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Educational Review
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Coincidence or conspiracy? Whiteness, policy and the persistence of the
Black/White achievement gap
David Gillborn a
a Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK
Online Publication Date: 01 August 2008
To cite this Article Gillborn, David(2008)'Coincidence or conspiracy? Whiteness, policy and the persistence of the Black/White
achievement gap',Educational Review,60:3,229 — 248
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/00131910802195745
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131910802195745
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Coincidence or conspiracy? Whiteness, policy and the persistence of the
Black/White achievement gap
David Gillborn*
Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK
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 disproportionate focus on students in receipt
of free school meals (FSMs). Simultaneously the media increasingly present Whites
as race victims, re-centring the interests of White people in popular discourse, while
government announcements create a false image of dramatic improvements in
minority achievement through a form of ‘‘gap talk’’ that disguises the deep-seated
and persistent nature of race inequality. The paper concludes by reviewing the key
elements that define the current situation and notes that they fit the essential
characteristics used in lawto identify the operation of a conspiracy. It is argued that
conceiving the racism that saturates the system in terms of a conspiracy has a
number of advantages, not least the insight it provides into the workings of
‘‘Whiteness’’ as a fundamental driver of social policy.
Keywords: critical race theory (CRT); Whiteness; racism; achievement; inequality
Introduction
White audience member:
The problem with talking about a conspiracy is that you could breed a culture of
paranoia.
David Gillborn (DG):
Paranoia? You mean Black people might start to think the school system doesn’t
treat them fairly? Do you think there are many Black kids or parents who haven’t
worked that out yet?
1
This paper is based on the Educational Review Guest Lecture which I gave at
Birmingham University in October 2007. Anti-racist researchers are frequently told
that their interests are too specialized (sometimes ‘‘too political’’) for a generic event
such as a prestigious annual lecture and so I would like to record my thanks to the
editorial team at the journal, especially Deirdre Martin the editor, and to the
publisher Routledge, for the opportunity to address these issues in such a context.
In this paper I consider the role of racism in the education system. Because of the
limits of space, I focus on the achievements and experiences of ‘‘Black’’ students; by
which I mean young people who would identify with family origins in Black Africa
and/or the Caribbean.
2
In particular, I examine the following issues: first, I look at
the claims that White working class boys are now the pressing issue for education. I
analyse the facts of the case and show how a version of reality is constructed in the
*Email: d.gillborn@ioe.ac.uk
Educational Review
Vol. 60, No. 3, August 2008, 229–248
ISSN 0013-1911 print/ISSN 1465-3397 online
#2008 Educational Review
DOI: 10.1080/00131910802195745
http://informaworld.com
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media that serves to present Whites as victims and erase racism from the agenda.
Second, I examine how politicians talk about race inequality and, in particular, how
the selective use of statistics serves to systematically misrepresent the true nature and
extent of race inequality. Finally, I conclude by reviewing the wider picture and
offering a new model of how racism operates through the education system. The
analysis highlights the extent of racist processes across the system and foregrounds
the dialectical relationship between individual actors and a regime of White interests
that dominates policy and practice.
White working class boys: the construction of new race victims
For more than a decade discussions of educational inequality in England have given a
prominent role to the experiences and achievements of boys. A variety of studies have
sought to quantify and understand the generally higher average achievements of girls at
the age of 16, marking the end of compulsory schooling (see for example Arnot et al.
1998). Feminist researchers have been especially critical of the way that boys are often
viewed as a homogeneous group, ignoring differences in social class and ethnic origin
(Epstein et al. 1998; Arnot, David and Weiner 1999; Youdell 2006; Archer and Francis
2007). Since the mid-2000s a particular focus of popular discourse (in radio, television
and newspaper coverage) has been White working-class boys. The following headlines,
for example, are drawn from a selection of national daily newspapers:
School low achievers are white and British
The Times, 22 June 2007
White boys ‘‘are being left behind’’ by education system
Daily Mail, 22 June 2007
White boys ‘‘let down by education system’’
Daily Telegraph, 22 June 2007
Deprived white boys ‘‘low achievers’’
Daily Express, 22 June 2007
White working-class boys are the worst performers in school
Independent, 22 June 2007
Half school ‘‘failures’’ are white working-class boys, says report
The Guardian, 22 June 2007
As someone who grew up as a White working-class boy I am well aware of the need to
improve how this group are treated in school but a focus on this specific constellation of
race-class-gender identities is not necessarily as progressive as it might sound. The
newspaper headlines (earlier) relate to a report on low educational achievement (Cassen
and Kingdon 2007) and repeat a focus that resurfaces at regular intervals whenever
statistics are published on low achievement. This focus is familiar to anyone who works
on race equality: it characterizes media debates on the issue and has become a feature of
almost every discussion with education professionals on the issue. Whenever I raise race/
racism as an issue, someone (usually a White person) will announce that ‘‘the biggest
problem is White working-class boys’’. Before considering the statistics behind these
kinds of debate, I want first to examine the public discourse of White failure because it
has important and destructive consequences educationally, politically and socially.
230 D. Gillborn
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This is how a leading daily newspaper reported the publication of official
statistics on General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) attainment:
White boys falling behind
White, working-class boys have the worst GCSE results
… Just 24 per cent of disadvantaged white boys now leave school with five or more good
GCSEs.
This compares with 33.7 per cent for black African boys from similar low-income
households.
There were fears last night that the figures could hand votes to the far-Right British
National Party because additional funding is available to help children from ethnic
minorities. (Daily Mail, 13 January 2007)
There are several things to consider here. First, the misleading assertion that
‘‘additional funding is available to help children from ethnic minorities’’: in fact,
local authorities (LAs) and schools have to bid for dedicated funding towards
minority education projects: the additional funds are not simply handed out,
automatically privileging minoritized children as the story would seem to suggest.
Second, the story argues that the results could fuel support for extreme political
parties like the British National Party (BNP). This repeats a line of argument that
has featured in British political discourse since the late 1950s – when riots by White
racists led to the first major immigration controls (Ramdin 1987). By warning of the
danger of inflaming support for racist parties, what actually happens is that
politicians and commentators invoke the threat of racist violence as a means of
disciplining calls for greater race equality. This can be seen clearly in the following
quotation from the specialist educational press:
Cameron Watt, deputy director of the Centre for Social Justice and a key figure
involved in a report on the subject published recently by former Tory leader Iain
Duncan Smith, said: ‘‘There’s a political lobby highlighting the issue of under-
achievement among black boys, and quite rightly so, but I don’t think there’s a single
project specifically for white working-class boys. I don’t want to stir up racial hatred,
but that is something that should be addressed.’’ (Times Educational Supplement,12
January 2007)
It is important to recognize what is happening here. The 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. It is significant that despite the larger class
inequality, media commentators and policy advisers do not warn of an impending
class war: they do not raise the spectre that failure on this scale will promote action
against private schools or the ‘‘gifted and talented’’ scheme that receives millions of
pounds of extra funding and is dominated by middle-class students (see Gillborn
2008). The race dimension is deliberately accentuated in the coverage.
The media image of failing white boys goes further than merely highlighting a
difference in attainment, it actually includes the suggestion that white failure is
Educational Review 231
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somehow the fault of minoritized students and/or their advocates. This is implicit in
the quotation attributed to Cameron Watt (earlier) but also became an explicit part
of some media coverage: I can illustrate this by examining some of the radio
coverage from an award winning news and current programme: the Breakfast show
on Radio 5Live.
Radio 5Live is a national radio channel run by the British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC). It was re-launched as a dedicated news and sports service in
1994 and has been described as ‘‘one of the success stories in the recent history of
British broadcasting’’ (Tolson 2006, 94). The BBC enjoys exceptionally high levels of
public trust in relation to its news content; recently receiving more than five times the
rating of its nearest rival in a survey of public opinion (YouGov 2005). This makes
the BBC’s news coverage potentially very influential, it is the most trusted news
provider and caters to a national audience. In addition, the programme in question
(Radio 5Live’s Breakfast show) is held in high regard professionally: it won the Sony
Radio Academy Award for the Best News & Current Affairs Programme (Sony
2007). On 22 June 2007 the programme led its news bulletins with the story that
fuelled the numerous headlines already quoted (earlier) on White boys as the key
under-achieving group. At around 6 a.m. Nicky Campbell, one of the programme’s
two main hosts, interviewed a researcher who was introduced as having contributed
to the research report behind the headlines:
3
Nicky Campbell:
Isn’t the problem that - the race relations industry has, some would argue,
compartmentalized people. And if we had less concentration on race, more on
individuals, we took colour out of the equation: it wouldn’t be ‘‘oh Black boys do
this, White boys do that, Chinese boys do this, Asian’’ – it should just be looking at
children as individuals. Isn’t race part of the problem here in a sense?
Figure 1. Five or more higher grade (A*–C) GCSEs (any subject) boys by ethnic origin and
FSM status, England 2006. Source: DfES (2006a, table 32).
232 D. Gillborn
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Interviewee (a member of the research team):
Yes you do have to look at children as individuals but, but this kind of research
does actually show erm that people from different cultures are having different
experiences …
Despite the host’s suggestion that ‘‘the race relations industry’’ is somehow culpable,
therefore, the researcher maintains that ethnicity is an important variable and should
not be removed from policy discourse. Around an hour later the same issue led the
7a.m. news headlines and was explored in an interview with a London headteacher:
Nicky Campbell:
… there’s the inescapable conclusion, according to some of our listeners, a- a-and
indeed according to some experts too, that the school system has been focusing
disproportionately …too much on children from other ethnic backgrounds’
Interviewee (a London headteacher):
I, I think, if I’m being honest that probably was true years ago, it’s not the case
now, we are – we’re put in a position where schools have got to focus on all of the
data. We’re very data rich across education and we are accountable for the
educational attainment of all of our students.
The host’s analysis was now backed by the invocation of ‘‘some of our listeners’’ and
‘‘some experts too’’ but again the interviewee failed to support the idea that White
kids suffered because of minoritized students in their schools. In fact, the London
headteacher seems to argue that the government’s emphasis on ‘‘accountability’’ has
raised standards for all. Unfortunately, as my research with Deborah Youdell
showed different groups of students have not shared equally in the overall
improvements that both Conservative and Labour governments have highlighted
in the headline attainment statistics. In particular, White working-class and Black
students (of all class backgrounds) have not shared equally in the improvements (see
Gillborn and Youdell 2000).
Undeterred, at 8a.m. the same topic featured in the news headlines and was
explored with new guests, including Professor Gus John (one of Britain’s leading
campaigners on race equality):
Nicky Campbell:
Professor Gus John –
Gus John:
Good morning.
Nicky Campbell:
Some are saying that too much attention has been given to African and Caribbean
boys to the detriment of young White boys.
Gus John:
Well the facts don’t bear that out you see. An-and I think this discussion is pretty
distorted, certainly as far as facts are concerned …
The interviewee steadfastly rejected the proposal that White boys’ low achievement
was somehow the fault of Black students. But the damage was already done.
Listeners and un-named ‘‘experts’’ had been cited to support the argument and its
constant repetition made it a key aspect of the morning news broadcast. At 9a.m. the
Breakfast show was followed by an hour-long phone-in on educational failure and
the presenter read out a familiar sounding view:
Educational Review 233
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Presenter: [reading from listeners’ text messages]
Somebody else says, er, ‘‘White youngsters fail because PC [politically correct]
teachers and the media are more interested in Black and Asian children.’’
In this way the country’s most trusted news service had effectively promoted the view
that White children are the victims of ethnic diversity in general and race equality in
particular.
A tendency to present White people as the new race victims has been commented
upon by writers in both the US (Delgado and Stefancic 1997; Apple 1998) and the
UK (Rollock 2006). The particular manifestation of White victimology in recent
academic and media analyses of examination performance is especially dangerous
for several reasons. The discourse presents Whites as the victims of race equality
measures. Consequently, moves that have been inspired by a commitment to social
justice become recast as if they represent a competitive threat to White people; they
are redefined as a sectional (racialized, even racist) campaign. Simultaneously, this
refrain of racial competition has the effect of erasing from sight the possibility that
members of all ethnic groups might excel in a single educational system. The
prominence given to these arguments and the strategic citation of far right groups
(such as the BNP) has the clear effect of sounding a warning to everyone involved in
education: make sure that White kids are catered for – don’t let race equality go too
far. The threatened price of de-centring White children is racial violence – both
symbolic and, in the case of racist harassment, physical.
This is evidence that Whiteness is a key resource even for people who suffer
economic disadvantage. Critical race theory (CRT) is often misrepresented by its
detractors, who assert that CRT homogenizes White people and downplays the
significance of poverty among Whites (Darder and Torres 2004; Cole 2007). In fact
CRT is extremely sensitive to differences in power and privilege within the category
of White people (Delgado and Stefancic 1997). However, critical race theorists also
point to the benefits that accrue to all White people from their positioning within a
racist system. White people are not all equally privileged, but all White people do
gain some advantage from their Whiteness: their interests are assumed to be
important and any challenge to their centrality is met with hostility and violence,
both symbolic and physical (Allen 2006; Stovall 2006; Gillborn 2008).
Race, class and educational attainment
In 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:
Just 24 per cent of disadvantaged white boys now leave school with five or more good
GCSEs. This compares with 33.7 per cent for black African boys from similar low-
income households. (Daily Mail, 2007)
It is significant that the paper chose to highlight the largest possible Black/White
inequality: Black African FSM boys were 9.7 percentage points more likely to attain
234 D. Gillborn
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five higher grades, i.e. three times the size of the gap between ‘‘White British’’ and
‘‘Black Caribbean’’ FSM boys (3.1 percentage points). Even more importantly, the
story focused exclusively on pupils in receipt of FSMs but used a variety of terms as
shorthand for this group, including ‘‘working class’’, ‘‘disadvantaged’’ and ‘‘low-
income’’. This is a common feature of media coverage of educational statistics.
Indeed, this assumption that FSMs equates to ‘‘working class’’ students was
enshrined in some of the headlines quoted earlier:
White working-class boys are the worst performers in school
Independent, 22 June 2007
Half school ‘‘failures’’ are white working-class boys, says report
The Guardian, 22 June 2007
This slippage, from ‘‘receipt of free school meals’’ to ‘‘working class’’, may be an
innocent attempt to bring life to otherwise verbose and dry educational statistics. But
the consequences of this shift are far from innocent. Receipt of FSMs is used as a crude
measure of disadvantage in educational statistics mainly because it is a piece of
information that is readily accessible: the data are routinely collected by schools and
provide a simple binary division. In contrast, there is no single scale of social class
categories that is universally recognized; the categories are multiple and difficult to
interpret; and, perhaps most importantly, the data are expensive to generate because
additional, often sensitive, information is required to construct the datasets.
Consequently, official research rarely uses a detailed measure of social class, preferring
instead to rely on the binary disadvantage proxy of FSMs (see Archer and Francis
2007; Gillborn 2008). In the GCSE data quoted earlier 13.2% of all pupils were in
receipt of FSMs (DfES 2006a, table 32). But in a recent survey by the National Centre
for Social Research 57% of UK adults described themselves as ‘‘working class’’ (BBC
News Online 2007). Consequently the discursive slippage from ‘‘free school meals’’ to
‘‘working class’’ has the effect of inflating the significance of the finding: data on a
relatively small group of students (13% of the cohort) are reported in a way that makes
it sound descriptive of more than half the population (57%).
The focus on pupils in receipt of FSMs has become increasingly pronounced in
recent years. The media’s exclusive use of the FSMs statistics reflects the way that the
data are presented by the Education Department itself. In 2006, for example, the
department published a 104 page digest of statistics on race and education (DfES
2006b). Amid the 19 tables and 48 illustrations, the document focuses a good deal on
the significance of the FSM variable and, for example, includes three separate
illustrations detailing different breakdowns of GCSE attainment among FSM
students (DfES 2006b, 65–68): in contrast there is not a single table nor illustration
giving a separate breakdown for non-FSM students and their relative attainments
cannot be deduced from the FSM data that are presented.
The failure to interrogate N-FSM attainment in official documents invites the
question as to how different ethnic groups attain within this larger, increasingly neglected,
86.8% of the cohort. The answer is contained in Figure 2. As Figure 2 illustrates, the image
of White failure created by the newspaper headlines does not reflect the reality as
experienced by the majority of students. White British students who do not receive free
meals are more likely to attain five higher grade passes than their counterparts of the same
gender in several minoritized groups, including those of Bangladeshi, Black African,
Pakistani, Mixed (White/Black Caribbean) and Black Caribbean ethnic heritage. Clearly,
Educational Review 235
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race inequality of the more familiar variety (where minoritized students achieve less well)
remains a key characteristic of the English education system and affects students of both
genders.
4
The largest inequalities relate to Black Caribbean N-FSM students, where girls
are 9.7 percentage points less likely to achieve the benchmark than their White peers and
the figure for boys is 17.2 percentage points.
Gap talk: locked-in inequality and governmental impression management
While some gaps have narrowed, for example, for black and minority ethnic pupils,
others have proved to be extremely persistent nationally. This is despite overall
improvement in the attainment of all groups of pupils. For example, the difference in the
proportion of boys and girls achieving the expected levels in English … (DfES 2007, 7)
This quotation is taken from the ‘‘2020 vision: report’’, authored by a group chaired by
Christine Gilbert, the current Chief Inspector of Schools. The report was meant to
provide a vision for education into the next decade and was launched as providing a
new direction in education policy. The authors claimed a deep commitment to changing
the shape of achievement nationally. Indeed, it included a chapter entitled, ‘‘Closing the
gap – a system-wide focus on achievement for all’’ (DfES 2007, 37–40). Despite these
laudable-sounding aims, the report authors seem to adopt a position that treats race
inequality somewhat superficially. As the quotation (earlier) illustrates, the report
asserts that race inequalities are shrinking but does not provide any evidence to
substantiate this. Furthermore, the report (which runs to more than 50 pages) does not
once use the words ‘‘racism’’, ‘‘discrimination’’ or even the more anodyne ‘‘prejudice’’.
In fact, the statement that the gap ‘‘for black and minority ethnic pupils’’ has
Figure 2. Five or more higher grade (A*–C) GCSEs (any subject) N-FSMs by gender and
ethnic origin, England 2006. Source: DfES (2006a, table 32).
236 D. Gillborn
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‘‘narrowed’’ (DfES 2007, 7) is the only direct reference to the scale of any ethnic
inequalities: no statistics are offered to support the inference that things are improving
for Black children. This is an example of what I call ‘‘Gap Talk’’.
Whenever policy-makers are challenged about their record on race equality, they
typically respond with ‘‘Gap Talk’’, that is, they assert that an ethnic inequity is
getting better, that a gap (in attainment, retention, exclusion or some other measure)
is getting smaller. This assertion is usually (but not always) supported by the use of
statistics. Figure 3 includes examples of gap talk from 2001 to 2007 and shows how
these occasions represent more than the mere reporting of the latest statistics: talk of
‘‘closing’’ or ‘‘narrowing’’ gaps operates as a discursive strategy whereby statistical
data are used to construct the view that things are improving and the system is
moving in the right direction. This ‘‘Gap Talk’’ serves a particular strategic and
political purpose: it reassures that things are improving and, therefore, operates to
silence calls for radical dedicated action on race equality. After all, why consider
radical change if things are already improving? Despite the frequency with which
Gap Talk appears in official pronouncements, the reality is that deep-level race
inequalities are a fundamental and relatively stable feature of the English education
system. In order to see this clearly it is necessary to look at data that relate to a
longer time period (see Figure 4).
2001: long established achievement gaps begin to be narrowed
Last year, even the lowest scoring local education authority (LEA) in the English and mathematics tests achieved better
than the national average of four years ago. And the fastest improving areas in the country are among the most
disadvantaged as long established achievement gaps begin to be narrowed. (DfES 2001, 9, emphasis added)
2003: major programmes … help to reduce the gap
… there has been a clear expectation that policies aimed at raising attainment levels amongst pupils from
disadvantaged backgrounds will disproportionately benefit ethnic minorities. Indeed, major programmes such as the
National Strategies for Numeracy and Literacy, Beacon Schools, Specialist Schools and Excellence in Cities are all
expected to have disproportionate benefits in low social class areas and should consequently help to reduce the gap. Indeed,
some evaluations report that these programmes are already having positive impacts on ethnic minority groups. (Cabinet
Office 2003, 58, emphasis added)
2005: evidence showing that the gap was closing
Asian and Black pupils made the greatest rate of improvement in 2004 examinations according to figures released
today. The proportion of Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Black Caribbean, Black African and other Black pupils achieving five
or more A* to C grades at GCSE and equivalent in 2004 has improved by more than 2.5 percentage points in each
group. (…) Schools Minister Derek Twigg welcomed the figures, saying that minority ethnic groups were making great
progress and that evidence showing that the gap was closing between Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi pupils and other
p
upils at GCSE and equivalent was also encouraging. (DfES 2005b, emphasis added)
2006: "closing the gap"
Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Black pupils have made the greatest improvement in this year's GCSE results according to
figures released today. The biggest improvers are Bangladeshi and Black Caribbean pupils with the proportion getting
five good GCSEs jumping by 3.5 percentage points from 52.7% to 56.2%, and 2.7 percentage points from 41.7% to
44.4% respectively. The increases are well above the national increase of 2 percentage points (…) Schools Minister
Andrew Adonis welcomed this continuing upward trend and the sustained progress that the Government is making in
closing the gap between Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi pupils and other pupils at GCSE and equivalent (…) The
proportion of both Black Caribbean and Bangladeshi pupils achieving 5+ A*-C at GCSE and equivalent is up 10
percentage points since 2003, compared to a national increase of 6 percentage points. (DfES 2006c, emphasis added)
2007: "significant progress in tackling educational attainment gaps"
We are already making significant progress in tackling educational attainment gaps but recognise we need to go much
further. As a result of work in schools, the proportion of Black Caribbean boys achieving five good GCSEs is up 11 per
cent points since 2003, compared to the national increase of 7 per cent points. (DCLG 2007, emphasis added)
Figure 3. Gap Talk.
Educational Review 237
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Figure 4 shows the Black/White inequality in educational attainment at age 16. The
data use a relatively crude composite ‘‘Black’’ category but have the advantage of
drawing on the only nationally representative survey that reaches back to the late 1980s,
when the first substantial reforms in the modern era got underway.
5
The data indicate
that there have been periods where the gap has narrowed, and other times where it has
widened. By selectively citing a one- or two-year period in isolation, ‘‘Gap Talk’’
provides the reassuring official verdict that the system is moving inexorably towards
greater equality. But this is a fiction that hides the truth about the deep-seated nature of
raceinequality:ifwetakealongertermview and compare Black/White improvements
over a period of 6, 10 and 15 years, then the statistics suggest that, in practical terms, the
Black/White inequality is a permanent feature of the system. Over 15 years the gap grew
by three percentage points; over 10 years it narrowed by one point; and over six years it
grew by nine points (see Figure 5). At these overall rates of improvement in every case
White students would hit saturation point (with 100% attaining the benchmark) well
before Black students close the gap. Indeed, the earliest that Black students would make
100% (and finally close the gap) would be the year 2054.
It is important to state clearly that I do not believe that these calculations offer
any firm indication of future trends – although that is exactly what Gap Talk invites
people to assume by offering statistics on recent changes as evidence that policy is
moving ahead in the desired fashion. Rather, I present the calculations as an
alternative means of viewing the statistics through a lens that highlights the longer
term pattern and reveals the persistence of deep-rooted race inequality.
This alternative perspective suggests that ‘‘Gap Talk’’ is not merely optimistic, it
is downright deceitful. Rather than being an inequality that is consistently narrowing
with each cohort, as ‘‘Gap Talk’’ suggests, official data show that the Black/White
inequality of achievement displays many of the characteristics that Daria Roithmayr
identifies in situations of ‘‘locked-in inequality’’. Roithmayr is a critical race theorist
working in legal studies, who has used economic and anti-trust theory, for example,
Figure 4. Black/White achievement gap 1989–2004 (England and Wales). Source: DfES
(2005a, table A).
238 D. Gillborn
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Figure 5. Locked-in race inequality. Source: Calculations based on data from DfES (2005a,
table A).
Educational Review 239
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to expose the workings of racist inequality in admissions to law schools. She
identifies ‘‘locked-in inequality’’ where:
Market monopolies can become self-reinforcing, locked in, and ultimated under certain
circumstances. For example, in markets characterized by positive feedback, an early
competitive advantage can feed on itself to produce a perpetually increasing lead that
ultimately becomes impossible to overcome … When that occurs, we say that the product
has become ‘‘locked in’’ to its monopoly or market leader position. (Roithmayr 2003, 38)
The Black/White achievement gap in England has the hallmarks of locked-in
inequality. That is, an inequality so great and so deep seated that it cannot be closed
through the ‘‘normal’’ workings of the system. However, this reality is hidden by ‘‘Gap
Talk’’ which constructs the false impression of progress. Meanwhile mainstream policy
continues to lumber on prioritizing major initiatives in the name of ‘‘standards for all’’
which actually have the effect of further disadvantaging Black students. For example,
the emphasis on increased selection and separation within mainstream schools through
initiatives like the ‘‘Gifted and Talented’’ programme and ‘‘setting by ability’’. Decades
of research, on both sides of the Atlantic, show that whenever teachers are asked to
assess their students’ ‘‘potential’’ against some academic or behavioural norm, Black
students are typically under-represented in the highest ranked groups (which benefit
from additional resources) and over-represented in the low-ranked groups, which
typically experience teaching of lower quality, cover less of the curriculum and, in the
English system of ‘‘tiered’’ GCSE examinations, are likely to be entered for tests where
the very highest grades are not available because they are restricted to a ‘‘higher’’ paper
reserved for ‘‘more able’’ students (see Oakes 1990; Talbert and Ennis 1990; CRE 1992;
Braddock and Dawkins 1993; Gillborn and Gipps 1996; Hallam and Toutounji 1996;
Sukhnandan and Lee 1998; Gillborn and Youdell 2000; Hallam 2002; Oakes, Joseph
and Muir 2004; Tikly et al. 2006; Araujo 2007; Gillborn 2008).
Despite these research findings, replicated numerous times, setting and discipline
remain central policy priorities, whoever resides in Number 10 Downing Street.
Shortly before becoming Prime Minister as Tony Blair’s successor, for example,
Gordon Brown used his last Mansion House speech to pledge a World-Class
education system, with ‘‘a renewed focus on setting by ability’’ (Brown 2007).
All of this raises fundamental questions about the nature of race inequality in
education and the culpability of policy-makers. Of course, as an observer to the policy
process I cannot look inside the heads of policy-makers and their advisers. It might be
that policy-makers genuinely believe that things are getting better for Black students;
perhaps they have not noticed that successive official statements report apparently
significant improvements year-after-year but race inequality continues; perhaps their
advisers have not yet done the calculations; perhaps they are genuinely unaware of the
academic research and community-based campaigns that highlight the failings of policy
and practice (see Richardson 2005; John 2006). Fortunately, as critical social scientists
and educators, we do not need to look inside the heads of policy-makers – their
intentions are irrelevant. What matters is the effect that changes in policy and practice
have for particular minoritized groups. A focus on outcomes (rather than intent) is a
basic tenet of any serious attempt to understand race inequality and is already well
established in relevant social policy. For example, The Stephen Lawrence inquiry made
this clear in its well known definition of institutional racism:
The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional
service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or
240 D. Gillborn
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detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through
unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which dis-
advantage minority ethnic people. (Macpherson 1999, 28)
This definition was accepted by Government and helped shape changes in race
relations law, through the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, that placed a
positive duty to pursue race equality on more than 40,000 public bodies, including
government departments and every state maintained school. It is well established,
therefore, that good intentions are not enough to avoid discriminatory behaviour
nor are they an excuse where the outcomes of policies and actions work against
certain minoritized groups. This is a vital point which must be borne in mind when
assessing the nature of the policy context within which we seek to understand the
shape and nature of race inequality.
Conspiracy theories and theorizing conspiracy
In previous analyses of the deep-rooted and normalized nature of race inequality I
have drawn on several different conceptual ideas. In recent years my growing
understanding of CRT helped me to move beyond the confines of UK policy
theorizing and raise more fundamental questions about the nature of the processes
that shape Black educational failure in both the US and the UK (see Gillborn 2006).
As I started to explore these processes I tried to find a way of capturing the extensive
but often hidden nature of White power interests. In several talks (including to
diverse audiences in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia) I tried to convey the
situation by arguing that ‘‘It’s not a conspiracy, it’s worse than that!’’
What I intended to communicate was the almost automatic way in which White
interests, and the disadvantaging of Black students, went unremarked but was a key
element in all educational policy: for example, operating in the selection of policy
priorities at a national level; figured in teachers’ views of ‘‘ability’’ at the classroom
level; strengthened through the media’s selective reporting of educational achieve-
ment; and seen in the way that most researchers treat race inequality as an after-
thought, a kind of peripheral extra that might have relevance after the main
inequalities (such as class) have been accounted for. Each of these problems has been
discussed earlier in this paper, for example, epitomized in the construction of White
‘‘working class’’ boys as new race victims while the interests of Black students are
sidelined and policies (such as greater use of ‘‘setting by ability’’ and the ‘‘Gifted and
Talented’’ programme) further institutionalize the existing race inequity.
As I discussed this perspective with anti-racists internationally, however, I was
questioned by several colleagues who wanted me to explain how, in view of the data I
had presented, could I still maintain that the situation was not a conspiracy? After
all, they argued, it had the same effect as a conspiracy. As I began reading more
widely I realized that I had fallen into the trap of accepting contemporary
‘‘commonsense’’ notions of conspiracy. As I explored the use of conspiracy theories
in African American literature and critical legal work it became clear that I was
indeed describing a conspiracy – though not a simple nor obvious one.
Conspiracy theories and the academy
Understanding racism as a form of conspiracy is by no means a new idea. In the US
there is a substantial literature on conspiracy and racism, especially among African
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American communities. Patricia Turner’s I heard it through the grapevine (1993) is a
particularly important example of scholarly work in the field. The book is a careful
exploration of community beliefs about racial oppression. Turner shows that many
well-known rumours and conspiracy theories reflect the reality of race oppression in the
US. When the book was published, however, it was attacked by others in the field for
not condemning what they called ‘‘the virus of paranoia’’ (Robins and Post 1997,
quoted by Knight 2000, 13). This response is extremely important because it highlights
the dismissive response that often accompanies talk of conspiracies, even in academic
research. A study of the views of just over 1000 African Americans in Louisiana in the
late 1990s, for example, claimed to be ‘‘the first extensive empirical examination of the
opinion of African Americans on a wide range of theories implicating government’’
(Parsons et al. 1999, 203). The authors note that ‘‘conspiracy theories’’ have been
‘‘given credibility by a bitter history of real plots against African Americans’’ (Parsons
et al. 1999, 202, emphasis added) but are nevertheless worried by the relatively high
numbers supporting these beliefs and conclude by considering ‘‘what can be done to
minimize the belief in conspiracy theories and restore trust in government?’’ (Parsons et
al. 1999, 218). In response they suggest a greater role for African Americans ‘‘in their
government’’ is an essential criterion (Parsons et al. 1999, 218). They 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).
The assumption that a belief in conspiracy is necessarily destructive and/or
erroneous is extremely strong. Virtually any mention of ‘‘conspiracy’’ leads to
ridicule. This, of course, is an important operation of power: the stories told by the
powerful are classed as ‘‘history’’, but the stories of the oppressed are dismissed as
paranoid delusions. In the remainder of this paper I want to reverse this
commonsense assumption and place the idea of conspiracy centre-stage: conspiracy
is not only a useful metaphor for how the education system operates, it accurately
describes the nature of the problem and the scale of the task facing anti-racists.
Legal approaches to theorizing conspiracy
To use the word conspiracy to describe certain aspects of our society is a strong
indictment against the social fabric of this country. I have been challenged hundreds of
times in debates and by the media with the use of this word conspiracy. Many of the
challengers want me to document who were the plotters of this conspiracy, where was
the meeting and when did it take place? I smile and listen to their barrage and remain
confident in knowing as Neely Fuller stated ‘‘until you understand White supremacy,
everything else will confuse you’’. (Jawanza Kunjufu 2005, 1, original emphasis)
This quotation is taken from the opening of Jawanza Kunjufu’s book series entitled
Countering the conspiracy to destroy black boys. It neatly captures some of the
assumptions that meet talk of racism as a conspiracy, for example, the assumption
that a conspiracy requires a clandestine meeting where plotters secretly agree their
plans. But this is a caricatured, cartoon-like version of conspiracy. In the real world
conspiracies are more complex and more powerful than the Hollywood image.
Fortunately, there is a discipline that has had to take conspiracy very seriously;
242 D. Gillborn
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namely, the law. In order to counter conspiracies, the law has had to evolve a more
sophisticated approach than that seen in most social science treatments of the idea.
Interestingly, legal approaches to conspiracy – like critical approaches to race
equality – emphasize the importance of overall outcomes:
a conspiracy has to be viewed as a whole, the component parts – which may be
unobjectionable by themselves or taken individually – are not to be weeded out and
enquired into separately. (Joshua and Jordan 2003, 655)
This perfectly describes how racism operates across the education system: where
countless mundane actions and decisions have racist impacts but they appear small,
even insignificant, in isolation. It is their cumulative weight that matters; from
Whitehall and national policy, through to daily acts of discipline enforcement and
academic sorting in classrooms.
The law also recognizes that conspiracies can happen without meetings or formal
agreements:
no formal agreement is required, it may be express or implied, and it is not even
necessary to prove the terms of any particular agreement or plan. Conspiracy may be
demonstrated by concert of action between the participants all working together for a
common purpose. (Joshua and Jordan 2003, 655)
Laws designed to prevent the operation of business cartels talk about ‘‘concerted
practices’’. The law provides for prosecutors to infer the operation of a cartel from its
actions: there is no need for a meeting, and no need for a formal agreement. What is
required, is evidence of ‘‘concert of action’’ between participants ‘‘working together for
a common purpose’’. An extended analysis of the English education system certainly
provides evidence of concerted action by numerous participants, all effecting the
legitimation and continued existence of Black educational exclusion and failure. I have
already noted several examples, such as the actions of policy-makers who continue to
prioritizestrategies that are known to disadvantage Black students; teachers whose very
notion of ‘‘ability’’ and motivation often preclude Black success; media commentators
keen to promote stories of racial unrest, especially where White people are constructed
as the new race victims; and the majority of educational scholars who are content to
view race/racism as peripheral issues of marginal significance and declining importance
in a world dominated by inequalities (such as class and gender) which appear more
immediately relevant to their own concerns and experiences.
Racism in education as a hub-and-spoke conspiracy
Race inequality in education has all the key characteristics that identify a conspiracy
in the law. A legal perspective can also help us understand the operation of the
conspiracy by identifying what kind of conspiracy we are dealing with.
a chain conspiracy involves several parties as links in one long criminal chain.
Defendants in chain conspiracies are responsible for the actions of all participants in the
chain, even if they never met some of the other participants in the chain. (Guide to
California Law, no date)
Superficially this sounds like an interesting possibility, after all education happens
sequentially (inequalities from primary school can be amplified and normalized in
secondaries) and education policy is often thought of as a sequence of decisions and
actions. However, as Stephen Ball (2006, 2008) has argued, policy is a lot ‘‘messier’’
than is normally assumed: there are unpredictable and unstable links between
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different contexts of policy production and implementation. Also, the racism that
I have outlined (earlier) is a lot more extensive and powerful than this model
suggests. There is, for example, a well known saying that a chain is only as strong as
its weakest link. But racism in education withstands lots of weak links; for example,
there are some schools that prioritize race equality and produce outstanding results
and there are countless individual teachers working tirelessly for race equality. But
these broken links make little difference to the overall shape of the system.
Consequently, the notion of a chain conspiracy does not usefully describe the
educational context in the UK. There is, however, another form of conspiracy that
does illuminate the educational processes:
In a hub-and-spoke conspiracy, many parties (the spokes), conspire with one person
(the hub), but not with other defendants. (Guide to California Law, no date)
In key respects this model offers a useful way of conceiving of the processes that I
have described. Individual people (teachers, policy-makers, commentators) and
separate agencies (education; the media; the criminal justice system) can be viewed as
spokes connected through a central hub of Whiteness, i.e. the shared supposedly
‘‘commonsense’’ beliefs that privilege White experiences, assumptions and interests.
This, of course, is a wheel with literally millions of spokes. This idea shows how the
actions and assumptions of different actors (from policy-makers to media pundits
and individual teachers) are all interconnected in mutually reinforcing and
immensely powerful ways. The model highlights several important features about
contemporary racism in education which offer a means of identifying, anticipating
and better resisting the conspiracy in the future.
First, the hub-and-spoke model highlights the dialectical relationship between
individual agency and wider structures of racism. Every individual actor is important
and implicated but each individual can hide in the mass of other spokes and deny
their significance. One of the strengths of institutional racism is that no single person
or agency can be held up as wholly responsible, but to some extent the system draws
authority from them all.
Second, the model highlights the reach and subtlety of racism. It suggests that every
single action and policy is potentially implicated in the conspiracy. Because of the
existing race inequalities in society, and because of the racist assumptions that most
Whites bring into school, every single education policy is likely to impact on
minoritized groups differently. Indeed, each policy is likely to have a disproportionately
negative impact on particular groups, such as Black students and their Muslim peers of
Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage. This is because racist assumptions saturate the
system and we are not starting from a level playing field in terms of existing inequalities.
Unless a policy is consciously interrogated for race equality impacts, therefore, the
chances are that every policy is likely to become another spoke in the conspiracy.
Finally, the model highlights the importance of anti-racist resistance. The conspiracy
is so deeply entrenched in White assumptions and actions that resistance cannot be left
to other people. Unless you are actively resisting, the chances are that you are just
another spoke who routinely reinforces the situation (whether you realize it or not).
Conclusion
‘‘It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you’’ quote by Huey Newton, co-founder
of the Black Panther Party. (Delgado 2006, 56)
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In this paper I have argued that the racism which shapes the experiences and
achievements of Black students can usefully be understood as a form of conspiracy,
whereby individual actors (from national policy-makers and commentators, through
to head teachers and classroom practitioners) and agencies (the economy, the
education system, the media) operate in ways that embody, legitimize and sustain
White racial hegemony. I am not arguing that the situation is merely like a conspiracy;
I am suggesting that it is a conspiracy in terms of the law’s understanding of the
concept rather than the cartoon version of Hollywood movies and soap operas.
I have presented the analysis by drawing on a range of data. First I looked at the
myopic focus on pupils in receipt of FSMs. I showed how an official commentary on
this group has come to dominate discussions of educational inequality in England.
This is sustained partly by the discursive slippage that moves from statistics on FSM
pupils (13.2% of the cohort) and makes assertions about ‘‘working class’’ students
(more than 50% of the population according to popular understanding of the term).
This shift also removes familiar race inequalities from view since they are only
apparent in figures on the now hidden 86% N-FSMs. By concentrating on FSM
students the statistics present White students as the main under-achievers and, in the
hands of the media and other commentators, this rapidly becomes a story about
White racial victimization as if the White FSM statistics are somehow the fault of
minoritized students, their communities and/or advocates.
Second I examined the use of ‘‘Gap Talk’’, i.e. the constant iteration of official
statements that race inequalities – where they exist – are lessening with each passing
year. By deploying selective official statistics, Gap Talk constructs the view that race
inequality is narrowing and, therefore, that policy is moving us inexorably towards
equity. Consequently any calls for a radical reappraisal of policy objectives and
strategies is made redundant. In contrast, an analysis of official statistics on a
nationally representative sample, and over a longer time-period than is common in
‘‘Gap Talk’’, revealed that the Black/White gap is not shrinking year upon year and
that, unless there is a major shift in policy and practice unlike anything the system
has ever seen, then in practical terms the Black/White gap is a permanent and
inevitable feature of the current system.
Finally, building on the view that policy and practice should be judged by
outcome, not intent, I concluded by outlining an understanding of racism as a form
of hub-and-spoke conspiracy, where the interests and experiences of White people
define the shape and function of policy and practice.
I realize that this analysis is challenging, possibly even offensive to those Whites
who believe that racism is a marginal problem perpetrated by a few extremists with
conscious malign intent. Nevertheless, the evidence is compelling; it suggests that
racism is a fundamental, organizing principal of the contemporary education system.
And so, the next time you hear about ‘‘narrowing gaps’’, or you are told that race is
irrelevant, take a moment to check that you are not being cast in the role of a
compliant, self-interested spoke.
Notes
1. This exchange followed a few days after I gave the 2007 Educational Review Guest Lecture
when (at a meeting on race and education policy in London) I unexpectedly met someone
who had been in the lecture audience.
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2. For discussion of the issues involved in the use of different ‘‘race’’ census categories in
research and policy see Gillborn (1995), Hylton (2008) and Mason (2000).
3. All quotations from Radio 5Live are my own verbatim transcriptions from an audio
recording of the programmes. I use standard transcription notations:
(…) denotes that speech has been edited out;
italicized text denotes that the speaker stressed this word/phrase.
4. Students of Chinese and Indian ethnic heritage are the only principal minority groups who
are more likely to achieve five higher grade passes than their White N-FSM peers: for a
detailed account of these groups and an analysis of racism within their school experiences
see Gillborn (2008, chapter 7).
5. The data are drawn from the Youth Cohort Survey (YCS), see Connolly (2006), Drew
(1995) and Gillborn (2008).
Notes on contributor
David Gillborn, Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London
WC1H 0AL, UK. Tel.: 020 7612 6811; Fax: 020 7612 6366; Email: d.gillborn@ioe.ac.uk
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