ABSTRACT
The concept of race and utility of race analysis have been staples of social theory and education for quite some time. One can hardly read or write about the challenges of education without confronting the “problem of race.” This does not mean that scholars wholly embrace race; some actively avoid and denigrate its study. However, it suggests that while race studies may not have reached mainstream status in most disciplines, they have made an impact that significantly changes the trajectory of most disciplines that have spoken to matters of race. Gatekeepers of the disciplines, including education, who wish to uphold “excellence” rather than “diversity” have launched their battlecry in what is now familiarly referred to as the “cultural wars,” as if the former were not a racial project (Symcox, 2002). That said, the race concept has been left relatively untouched, sometimes left as a proxy for the vague identity of “social group,” sometimes conflated with ethnicity sometimes nationality. Particularly in the USA, race has become common sense and sometime loses both its specificity and edge. Loic Wacquant (1997, 2002) interrogates not only the utility of this move, but also the questionable, folk-knowledge status of race that passes as scientific or analytical. Or worse, Wacquant fears that with the reality of U.S. imperialism enacted at the level of theory, “American” race analysis is exported as a general world analysis rather than a particular set of assumptions. With the arrival of post-studies in the form of poststructuralism and its varieties, new opportunities for analysis, insights, and ambivalences have made it possible to ask fundamental questions about the status of race. As I have outlined in Chapter 3, it also returns to the fold more established discourses on race, such as Marxism.
