Racism and Education

 We recognize that education at all levels and all ages, including within the family, in particular human rights education, is a key to changing attitudes and behavior based on racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and to promoting tolerance and respect for diversity in societies; we further affirm that such education is a determining factor in the promotion, dissemination and protection of the democratic values of justice and equity, which are essential to prevent and combat the spread of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

Introduction: Education can be a means to retain as well as to eliminate inequality. As it can serve two contradictory purposes, two opposite results may ensue. Education can reinforce or diminish inequality. Purposeful government strategies are necessary for diminishing inequality because, without them, “a family’s social, cultural and economic status tends to act as a rifle-barrel setting an educational trajectory from which it is difficult for a child to escape.”1 Controversies surrounding affirmative action in education in the United States epitomize the choices to be made through its description by some as reversing discrimination, by others as reverse discrimination.2 The prohibition of discrimination has been attained almost all over the world, but this is not the same as the obligations to eliminate discrimination. These obligations are accepted by some Governments, rejected by others, and – where accepted – are implemented in different ways. Aiming at equal enjoyment of human rights, the obligations span the individual and the structural level, and they necessarily trigger controversy. Strategies aimed at eliminating racial discrimination in education are globally an exception rather than a rule. Few countries in the world statistically monitor race. Indeed, in many, race has been obliterated from national statistics in the hope that it would not count if no longer counted.3 Hopes that making race statistically irrelevant would also make it socially and politically irrelevant have not materialized, on the contrary. Nevertheless, the prerequisite for strategies to eliminate racial discrimination, statistical monitoring of discrimination on the grounds of race, color, ethnicity or provenance, has yet to become part of internationally comparable education statistics.4 This shows a continuing prevalence of ‘rejectionist’ in many countries, which denies that a policy to eliminate racial discrimination is needed.5 Realization of the right to education is a continuing process. Progress can be depicted through two overlapping and broadening concentric circles, the first showing an incremental inclusion of those previously excluded from education, and the second an 40 Dimensions of Racism extension of the right to education and its gradual conversion into rights-based education. The principle of indivisibility of human rights requires conformity of the right to education with the entirety of human rights law. Thus, government human rights obligations encompass making education available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable.6 Mere access to educational institutions does not amount to the right to education. Rather, it requires enforceable individual entitlements to education, safeguards for human rights in education and ‘instrumentalization of education to the enjoyment of all human rights through education. The extension of the right to education to previously excluded categories has undergone four stages. The first entailed overcoming legalized and institutionalized exclusion from education, a prominent feature of pre-human-rights education laws and a prominent feature of colonialism regarding racial exclusion. The second stage involved dismantling racially segregated educational institutions, the first step towards overcoming exclusion. The third has involved a transformation of education from segregation and assimilation towards integration, an ongoing process that is gradually restoring human rights to previously excluded categories in education and through education. The fourth, most challenging stage necessitates adaptation of education to the equal rights of all diverse learners and its ‘instrumentalization ’to enhance equal enjoyment of all human rights through education.

1. The heritage of racial exclusion:

The first recognition of education as a right did not necessarily mean its affirmation as a human right. Race and sex were frequent exclusionary criteria embodied in domestic laws. Today, non-citizens are often explicitly excluded,7 and the racial or ethnic profile of the excluded is routinely a cause of deep concern, albeit not recorded or monitored. Domestic servants or children without identity documents may be implicitly excluded, especially where such documents are required for school enrolment. Again, the racial or ethnic profile of the excluded is neither formally recorded nor statistically monitored, hence it does not inform education strategies

2. Surmounting segregation:

When the right to education was first recognized, the second stage routinely involved segregation, whereby girls, indigenous people, children with disabilities or members of minorities were given access to education, but confined to separate, routinely inferior schools. A look back at the past half-century shows that powerful movements have opposed racial segregation. Their success was marked by prohibitions of racial discrimination and government obligations to eliminate it. Segregation has been, however, altered rather than eliminated. The boundaries of belonging are no longer laid down in law, but are determined by the power of the purse and evidenced in the racial profile of residential segregation and the intake of private schools in many countries.

3. ‘Assimilationist’ and integrationist policies:

The third stage in strategies aimed at educating all children together involves shifting from segregation to assimilation and towards integration. Categories newly admitted to mainstream schools have to adapt to the model of education that previously excluded them, abandoning their mother tongue or religion, or their usual residence if they are enrolled in boarding schools. Girls are admitted to schools whose curricula were designed for boys, indigenous and minority children placed in schools that provide instruction in an alien language and, often, teach them history that denies their very existence. This process may be underpinned by non exclusionary goals, but these tend to be interpreted differently. Assimilation entails imposition of uniformity; integration acknowledges diversity but only as departure from the ‘norm’. Hence, newcomers have to adjust to the ‘norm’, which routinely extrapolates key features of the earliest selfgranted bearers of rights, favoring male over female, or speakers of the dominant national language over those speaking a vernacular.

4. Adaptation to diversity:

In 1978, UNESCO forged the concept of a right to be different, stating that “all individuals and groups have the right to be different, to consider themselves as different and to be regarded as such.”26 This concept was revisited by Justice Albie Sachs in 2000 when, in delivering a judgement in the name of South Africa’s Constitutional Court, he took the argument one step further, affirming “the right of people to be who they are without being forced to subordinate themselves to the cultural and religious norms of others.

 

5. Retrospect and prospects:

The objective towards which education should be molded is often defined as tolerance. Setting the limits of the intolerable is the first necessary step towards creating space for teaching and learning tolerance. Tolerance implies acceptance, albeit passive, of ‘the other’, and ‘the other’ is constantly created and recreated. Shared 49 Racism and education humanity yields to the emphasis of differences in provenance, lifestyle or status. The internationally prohibited division of humanity by race, sex or color has been expunged from educational curricula. An emphasis on provenance, however, defines ‘the other’ as immigrants, for example, and race is routinely the principal denominator.

KEY MESSAGE ■

Policymakers, teachers and families must all work together to promote equality and non-discrimination: 

► policymakers must create, enforce and fund policies to eliminate discrimination;

 ► teachers must be trained to work with children from all backgrounds; and

 ► pupils’ parents should be included in their school’s decisions to promote equality and non-discrimination in education. 

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