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Toward a Critical Race Theory
of Education
GLORIA L A DSON-BIL L INGS AND
WILLI A M F. TATE IV
University of Wisconsin
This article asserts that despite the salience of race in U.S. society, as a topic of scholarly
inquiry, it remains untheorized. The article argues for a critical race theoretical perspective in
education analogous to that of critical race theory in legal scholarship by developing three
p r o p o s i t i o n s : (1) race continues to be significant in the United States; (2) U.S. society is based
on property rights rather than human rights; and (3) the intersection of race and property cre-
ates an analytical tool for understanding inequity. The article concludes with a look at the
limitations of the current multicultural paradigm.
The presentation of truth in new forms provokes resistance, confounding those
committed to accepted measures for determining the quality and validity of
statements made and conclusions reached, and making it difficult for them to
respond and adjudge what is acceptable.
—Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well
I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high inde -
pendence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in
which you this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of
justice, liberty, prosperity and independence bequeathed by your fathers, not by
me . . .
—Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom
In 1991 social activist and education critic Jonathan Kozol delineated the
great inequities that exist between the schooling experiences of white mid-
dle-class students and those of poor African-American and Latino students.
And, while Kozol’s graphic descriptions may prompt some to question how
it is possible that we allow these “savage inequalities,” this article suggests
that these inequalities are a logical and predictable result of a racialized
society in which discussions of race and racism continue to be muted and
m a r g i n a l i z e d .1
T e a c h e r s C o l l e g e R e c o r d V o l u m e 9 7 , N u m b e r 1 , F a l l 1 9 9 5
Copyright ©by Teachers College, Columbia University
0161–4681–95/9701/047$1.50/0
In this article we attempt to theorize race and use it as an analytic tool
for understanding school inequity.2We begin with a set of propositions
about race and property and their intersections. We situate our discussion
in an explication of critical race theory and attempt to move beyond the
boundaries of the educational research literature to include arguments
and new perspectives from law and the social sciences. In doing so, we
acknowledge and are indebted to a number of scholars whose work crosses
disciplinary boundaries.3We conclude by exploring the tensions between
our conceptualization of a critical race theory in education and the educa-
tional reform movement identified as multicultural education.
UNDERSTANDING RACE AND PROPERTY
Our discussion of social inequity in general, and school inequity in particu-
lar, is based on three central propositions:4
1 . Race continues to be a significant factor in determining inequity in
the United States.
2 . U.S. society is based on property rights.
3 . The intersection of race and property creates an analytic tool
through which we can unde rstand social (and, consequently,
school) inequity.
In this section we expand on these propositions and provide supporting
“meta-propositions” to make clear our line of reasoning and relevant appli-
cation to educational or school settings.
RACE AS FACTOR IN INEQUITY
The first proposition—that race continues to be a significant factor in
determining inequity in the United States—is easily documented in the sta-
tistical and demographic data. Hacker’s look at educational and life
chances such as high school dropout rates, suspension rates, and incarcera-
tion rates echoes earlier statistics of the Children’s Defense Fund.5H o w-
ever, in what we now call the postmodern era, some scholars question the
usefulness of race as a category.
Omi and Winant argue that popular notions of race as either an ideolog-
ical construct or an objective condition have epistemological limitations.6
Thinking of race strictly as an ideological construct denies the reality of a
racialized society and its impact on “raced” people in their everyday lives.
On the other hand, thinking of race solely as an objective condition denies
the problematic aspects of race—how do we decide who fits into which
48 Teachers College Record
racial classifications? How do we categorize racial mixtures? Indeed, the
world of biology has found the concept of race virtually useless. Geneticist
Cavalli-Sforza asserts that “human populations are sometimes known as
ethnic groups, or ‘races.’ . . . They are hard to define in a way that is both
rigorous and useful because human beings group themselves in a bewilder-
ing array of sets, some of them overlapping, all of them in a state of flux.”7
Nonetheless, even when the concept of race fails to “make sense,” we
continue to employ it. According to Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison:
Race has become metaphorical—a way of referring to and disguising
forces, events, classes, and expressions of social decay and economic
division far more threatening to the body politic than biological “race”
ever was.
Expensively kept, economically unsound, a spurious and useless politi-
cal asset in election campaigns, racism is as healthy today as it was dur-
ing the Enlightenment. It seems that is has a utility far beyond econ-
omy, beyond the sequestering of classes from one another, and has
assumed a metaphorical life so completely embedded in daily dis-
course that it is perhaps more necessary and more on display than
ever before.8
Despite the problematic nature of race, we offer as a first meta-proposition
that race, unlike gender and class, remains untheorized.9Over the past few
decades theoretical and epistemological considerations of gender have pro-
l i f e r a t e d .1 0 Though the field continues to struggle for legitimacy in aca-
deme, interest in and publications about feminist theories abound. At the
same time, Marxist and Neo-Marxist formulations about class continue to
merit consideration as theoretical models for understanding social
i n e q u i t y .1 1 We recognize the importance of both gender- and class-based
analyses while at the same time pointing to their shortcomings vis-à-vis race.
Roediger points out that “the main body of writing by White Marxists in the
United States has both ‘naturalized’ whiteness and oversimplified race.”1 2
Omi and Winant have done significant work in providing a sociological
explanation of race in the United States. They argue that the paradigms of
race have been conflated with notions of ethnicity, class, and nation
b e c a u s e
theories of race—of its meaning, its transformations, the significance
of racial events—have never been a top priority in social science. In
the U.S., although the “founding fathers” of American sociology . . .
were explicitly concerned with the state of domestic race relations,
racial theory remained one of the least developed fields of sociological
i n q u i r y .1 3
Critical Race Theory 49
To mount a viable challenge to the dominant paradigm of ethnicity (i.e.,
we are all ethnic and, consequently, must assimilate and rise socially the
same way European Americans have), Omi and Winant offer a racial for-
mation theory that they define as “the sociohistorical process by which
racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed and destroyed. . . .
[It] is a process of historically situated projects in which human bodies and
social structures are represented and organized.” Further, they link “racial
formation to the evolution of hegemony, the way in which society is orga-
nized and ruled.” Their analysis suggests that “race is a matter of both
social structure and cultural representation.”1 4
By arguing that race remains untheorized, we are not suggesting that
other scholars have not looked carefully at race as a powerful tool for
explaining social inequity, but that the intellectual salience of this theoriz-
ing has not been systematically employed in the analysis of educational
inequality. Thus, like Omi and Winant, we are attempting to uncover or
decipher the social-structural and cultural significance of race in educa-
tion. Our work owes an intellectual debt to both Carter G. Woodson and
W. E. B. Du Bois, who, although marginalized by the mainstream academic
community, used race as a theoretical lens for assessing social inequity.1 5
Both Woodson and Du Bois presented cogent arguments for considering
race as the central construct for understanding inequality. In many ways
our work is an attempt to build on the foundation laid by these scholars.1 6
Briefly, Woodson, as far back as 1916, began to establish the legitimacy of
race (and, in particular, African Americans) as a subject of scholarly
i n q u i r y .1 7 As founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and
History and editor of its Journal of Negro History, Woodson revolutionized
the thinking about African Americans from that of pathology and inferior-
ity to a multitextured analysis of the uniqueness of African Americans and
their situation in the United States. His most notable publication, The Mis -
education of the Negro, identified the school’s role in structuring inequality
and demotivating African-American students:
The same educational process which inspires and stimula tes the
oppressor w ith the thought that he is everything and has accom-
plished everything worthwhile, depresses and crushes at the same time
the spark of genius in the Negro by making him feel that his race does
not amount to much and never will measure up to the standards of
other peoples.1 8
Du Bois, perhaps better known among mainstream scholars, profoundly
impacted the thinking of many identified as “other” by naming a “double
consciousness” felt by African Americans. According to Du Bois, the
African American “ever feels his two-ness—an American, A Negro; two
50 Teachers College Record
souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings.”1 9 In a current biography of
Du Bois, Lewis details the intellectual impact of this concept:
It was a revolutionary concept. It was not just revolutionary; the con-
cept of the divided self was profoundly mystical, for Du Bois invested
this double consciousness with a capacity to see incomparably further
and deeper. The African-American—seventh son after the Egyptian
and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian—pos-
sessed the gift of “second sight in this American world,” an intuitive
faculty (prelogical, in a sense) enabling him/her to see and say things
about American society that possessed a heightened moral validity.
Because he dwelt equally in the mind and heart of his oppressor as in
his own beset psyche, the African American embraced a vision of the
commonweal at its best.2 0
As a prophetic foreshadowing of the centrality of race in U.S. society, Du
Bois reminded us that “the problem of the twentieth century is the prob-
lem of the color line.”2 1
The second meta-proposition that we use to support the proposition that
race continues to be significant in explaining inequity in the United States
is that class- and gender-based explanations are not powerful enough to
explain all of the difference (or variance) in school experience and perfor-
mance. Although both class and gender can and do intersect race, as
stand-alone variables they do not explain all of the educational achieve-
ment differences apparent between whites and students of color. Indeed,
there is some evidence to suggest that even when we hold constant for
class, middle-class African-American students do not achieve at the same
level as their white counterparts.2 2 Although Oakes reports that “in aca-
demic tracking, . . . poor and minority students are most likely to be
placed at the lowest levels of the school’s sorting system,”
2 3
we are less
clear as to which factor—race or class—is causal. Perhaps the larger ques-
tion of the impact of race on social class is the more relevant one. Space
limitations do not permit us to examine that question.
Issues of gender bias also figure in inequitable schooling.
2 4
F e m a l e s
receive less attention from teachers, are counseled away from or out of
advanced mathematics and science courses, and although they receive
better grades than their male counterparts, their grades do not translate
into advantages in college admission and/or the work place.
2 5
But examination of class and gender, taken alone or together, do not
account for the extraordinarily high rates of school dropout, suspension,
explusion, and failure among African-American and Latino males.
2 6
I n
the case of suspension, Majors and Billson argue that many African-
American males are suspended or expelled from school for what they
Critical Race Theory 51
termed “non-contact violations”—wearing banned items of clothing such
as hats and jackets, or wearing these items in an “unauthorized” manner,
such as backwards or inside out.
2 7
The point we strive to make with this meta-proposition is not that class
and gender are insignificant, but rather, as West suggests, that “race mat-
ters,” and, as Smith insists, “blackness matters in more detailed ways.”
2 8
THE P R OPER T Y ISS U E
Our second proposition, that U.S. society is based on property rights, is
best explicated by examining legal scholarship and interpretations of
rights. To develop this proposition it is important to situate it in the con-
text of critical race theory. Monaghan reports that “critical race legal
scholarship developed in the 1970s, in part because minority scholars
thought they were being overlooked in critical legal studies, a better-
known movement that examines the way law encodes cultural norms.”
2 9
However, Delgado argues that despite the diversity contained within the
critical race movement, there are some shared features:
an assumption that racism is not a series of isolated acts, but is
endemic in American life, deeply ingrained legally, culturally, and
even psychologically;
a call for a reinterpretation of civil-rights law “in light of its ineffectu-
ality, showing that laws to remedy racial injustices are often under-
mined before they can fulfill their promise”;
a challenge to the “traditional claims of legal neutrality, objectivity,
color-blindness, and meritocracy as camouflages for the self-interest
of dominant groups in American society”;
an insistence on subjectivity and the reformulation of legal doctrine
to reflect the perspectives of those who have experienced and been
victimized by racism firsthand;
the use of stories or first-person accounts.
3 0
In our analysis we add another aspect to this critical paradigm that dis-
entangles democracy and capitalism. Many discussions of democracy con-
flate it with capitalism despite the fact that it is possible to have a demo-
cratic government with an economic system other than capitalism. Dis-
cussing the two ideologies as if they were one masks the pernicious
effects of capitalism on those who are relegated to its lowest ranks. Tradi-
tional civil rights approaches to solving inequality have depended on the
“rightness” of democracy while ignoring the structural inequality of capi-
t a l i s m .
3 1
However, democracy in the U.S. context was built on capitalism.
52 Teachers College Record
In the early years of the republic only capitalists enjoyed the franchise.
Two hundred years later when civil rights leaders of the 1950s and 1960s
built their pleas for social justice on an appeal to the civil and human
rights, they were ignoring the fact that the society was based on p r o p e r t y
r i g h t s.
3 2
An example from the 1600s undescores the centrality of property
in the Americas from the beginning of European settlement:
When the Pilgrims came to New England they too were coming not
to vacant land but to territory inhabited by tribes of Indians. The
governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, created
the excuse to take Indian land by declaring the area legally a “vac-
uum.” The Indians, he said, had not “subdued” the land, and there-
fore had only a “natural” right to it, but not a “civil right.” A “natural
right” did not have legal standing.
3 3
Bell examined the events leading up to the Constitution’s develop-
ment and concluded that there exists a tension between property rights
and human rights.
3 4
This tension was greatly exacerbated by the presence
of African peoples as slaves in America. The purpose of the government
was to protect the main object of society—property. The slave status of
most African Americans (as well as women and children) resulted in
their being objectified as property. And, a government constructed to
protect the rights of property owners lacked the incentive to secure
human rights for the African American.
3 5
According to Bell “the concept of individual rights, unconnected to
property rights, was totally foreign to these men of property; and thus,
despite two decades of civil rights gains, most Blacks remain disadvan-
taged and deprived because of their race.”
3 6
The grand narrative of U.S. history is replete with tensions and struggles
over property—in its various forms. From the removal of Indians (and
later Japanese Americans) from the land, to military conquest of the Mexi-
c a n s ,
37
to the construction of Africans as property,
3 8
the ability to define,
possess, and own property has been a central feature of power in America.
We do not suggest that other nations have not fought over and defined
themselves by property and landownership.
3 9
However, the contradiction
of a reified symbolic individual juxtaposed tdo the reality of “real estate”
means that emphasis on the centrality of property can be disguised. Thus,
we talk about the importance of the individual, individual rights, and civil
rights while social benefits accrue largely to property owners.
40
Property relates to education in explicit and implicit ways. Recurring
discussions about property tax relief indicate that more affluent commu-
nities (which have higher property values, hence higher tax assessments)
resent paying for a public school system whose clientele is largely non-
white and poor.
4 1
In the simplest of equations, those with “better” prop-
Critical Race Theory 53
erty are entitled to “better” schools. Kozol illustrates the disparities:
“Average expenditures per pupil in the city of New York in 1987 were
some $5,500. In the highest spending suburbs of New York (Great Neck
or Manhasset, for example, on Long Island) funding levels rose above
$11,000, with the highest districts in the state at $15,000.”
4 2
But the property differences manifest themselves in other ways. For
example, curriculum represents a form of “intellectual property.”
4 3
T h e
quality and quantity of the curriculum varies with the “property values”
of the school. The use of a critical race story
4 4
appropriately represents
this notion:
The teenage son of one of the authors of this article was preparing
to attend high school. A friend had a youngster of similar age who
also was preparing to enter high school. The boys excitedly poured
over course offerings in their respective schools’ catalogues. One
boy was planning on attending school in an upper-middle-class white
community. The other would be attending school in an urban,
largely African-American district. The difference between the course
offerings as specified in the catalogues was striking. The boy attend-
ing the white, middle-class school had his choice of many foreign
languages—Spanish, French, German, Latin, Greek, Italian, Chi-
nese, and Japanese. His mathematics offerings included algebra,
geometry, trigonometry, calculus, statistics, general math, and busi-
ness math. The science department at this school offered biology,
chemistry, physics, geology, science in society, biochemistry, and
general science. The other boy’s curriculum choices were not nearly
as broad. His foreign language choices were Spanish and French.
His mathematics choices were general math, business math, and
algebra (there were no geometry or trig classes offered). His science
choices were general science, life science, biology, and physical sci-
ence. The differences in electives were even more pronounced, with
the affluent school offering courses such as Film as Literature, Asian
Studies, computer programming, and journalism. Very few elective
courses were offered at the African-American school, which had no
band, orchestra, or school newspaper.
The availability of “rich” (or enriched) intellectual property delimits
what is now called “opportunity to learn”
4 5
—the presumption that along
with providing educational “standards”
4 6
that detail what students should
know and be able to do, they must have the material resources that sup-
port their learning. Thus, intellectual property must be undergirded by
“real” property, that is, science labs, computers and other state-of-the-art
technologies, appropriately certified and prepared teachers. Of course,
54 Teachers College Record
Kozol demonstrated that schools that serve poor students of color are
unlikely to have access to these resources and, consequently, students will
have little or no opportunity to learn despite the attempt to mandate
educational standards.
4 7
C R I T I C A L R A C E T H E O R Y A N D E D U C A T I O N
With this notion of property rights as a defining feature of the society, we
proceed to describe the ways that the features of critical race theory men-
tioned in the previous section can be applied to our understanding of
educational inequity.
Racism as Endemic and Deeply Ingrained in American Life
If racism were merely isolated, unrelated, individual acts, we would expect
to see at least a few ex amples of educational excellence and equity
together in the nation’s public schools. Instead, those places where African
Americans do experience educational success tend to be outside of the
public schools.4 8 While some might argue that poor children, regardless of
race, do worse in school, and that the high proportion of African-Ameri-
can poor contributes to their dismal school performance, we argue that
the cause of their poverty in conjunction with the condition of their
schools and schooling is institutional and structural racism. Thus, when we
speak of racism we refer to Wellman’s definition of “culturally sanctioned
beliefs which, regardless of the intentions involved, defend the advantages
Whites have because of the subordinated positions of racial minorities.”
We must therefore contend with the “problem facing White people [of
coming] to grips with the demands made by Blacks and Whites while at the
same time a v o i d i n g the possibility of institutional change and reorganiza-
tion that might affect them.”4 9
A Reinterpretation of Ineffective Civil Rights Law
In the case of education, the civil rights decision that best exemplifies our
position is the landmark Brown v . Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.
While having the utmost respect for the work of Thurgood Marshall and
the National Association for the Advancement of Co lored People
(NAACP) legal defense team in arguing the B r o w n decision, with forty
years of hindsight we recognize some serious shortcomings in that strategy.
Today, students of color are more segregated than ever before.5 0 A l t h o u g h
African Americans represent 12 percent of the national population, they
are the majority in twenty-one of the twenty-two largest (urban) school dis-
t r i c t s .5 1 Instead of providing more and better educational opportunities,
Critical Race Theory 55
school desegregation has meant increased white flight along with a loss of
African-American teaching and administrative positions.5 2 In explaining
the double-edge sword of civil rights legislation, Crenshaw argued that
the civil rights community . . . must come to terms with the fact that
antidiscrimination discourse is fundamentally ambiguous and can
accommodate conservative as well as liberal views of race and equality.
This dilemma suggests that the civil rights constituency cannot afford
to view antidiscrimination doctrine as a permanent pronouncement of
society’s commitment to ending racial subordination. Rather, antidis-
crimination law represents an ongoing ideological struggle in which
occasional winners harness the moral, coercive, consensual power of
law. Nonetheless, the victories it offers can be ephemeral and the risks
of engagement substantial.5 3
An example of Crenshaw’s point about the ambiguity of civil rights legisla-
tion was demonstrated in a high school district in Northern California.54 Of
the five high schools in the district, one was located in a predominantly
African-American community. To entice white students to attend that
school, the district funded a number of inducements including free camping
and skiing trips. While the trips were available to all of the students, they
were attended largely by the white students, who already owned the expen-
sive camping and skiing equipment. However, these inducements were not
enough to continuously attract white students. As enrollment began to fall,
the district decided to close a school. Not surprisingly, the school in the
African-American community was closed and all of its students had to be
(and continue to be) bused to the four white schools in the district.
Lomotey and Staley’s examination of Buffalo’s “model” desegregation
program revealed that African-American and Latino students continued to
be poorly served by the school system. The academic achievement of
African-American and Latino students failed to improve while their suspen-
sion, expulsion, and dropout rates continued to rise. On the other hand,
the desegregation plan provided special magnet programs and extended
day care of which whites were able to take advantage. What, then, made
Buffalo a model school desegregation program? In short, the benefits that
whites derived from school desegregation and their seeming support of the
district’s desegregation program.5 5 Thus, a model desegregation program
becomes defined as one that ensures that whites are happy (and do not
leave the system altogether) regardless of whether African-American and
other students of color achieve or remain.
Challenging Claims of Neutrality, Objectivity, Color-blindness, and Meritocracy
A theme of “naming one’s own reality” or “voice” is entrenched in the
56 Teachers College Record
work of critical race theorists. Many critical race theorists argue that the
form and substance of scholarship are closely connected.5 6 These scholars
use parables, chronicles, stories, counterstories, poetry, fiction, and revi-
sionist histories to illustrate the false necessity and irony of much of cur-
rent civil rights doctrine. Delgado suggests that there are at least three rea-
sons for naming one’s own reality in legal discourse:
1 . Much of reality is socially constructed.
2 . Stories provide members of outgroups a vehicle for psychic self-
p r e s e r v a t i o n .
3 . The exchange of stories from teller to listener can help overcome
ethnocentrism and the dysconscious conviction of viewing the world
in one way.5 7
The first reason for naming one’s own reality is to demonstrate how
political and moral analysis is conducted in legal scholarship. Many main-
stream legal scholars embrace universalism over particularity.5 8 A c c o r d i n g
to Williams, “theoretical legal understanding” is characterized, in Anglo-
American jurisprudence, by the acceptance of transcendent, acontextual,
universal legal truths or procedures.5 9 For instance, some legal scholars
might contend that the tort of fraud has always existed and that it is a com-
ponent belonging to the universal system of right and wrong. This view
tends to discount anything that is nontranscendent (historical), or contex-
tual (socially constructed), or nonuniversal (specific) with the unscholarly
labels of “emotional,” “literary,” “personal,” or “false.”
In contrast, critical race theorists argue that political and moral analysis
is situational—“truths only exist for this person in this predicament at this
time in history.”6 0 For the critical race theorist, social reality is constructed
by the formulation and the exchange of stories about individual situa-
t i o n s .6 1 These stories serve as interpretive structures by which we impose
order on experience and it on us.6 2
A second reason for the naming-one’s-own-reality theme of critical race
theory is the psychic preservation of marginalized groups. A factor con-
tributing to the demoralization of marginalized groups is self-condemna-
t i o n .6 3 Members of minority groups internalize the stereotypic images that
certain elements of society have constructed in order to maintain their
p o w e r .6 4 Historically, storytelling has been a kind of medicine to heal the
wounds of pain caused by racial oppression.6 5 The story of one’s condition
leads to the realization of how one came to be oppressed and subjugated
and allows one to stop inflicting mental violence on oneself.
Finally, naming one’s own reality with stories can affect the oppressor.
Most oppression does not seem like oppression to the perpetrator.6 6 D e l-
gado argues that the dominant group justifies its power with stories—stock
Critical Race Theory 57
explanations—that construct reality in ways to maintain their privilege.6 7
Thus, oppression is rationalized, causing little self-examination by the
oppressor. Stories by people of color can catalyze the necessary cognitive
conflict to jar dysconscious racism.
The “voice” component of critical race theory provides a way to commu-
nicate the experience and realities of the oppressed, a first step on the
road to justice. As we attempt to make linkages between critical race theory
and education, we contend that the voice of people of color is required for
a complete analysis of the educational system. Delpit argues that one of the
tragedies of education is the way in which the dialogue of people of color
has been silenced. An example from her conversation with an African-
American graduate student illustrates this point:
There comes a moment in every class when we have to discuss “The
Black Issue” and what’s appropriate education for Black children. I tell
you, I’m tired of arguing with those White people, because they won’t
listen. Well, I don’t know if they really don’t listen or if they just don’t
believe you. It seems like if you can’t quote Vygotsky or something,
then you don’t have any validity to speak about your own kids. Anyway,
I’m not bothering with it anymore, now I’m just in it for a grade.6 8
A growing number of education scholars of color are raising critical ques-
tions about the way that research is being conducted in communities of
c o l o r .6 9 Thus, without authentic voices of people of color (as teachers, par-
ents, administrators, students, and community members) it is doubtful that
we can say or know anything useful about education in their communities.
T H E I N T E R S E C T I O N O F R A C E A N D P R O P E R T Y
In the previous sections of this article we argued that race is still a signifi-
cant factor in determining inequity in the United States and that the soci-
ety is based on property rights rather than on human rights. In this section
we discuss the intersection of race and property as a central construct in
understanding a critical race theoretical approach to education.
Harris argues that “slavery linked the privilege of Whites to the subordi-
nation of Blacks through a legal regime that attempted the conversion of
Blacks into objects of property. Similarly, the settlement and seizure of
Native American land supported White privilege through a system of prop-
erty rights in land in which the ‘race’ of the Native Americans rendered
their first possession right invisible and justified conquest.” But, more per-
nicious and long lasting then the victimization of people of color is the
construction of whiteness as the ultimate property. “Possession—the act
necessary to lay the basis for rights in property—was defined to include
only the cultural practices of Whites. This definition laid the foundation
58 Teachers College Record
for the idea that whiteness—that which Whites alone possess—is valuable
and is property.”7 0
Because of space constraints, it is not possible to fully explicate Harris’s
thorough analysis of whiteness as property. However, it is important to
delineate what she terms the “property functions of whiteness,” which
include: (1) rights of disposition; (2) rights to use and enjoyment; (3) rep-
utation and status property; and (4) the absolute right to exclude. How
these rights apply to education is germane to our discussion.
Rights of disposition. Because property rights are described as fully alien-
able, that is, transferable, it is difficult to see how whiteness can be con-
strued as property.7 1 However, alienability of certain property is limited
(e.g., entitlements, government licenses, professional degrees or licenses
held by one party and financed by the labor of the other in the context of
divorce). Thus, whiteness when conferred on certain student perfor-
mances is alienable.7 2 When students are rewarded only for conformity to
perceived “white norms” or sanctioned for cultural practices (e.g., dress,
speech patterns, unauthorized conceptions of knowledge), white property
is being rendered alienable.
Rights to use and enjoyment. Legally, whites can use and enjoy the privi-
leges of whiteness. As McIntosh has explicitly demonstrated, whiteness
allows for specific social, cultural, and economic privileges.7 3 Fuller further
asserts that whiteness is both performative and pleasurable.7 4 In the school
setting, whiteness allows for extensive use of school property. Kozol’s
description of the material differences in two New York City schools can be
interpreted as the difference between those who possess the right to use
and enjoy what schools can offer and those who do not:
The [white] school serves 825 children in the kindergarten through
sixth grade. This is approximately half the student population
crowded into [black] P.S. 79, where 1,550 children fill a space
intended for 1,000, and a great deal smaller than the 1,300 children
packed into the former skating rink.7 5
This right of use and enjoyment is also reflected in the structure of the cur-
riculum, also described by Kozol:
The curriculum [the white school] follows “emphasizes critical think-
ing, reasoning and logic.” The planetarium, for instance, is employed
not simply for the study of the universe as it exists. “Children also are
designing their own galaxies,” the teacher says. . . .
In my [Kozol’s] notes: “Six girls, four boys. Nine White, one Chinese. I
am glad they have this class. But what about the others? Aren’t there
ten Black children in the school who could e n j o y this also?”7 6
Critical Race Theory 59
Reputation and status property. The concept of reputation as property is
regularly demonstrated in legal cases of libel and slander. Thus, to damage
someone’s reputation is to damage some aspect of his or her personal
property. In the case of race, to call a white person “black” is to defame
him or her.7 7 In the case of schooling, to identify a school or program as
nonwhite in any way is to diminish its reputation or status. For example,
despite the prestige of foreign language learning, bilingual education as
practiced in the United States as a nonwhite form of second language
learning has lower status.7 8 The term u r b a n, the root word of u r b a n e, has
come to mean black. Thus, urban schools (located in the urbane, sophisti-
cated cities) lack the status and reputation of suburban (white) schools
and when urban students move to or are bused to suburban schools, these
schools lose their reputation.7 9
The absolute right to exclude. Whiteness is constructed in this society as
the absence of the “contaminating” influence of blackness. Thus, “one
drop of black blood” constructs one as black, regardless of phenotypic
m a r k e r s .8 0 In schooling, the absolute right to exclude was demonstrated
initially by denying blacks access to schooling altogether. Later, it was
demonstrated by the creation and maintenance of separate schools. More
recently it has been demonstrated by white flight and the growing insis-
tence on vouchers, public funding of private schools, and schools of
c h o i c e .8 1 Within schools, absolute right to exclude is demonstrated by
resegregation via tracking,8 2 the institution of “gifted” programs, honors
programs, and advanced placement classes. So complete is this exclusion
that black students often come to the university in the role of intruders—
who have been granted special permission to be there.
In this section we have attempted to draw parallels between the critical
race legal theory notion of whiteness as property and educational inequity.
In the final section we relate some of the intellectual/theoretical tensions
that exist between critical race theory and multicultural education.
T H E L I M I T S O F T H E M U L T I C U L T U R A L P A R A D I G M
Throughout this article we have argued the need for a critical race theoret-
ical perspective to cast a new gaze on the persistent problems of racism in
schooling. We have argued the need for this perspective because of the
failure of scholars to theorize race. We have drawn parallels between the
way critical race legal scholars understand their position vis-à-vis traditional
legal scholarship and the ways critical race theory applied to education
offers a way to rethink traditional educational scholarship. We also have
referred to the tensions that exist between traditional civil rights legislation
and critical race legal theory. In this section we identify a necessary tension
60 Teachers College Record
between critical race theory in education and what we term the multicul-
tural paradigm.
Multicultural education has been conceptualized as a reform movement
designed to effect change in the “school and other educational institu-
tions so that students from diverse racial, ethnic, and other social-class
groups will experience educational equality.”8 3 In more recent years, mul-
ticultural education has expanded to include issues of gender, ability, and
sexual orientation. Although one could argue for an early history of the
“multic ultural education movement” as far back as the 1880s when
George Washington Williams wrote his history of African Americans,
much of the current multicultural education practice seems more appro-
priately rooted in the intergroup education movement of the 1950s,
which was designed to help African Americans and other “unmeltable”
ethnics become a part of America’s melting pot.8 4 Their goals were pri-
marily assimilationist through the reduction of prejudice. However, after
the civil rights unrest and growing self-awareness of African Americans in
the 1960s, the desire to assimilate was supplanted by the reclamation of an
“authentic black personality” that did not rely on the acceptance by or
standards of white America. This new vision was evidenced in the academy
in the form of first, black studies and later, when other groups made simi-
lar liberating moves, ethnic studies.8 5
Current practical demonstrations of multicultural education in schools
often reduce it to trivial examples and artifacts of cultures such as eating
ethnic or cultural foods, singing songs or dancing, reading folktales, and
other less than scholarly pursuits of the fundamentally different concep-
tions of knowledge or quests for social justice.8 6 At the university level,
much of the concern over multicultural education has been over curricu-
lum inclusion.8 7 However, another level of debate emerged over what
became known as “multiculturalism.”
Somewhat different from multicultural education in that it does not rep-
resent a particular educational reform or scholarly tradition, multicultural-
ism came to be viewed as a political philosophy of “many cultures” existing
together in an atmosphere of respect and tolerance.8 8 Thus, outside of the
classroom multiculturalism represented the attempt to bring both students
and faculty from a variety of cultures into the school (or academy) environ-
ment. Today, the term is used interchangeably with the ever-expanding
“diversity,” a term used to explain all types of “difference”—racial, ethnic,
cultural, linguistic, ability, gender, sexual orientation. Thus, popular music,
clothes, media, books, and so forth, reflect a growing awareness of diversity
and/or multiculturalism. Less often discussed are the growing tensions that
exist between and among various groups that gather under the umbrella of
multiculturalism—that is, the interests of groups can be competing or their
Critical Race Theory 61
perspectives can be at odds.8 9 We assert that the ever-expanding multicul-
tural paradigm follows the traditions of liberalism—allowing a proliferation
of difference. Unfortunately, the tensions between and among these differ-
ences is rarely interrogated, presuming a “unity of difference”—that is, that
all difference is both analogous and equivalent.9 0
To make parallel the analogy between critical race legal theory and tra-
ditional civil rights law with that of critical race theory in education and
multicultural education we need to restate the point that critical race legal
theorists have “doubts about the foundation of moderate/incremental civil
rights law.”9 1 The foundation of civil rights law has been in human rights
rather than in property rights. Thus, without disrespect to the pioneers of
civil rights law, critical race legal scholars document the ways in which civil
rights law is regularly subverted to benefit whites.9 2
We argue that the current multicultural paradigm functions in a manner
similar to civil rights law. Instead of creating radically new paradigms that
ensure justice, multicultural reforms are routinely “sucked back into the
system” and just as traditional civil rights law is based on a foundation of
human rights, the current multicultural paradigm is mired in liberal ideol-
ogy that offers no radical change in the current order.9 3 Thus, critical race
theory in education, like its antecedent in legal scholarship, is a radical cri-
tique of both the status quo and the purported reforms.
We make this observation of the limits of the current multicultural para-
digm not to disparage the scholarly efforts and sacrifices of many of its pro-
ponents, but to underscore the difficulty (indeed, impossibility) of main-
taining the spirit and intent of justice for the oppressed while simultane-
ously permitting the hegemonic rule of the oppressor.9 4 Thus, as critical
race theory scholars we unabashedly reject a paradigm that attempts to be
everything to everyone and consequently becomes nothing for anyone,
allowing the status quo to prevail. Instead, we align our scholarship and
activism with the philosophy of Marcus Garvey, who believed that the black
man was universally oppressed on racial grounds, and that any program of
emancipation would have to be built around the question of race first.9 5 I n
his own words, Garvey speaks to us clearly and unequivocally:
In a world of wolves one should go armed, and one of the most power-
ful defensive weapons within the reach of Negroes is the practice of
race first in all parts of the world.9 6
N o t e s
1 Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities (New York: Crown Publishers, 1991). For further
discussion of our inability to articulate issues of race and racism see Toni Morrison, P l a y i n g
in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination ( C a m b r i d g e : Harvard University Press,
1992); Cornel West, “Learning to Talk of Race,” New York Times Magazine, August 2, 1992,
pp. 24, 26; and Beverly Daniel Tatum, “Talking about Race, Learning about Racism: T h e
62 Teachers College Record
Application of Racial Identity Development Theory in the Classroom,” Harvard Educational
Review 62 (1992): 1–24.
2 Throughout this article the term race is used to define the polar opposites of “con-
ceptual whiteness” and “conceptual blackness” (Joyce King, “Perceiving Reality in a New
W a y : Rethinking the Black/white Duality of our Time [Paper presented at the annual meet-
ing of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, April 1994]). We do
not mean to reserve the sense of “otherness” for African Americans; rather, our discussion
attempts to illuminate how discussions of race in the United States positions e v e r y o n e a s
either “white” or “nonwhite.” Thus, despite the use of African-American legal and educa-
tional exemplars, we include other groups who have been constructed at various time in
their history as nonwhite or black. Readers should note that some of the leading legal
scholars in the critical race legal theory movement are of Latino and Asian-American as
well as African-American heritage.
3 See, for example, Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought (New York: R o u t l e d g e ,
1991); Joyce King and Carolyn Mitchell, Black Mothers to Sons: Juxtaposing African American
Literature and Social Practice (New York: Peter Lang, 1990); and Patricia Williams, T h e
Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor ( C a m b r i d g e : Harvard University Press,
1 9 9 1 ) .
4 These propositions are not hierarchical. Rather, they can be envisioned as sides of an
equilateral triangle, each equal and each central to the construction of the overall theory.
5 Andrew Hacker, Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1992); and Marian Wright Edelman, Families in Peril: An Agenda for Social
Change ( C a m b r i d g e : Harvard University Press, 1987).
6M i c h a e l Omi and Howard Winant, “On the Theoretical Concept of Race,” in R a c e ,
Identity and Representation in Education, ed. C. McCarthy and W. Crichlow (New York: R o u t-
ledge, 1993), pp. 3–10.
7 Luigi Luca Cavall i-Sforza, “Genes, People and Languages,” Scientific American,
November 1991, p. 104.
8 Morrison, Playing in the Dark, p. 63.
9 This assertion was made forcefully by the participants of the Institute NHI (No
Humans Involved) at a symposium entitled “The Two Reservations: Western Thought, the
Color Line, and the Crisis of the Negro Intellectual Revisited,” sponsored by the Depart-
ment of African and Afro-American Studies at Stanford University, Stanford, Calif., March
3–5, 1994.
1 0 See, for example, Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering ( B e r k e l e y : U n i v e r-
sity of California Press, 1978); Simone DeBeauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: B a n t a m
Books, 1961); Vivian Gornick, “Women as Outsiders,” in Women in Sexist Society, ed. V. Gor-
nick and B. Moran (New York: Basic Books, 1971), pp. 70–84; Nancy Hartsock, “Feminist
Theory and the Development of Revolutionary Strategy,” Capitalist Patriarch and the Case for
Socialist Feminism, ed. Z. Eisenstein (London and New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979);
and Alison Jagger, Feminist Theory and Human Nature (Sussex, England: Harvester Press,
1 9 8 3 ) .
1 1 See, for example, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America
(New York: Basic Books, 1976); Martin Carnoy, Education and Cultural Imperialism ( N e w
Y o r k : McKay, 1974); Michael W. Apple, “Redefining Inequality: Authoritarian Populism and
the Conservative Restoration,” Teachers College Record 90 (1988): 167–84; and Philip Wexler,
Social Analysis and Education: After the New Sociology (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1 9 8 7 ) .
1 2 David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness ( L o n d o n : Verso, 1991), p. 6.
1 3 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s
to the 1990s, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 9.
Critical Race Theory 63
1 4 Ibid., p. 56.
1 5 Carter G. Woodson, The Miseducation of the Negro (Washington, D.C.: Association
Press, 1933); and W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folks (New York: Penguin Books, 1989;
first published in 1903).
1 6 Our decision to focus on Woodson and Du Bois is not intended to diminish the
import of the scores of African-American scholars who also emerged during their time such
as George E. Haynes, Charles S. Johnson, E. Franklin Frazier, Abram Harris, Sadie T.
Alexander, Robert C. Weaver, Rayford Logan, Allison Davis, Dorothy Porter, and Benjamin
Quarles. We highlight Woodson and Du Bois as early seminal thinkers about issues of race
and racism.
1 7 See John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, 6th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1 9 8 8 ) .
1 8 Woodson, The Miseducation of the Negro, p. xiii.
1 9 Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folks, p. 5. Other people of color, feminists, and gay and
lesbian theorists all have appropriated Du Bois’s notion of double consciousness to explain
their estrangement from mainstream patriarchal, masculinist U.S. culture.
2 0 David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York:
Henry Holt, 1993), p. 281.
2 1 Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folks, p. 1.
2 2 See, for example, Lorene Cary, Black Ice (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991); and
Jeannie Oakes, Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1985).
2 3 Oakes, Keeping Track, p. 67.
2 4 American Association of University Women, How Schools Shortchange Girls: A Study of
Major Findings on Gender and Education (Washington, D.C.: Author and National Education
Association, 1992).
2 5 Myra Sadker, David Sadker, and Susan Klein, The Issue of Gender in Elementary
and Secondary Education,” in Review of Educational Research in Education, vol. 19, ed. G. Cer-
ant (Washington, D.C.: American Educational Research Association, 1991), pp. 269–334.
2 6 Hacker, Two Nations, puts the dropout rate for African-American males in some
large cities at close to 50 percent.
2 7 Robert Majors and Janet Billson, Cool Pose: The Dilemmas of Black Manhood in America
(New York: Lexington Books, 1992).
2 8 Cornel West, Race Matters ( B o s t o n : Beacon Press, 1993); and David Lionel Smith,
“Let Our People Go,” Black Scholar 23 (1993): 75–76.
2 9 Peter Monaghan, “ ‘Critical Race Theory’ Questions the Role of Legal Doctrine in
Racial Inequity,” Chronicle of Higher Education, June 23, 1993, pp. A7, A9.
3 0 Delgado, cited in Monaghan, “Critical Race Theory.” Quotations are from p. A7. For
a more detailed explication of the first item in the list, see Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well.
3 1 Manning Marable, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America ( B o s t o n : South End
Press, 1983).
3 2 Derrick Bell, And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice (New York:
Basic Books, 1987).
3 3 Howard Zinn, A Peoples History of the United States (New York: Harper & Row, 1980),
p. 13.
3 4 Bell, And We Are Not Saved.
3 5 William Tate, Gloria Ladson-Billings, and Carl Grant, “The Brown Decision Revis-
i t e d : Mathematizing Social Problems,” Educational Policy 7 (1993): 255–75.
3 6 Bell, And We Are Not Saved, p. 239.
3 7 Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America ( B o s t o n : L i t t l e
Brown, 1993).
64 Teachers College Record
3 8 Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom.
3 9 Clearly, an analysis of worldwide tensions reinforces the importance of land to a
people—Israel and the Palestinians, Iraq and Kuwait, the former Soviet bloc, Hitler and the
Third Reich, all represent some of the struggles over land.
4 0 Even at a time when there is increased public sentiment for reducing the federal
deficit, the one source of tax relief that no president or member of Congress would ever
consider is that of denying home (property) owners their tax benefits.
4 1 See, for example, Howard Wainer, “Does Spending Money on Education Help?”
Educational Researcher 22 (1993): 22–24; or Paul Houston, “School Vouchers: The Latest Cal-
ifornia Joke,” Phi Delta Kappan 75 (1993): 61–66.
4 2 Kozol, Savage Inequalities, pp. 83–84.
4 3 This notion of “intellectual property” came into popular use when television talk
show host David Letterman moved from NBC to CBS. NBC claimed that certain routines
and jokes used by Letterman were the intellectual property of the network and, as such,
could not be used by Letterman without permission.
4 4 Richard Delgado, “When a Story Is Just a Story: Does Voice Really Matter?” V i r g i n i a
Law Review 76 (1990): 95–111.
4 5 See, for example, Floraline Stevens, Opportunity to Learn: Issues of Equity for Poor and
Minority Students (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, 1993); idem,
“Applying an Opportunity-to-learn Conceptual Framework to the Investigation of the
Effects of Teaching Practices via Secondary Analyses of Multiple-case-study Summary Data,”
The Journal of Negro Education 62 (1993): 232–48; and Linda Winfield and Michael D.
Woodard, “Assessment, Equity, Diversity in Reforming America’s Schools,” Educational Pol -
icy 8 (1994): 3–27.
4 6 The standards debate is too long and detailed to be discussed here. For a more
detailed discussion of standards see, for example, Michael W. Apple, “Do the Standards Go
Far Enough? Power, Policy, and Practices in Mathematics Education,” Journal for Research in
Mathematics Education 23 (1992): 412–31; and National Council of Education Standards and
Testing, Raising Standards for American Education: A Report to Congress, the Secretary of Educa -
tion, the National Goals Panel, and the American People (Washington, D.C.: Government Print-
ing Office, 1992).
4 7 Kozol, Savage Inequalities.
4 8 Some urban Catholic schools, black independent schools, and historically black col-
leges and universities have demonstrated the educability of African-American students. As
of this writing we have no data on the success of urban districts such as Detroit or Milwau-
kee that are attempting what is termed “African Centered” or Africentric education. See
also Mwalimu J. Shujaa, Ed., Too Much Schooling, Too Little Education: A Paradox of Black Life
in White Societies (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1994).
4 9 David Wellman, Portraits of White Racism (Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1977). Quotations are from pp. xviii and 42.
5 0 See, for example, Gary Orfield, “School Desegregation in the 1980s,” Equity and
C h o i c e, February 1988, p. 25; Derrick Bell, “Learning from Our Losses: Is School Desegrega-
tion Still Feasible in the 1980s? Phi Delta Kappan 64 (April 1983): 575; Willis D. Hawley,
“Why It Is Hard to Believe in Desegregation,” Equity and Choice, February 1988, pp. 9–15;
and Janet Ward Schofield, Black and White in School: Trust, Tension, or Tolerance? (New York:
Teachers College Press, 1989).
5 1 James Banks, “Teaching Multicultural Literacy to Teachers,” Teaching Education 4
(1991): 135–44.
5 2 See Karl Taeuber, “Desegregation of Public School Districts: Persisten ce and
Change,” Phi Delta Kappan 72 (1990): 18–24; and H. L. Bisinger, “When Whites Flee,” N e w
York Times Magazine, May 29, 1994, pp. 26–33, 43, 50, 53–54, 56. On loss of professional
Critical Race Theory 65
positions, see Sabrina King, “The Limited Presence of African American Teachers,” R e v i e w
of Educational Research 63 (1993): 115–49; and Jacqueline Irvine, “An Analysis of the Prob-
lem of Disappearing Black Educators,” Elementary School Journal 88 (1988): 503–13.
5 3 Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, “Race Reform, and Retrenchment: T r a n s f o r m a t i o n
and Legitimation in Antidiscrimination Law,” Harvard Law Review 101 (1988): 1331–87.
5 4 Ibid., p. 1335.
5 5 Kofi Lomotey and John Statley, “The Education of African Americans in Buffalo
Public Schools” (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational
Research Association, Boston, 1990).
5 6 Richard Delgado, “Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative,”
Michigan Law Review 87 (1989): 2411–41.
5 7 See Richard Delgado et al., “Symposium: Legal Storytelling,” Michigan Law Review 8 7
(1989): 2073. On dysconsciousness, see Joyce E. King, “Dysconscious Racism: I d e o l o g y ,
Identity and the Miseducation of Teachers,” Journal of Negro Education 60 (1991): 135. King
defines dysconsciousness as “an uncritical habit of mind (including perceptions, attitudes,
assumptions, and beliefs) that justifies inequity and exploitation by accepting the existing
order of things as given. . . . Dysconscious racism is a form of racism that tacitly accepts
dominant White norms and privileges. It is not the absence of consciousness (that is, not
unconsciousness) but an impaired consciousness or distorted way of thinking about race as
compared to, for example, critical consciousness.”
5 8 These notions of universalism prevail in much of social science research, including
educational research.
5 9 Williams, Alchemy of Race and Rights.
6 0 Richard Delgado, “Brewer’s Plea: Critical Thoughts on Common Cause,” V a n d e r b i l t
Law Review 44 (1991): 11.
6 1 For example, see Williams, Alchemy of Race and Rights; Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the
W e l l; and Mari Matsuda, “Public Response to Racist Speech: Considering the Victim’s
Story,” Michigan Law Review 87 (1989): 2320–81.
6 2 Delgado, “Storytelling.”
6 3 I b i d .
6 4 For example, see Crenshaw, “Race, Reform, and Retrenchment.”
6 5 Delgado, “Storytelling.”
6 6 Charles Lawrence, “The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection: Reckoning with Uncon-
scious Racism,” Stanford Law Review 39 (1987): 317–88.
6 7 Delgado et al., “Symposium.”
6 8 Lisa Delpit, “The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other Peo-
ple’s Children,” Harvard Educational Review 58 (1988): 280.
6 9 At the 1994 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in
New Orleans, two sessions entitled “Private Lives, Public Voices: Ethics of Research in Com-
munities of Color” were convened to discuss the continued exploitation of people of color.
According to one scholar of color, our communities have become “data plantations.”
7 0 Cheryl I. Harris, “Whiteness as Property,” Harvard Law Review 106 (1993): 1721.
7 1 See Margaret Radin, “Mark et-Inalienability,” Harvard Law Review 100 (1987):
1 8 4 9 – 9 0 6 .
7 2 See Signithia Fordham and John Ogbu, “Black Student School Success: Coping with
the Burden of ‘Acting White,’ ” The Urban Review 18 (1986): 1–31.
7 3 Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” I n d e p e n d e n t
School, Winter, 1990, pp. 31–36.
7 4 Laurie Fuller, “Whiteness as Performance” (Unpublished preliminary examination
paper, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1994).
66 Teachers College Record
7 5 Kozol, Savage Inequalities, p. 93.
7 6 Ibid., p. 96; emphasis added.
7 7 Harris, “Whiteness as Property,” p. 1735.
7 8 David Spener, “Transitional Bilingual Education and the Socialization of Immi-
grants,” Harvard Educational Review 58 (1988): 133–53.
7 9 H. G. Bissinger, “When Whites Flee,” New York Times Magazine, May 29, 1994, pp. 26–33,
43, 50, 53–54, 56.
8 0 Derrick Bell, Race, Racism, and American Law ( B o s t o n : Little, Brown, 1980).
8 1 We assert that the current movement toward African-centered (or Africentric)
schools is not equivalent to the racial exclusion of vouchers, or choice programs. Indeed,
African-centeredness has become a logical response of a community to schools that have
been abandoned by whites, have been stripped of material resources, and have demon-
strated a lack of commitment to African-American academic achievement.
8 2 Oakes, Keeping Track.
8 3 James A. Banks, “Multicultural Education: Historical Development, Dimensions, and
Practice,” in Review of Research in Education, vol. 19, ed. L. Darling-Hammond (Washington,
D . C . : American Educational Research Association, 1993), p. 3.
8 4 George Washington Williams, History of the Negro Race in America from 1619–1880:
Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens (2 vols.) (New York: G. P. Putnam & S o n s ,
1882–1883). On the intergroup education movement, see, for example, L. A. Cook and E.
Cook, Intergroup Education (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1954); and H. G. Traeger and M. R.
Yarrow, They Learn What They Live: Prejudice in Young Children (New York: Harper and Broth-
ers, 1952).
8 5 See, for example, Vincent Harding, Beyond Chaos: Black History and the Search for a
New Land (Black Paper No. 2) (Atlanta: Institute of the Black World, August 1970); J.
Blassingame, ed., New Perspectives in Black Studies ( U r b a n a : University of Illinois Press, 1971);
James A. Banks, ed., Teaching Ethnic Studies (Washington, D.C.: National Council for the
Social Studies, 1973); and Geneva Gay, “Ethnic Minority Studies: How Widespread? How
Successful?” Educational Leadership 29 (1971): 108–12.
8 6 Banks, “Multicultural Education.”
8 7 In 1988 at Stanford University the inclusion of literature from women and people of
color in the Western Civilization core course resulted in a heated debate. The university’s
faculty senate approved this inclusion in a course called Cultures, Ideas, and Values. The
controversy was further heightened when then Secretary of Education William Bennett
came to the campus to denounce this decision.
8 8 In the “Book Notes” section of the Harvard Educational Review 64 (1994): 345–47,
Jane Davagian Tchaicha reviews Donaldo Macedo’s Literacies of Power ( B o u l d e r : W e s t v i e w
Press, 1994) and includes two quotes, one from noted conservative Patrick Buchanan and
another from Macedo on multiculturalism. According to Buchanan, “Our Judeo-Christian
values are going to be preserved, and our Western heritage is going to be handed down to
future generations, not dumped into some landfill called multiculturalism” (quoted in
Tchaicha, p. 345). Macedo asserts that “the real issue isn’t Western culture versus multicul-
turalism, the fundamental issue is the recognition of humanity in us and in others” (quoted
in Tchaicha, p. 347).
8 9 In New York City, controversy over the inclusion of gay and lesbian issues in the cur-
riculum caused vitriolic debate among racial and ethnic groups who opposed their issues
being linked to or compared with homosexuals. Some ethnic group members asserted that
homosexuals were not a “culture” while gay and lesbian spokespeople argued that these
group members were homophobic.
90 Shirley Torres-Medina, “Issues of Power: Constructing the Meaning of Linguistic Dif-
ference in First Grade Classrooms” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1994).
Critical Race Theory 67
9 1 Richard Delgado, “Enormous Anomaly? Left-Right Parallels in Recent Writing about
Race,” Columbia Law Review 91 (1991): 1547–60.
9 2 See Bell, And We Are Not Saved.
9 3 See Cameron McCarthy, “After the Canon: Knowledge and Ideological Representa-
tion in the Multicultural Discourse on Curriculum Reform,” in Race, Identity and Representa -
t i o n, ed. C. McCarthy and W. Crichlow (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 290; and Michael
Olneck, “Terms of Inclusion: Has Multiculturalism Redefined Equality in American Educa-
t i o n ” American Journal of Education 101 (1993): 234–60.
9 4 We are particularly cognizant of the hard-fought battles in the academy waged and
won by scholars such as James Banks, Carlos Cortez, Geneva Gay, Carl Grant, and others.
9 5 Tony Martin, Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey
and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Dover, Mass.: The Majority Press, 1976).
9 6 Marcus Garvey, cited in ibid., p. 22.
68 Teachers College Record
