The Anthropology of Education and Contributions to Critical Race Studies

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis essay is a response to Jonathan Warren and Michelle Kleisath's “The Roots of US Anthropology's Race Problem: Whiteness, Ethnicity and Ethnography.” In this essay, I engage with critiques about anthropology’s position on the periphery of critical race studies. The discipline’s lack of attention to racism and critical race scholarship stands in some contrast to the subfield of anthropology of education with its explicit antiracist mission and goals. I suggest educational anthropologists are more explicit about promoting research that details the workings of racism and fosters racial literacy because of at least two reasons – as a subsection of anthropology, educational anthropology is more closely aligned with if not squarely located in the field of education, and it benefits from critical anthropological methods and sensibilities. I address each of these reasons and conclude with thoughts about educational anthropologists’ contribution to critical race studies.