Race Matters: Urban Education, Globalisation and the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

The educational landscape in Britain in the early twenty-first century is constantly changing. It shifts according to changes of government, economic instability and global pressures. The key concerns around race and anti/racism of the 2000s have waned into the policy background. The focus now is once again on sameness – on assimilation, an emphasis on the so-called and nebulous ‘British values’ and ‘community cohesion’, although the latter of these is now more in the guise of ‘counter terrorism’. The targeted initiatives to address Black and Minority Ethnic underachievement have been cut, and the blame for poor educational performance is laid at the feet of parents, the children themselves, teachers or ‘failing’ schools. Thus the emphasis is on individual responsibility: not structures or more specifically structural racism. Britain, as elsewhere, is also caught up in the global competition for a top place in the educational stakes. Initiatives are thus driven by school effectiveness rather than addressing inequalities. In addition, over almost 30 years we have seen the development and entrenchment of a marketised Education system, which has led to an atomised system of schooling and individualisation giving rise to competitiveness. All of this has consequences for urban education and race issues. Underpinning this scenario however, theoretical understanding of racism/s has developed and in the twenty-first century a clearer recognition of Whiteness and its implications for racist oppression has developed. These are some of the central issues that will be explored in this chapter, in relation to published key research and ideas, in a discussion and analysis of inequalities and possibilities for progressing social justice.