ABSTRACT
This chapter is an attempt to link-albeit provisionally and quite modestly-what is occurring in our cities and inside our schools to structures of imperialism and advanced capitalism that appear to be intractably globalized. Whiteness is a type of articulatory practice that can be located in the convergence of colonialism, capitalism, and subject formation. Whiteness is a sociohistorical form of consciousness, given birth at the nexus of capitalism, colonial rule, and the emergent relationships among dominant and subordinate groups. In Scott Lash's view, a politics of difference should recognize the singularity of the other through a dialogical praxis, through the overlapping of horizons, and through an ethics of sociality. Accompanied by a strategy of political articulation, critical multiculturalism can be a crucial practice in cutting racism at the joints and working toward a vision of cultural democracy premised on social and economic justice. Zygmunt Bauman sees communitarian democracy as community without freedom and liberal democracy as freedom without community.
