research and evaluation. This paper applies QuantCrit to the Indigenous higher education policy context in the Northern Territory (NT), Australia. It aims to elicit hidden assumptions within the use of statistics to measure the success of Indigenous higher education policies in the NT. We explore the historical utility of Indigenous higher education student statistics for policy evaluation in the NT. We argue that quantitative success measures should always be considered within the context of the structural racism that shapes policy goals. We conclude by highlighting that quantitative data can be useful for Indigenous higher education policy evaluation and research, but that alternative views for measuring policy success must be considered.
... Furthermore, Bhopal (2020) argues that universities are institutionally complacent in reproducing the status quo, which is White dominated. Therefore, the issue of race inequality within universities has become a permanent feature of the United Kingdom's educational system, and replicates the rigid social stratification of society (Gillborn, 2008), even when contemporary barriers to equality are removed, discrimination remains (Phillips, 2011). ...
This paper explores the long-standing attainment gap between Black male students relative to other student populations, within Higher Education Institutions in the United Kingdom. This paper attempts to develop a contextual understanding of the parallel relationship between the social and academic culture at universities in the UK, as well as identifies the barriers which affect Black male students’ academic engagement. The purpose of this study is to answer the questions, “What is the Black male student experience at one university in the UK?” and “Which attitudes and practices at this university promote diversity and inclusivity and which hinder this?” The research was conducted via interview to gain a better understanding and acknowledgement of the multiple truths grounding this subject matter (Jones, 2015). The main participants were four Black male undergraduate home students, and four White academic staff members, at a University in the United Kingdom. This paper concludes by recognising that the meanings and attitudes attached to the attainment gap vary significantly. The key recommendations identified were the importance of raising Black representation within the staff, as well as developing a racially conscious atmosphere, in order to develop a sense of inclusion and belonging within the Black male student population.
