Systemic and Individual Racism, Racialization and Antiracist Education

Abstract

I take up Silliman’s challenge to explore the ‘moral logic’ of ‘structural racism’ largely absent in my book, I’m Not a Racist, But...I criticize and build on Glenn Loury’s account of the normative assessment of racial inequality by examining three factors generating such disparitiesin educational achievement – stereotyping, performance-based generalizing, and a preschool skills gap. What is morally troubling about the resultant achievement gap is partly dependent on and partly independent of the moral assessment of the individual racial wrongs involved (or not) in these processes, a result in the spirit of Garcia’s individual focus but not his anti-consequentialism. Responding to Levinson, I suggest forms of antiracist educational practice built around the rejection of ‘race’ as a scientifically valid classification together with the retention of racial domination, and resistance to it, as historically significant forces (captured in the notion of ‘racialization’).