ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the nature and extent of racist incidents in education since the late 1960s and gives some flavour of the dominant interpretive frameworks used by educationists and others in framing a response to its incidence. It presents the issue of how best to define the term 'racist incident'. The chapter argues a firm distinction between racist incidents and the more common descriptions: 'racial incidents' and 'inter-racial conflict'. It discusses the stem from Stuart Hall's conviction that the purpose of theorizing is to 'enable us to grasp, understand and explains – to produce a more adequate knowledge of the historical world and its processes. The eruption of racist incidents in British schools is not a new phenomenon. 'Being racially harassed is a way of life' is how one Community Relations Officer put it to the Swann Committee. However, it is discrepant with the views of the Swann Committee which emphasized the particular salience of 'race' in contexts.
