`A Darker Shade of Pale?' Whiteness, the Middle Classes and Multi-Ethnic Inner City Schooling

Abstract

Drawing on data from interviews with 63 London-based families, this article argues that there are difficult and uncomfortable issues around whiteness in multi-ethnic contexts. Even those parents, such as the ones in our sample, who actively choose ethnically diverse comprehensive schools appear to remain trapped in white privilege despite their political and moral sentiments. This is a complicated question of value; of having value, finding value in, getting value from, and adding value. Even those white middle classes committed to multi-ethnic schooling face the perils of middle-class acquisitiveness, extracting value from, as they find value in, their multi-ethnic `other'. In such processes of generating use and exchange value a majority of both the white working classes and the black working classes, those who are perceived not to share white middle-class values, are residualized and positioned as excessive. Symbolically, they come to represent the abject `other' of no value.