Race, Teaching About

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, teaching about race is a different enterprise than 50 years ago. Conceptually, we have moved beyond early-20th-century “racial science,” where race was considered an aspect of biology and the human species was divided into five ranked subdivisions or “races.” Race is now recognized as a human invention, a social construction of historically specific practices, institutions, identities, and classifications, and an ideology for legitimizing social inequality. This is reflected in official statements of major academic disciplines, such as the American Anthropological Association and the American Sociological Association.

Race, as a lived experience, is also different in the 21st century. Post–World War II anticolonial movements produced new nations and nationalisms, many taking on strong commitments to social equality. Many overt forms of racism have disappeared globally, including the ending of apartheid in South Africa with the establishment of its new constitution in 1996. In the United States, the civil rights movement eradicated legal, institutionalized forms of racism in education, housing, and marriage.

Immigration has also both changed the demographics and challenged the racial categories of many formerly European dominated nations. In the United States, a growing number of cities and school districts have populations in which people of color are the majority, even as the definition of people of color remains somewhat transient.

Age and population shifts mean learners and educators are increasingly postcolonial and post–civil rights in their attitudes. They are used to experiencing old forms of racism vicariously, often through the lens of [Page 1738]multicultural and antiracist education programs. Such programs, initiated in the 1960s and 1970s, continue to produce excellent teaching resources, including websites, books, films, lesson plans, hands-on activities, and educator-oriented workshops.

Teaching about race now includes the complexities of 21st-century race and racism, persistent inequalities, the proliferation of global capitalism, and what Carol C. Mukhopadhyay and Peter Chua refer to as cultural racism. This phenomenon includes how race intersects with other structural identities such as class, gender, religion, and nationality and how it plays out in popular and political discourses about race. Examples of cultural racism can be seen in debates and mandates involving European immigration and affirmative action in the United States.

Other scholars explore the language of racism. One example is the persistence of outmoded racial labels such as Caucasian. Exciting new educational research on language and identity applies discourse analysis to the topic of “acting White,” exploring racialized consequences of particular linguistic styles, and the use of language to assert racial and ethnic identities. In hip hop lexicon for example, scholars are studying the interrelation of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and concepts of masculinity. Studies of code switching among bilingual and multilingual students also reveal study-worthy interactions of class, ethnicity, and nationality.

Although these are important developments and worth translating into educator-oriented materials, concerns remain because of the confusion that continues to surround the concept of race. In what sense is race “real”? What is biological fact and what is fiction? Where does culture enter? And what does it really mean to say that race is a “social construction”? And if race is solely a social invention, can it be eliminated?

...