5 incentives (including at first zero, and later very low export rates) had made Ireland an investment paradise for multinational firms seeking to gain access to the European Union market, especially those involved in the information technology and pharmaceuticals industries, which resulted in a major increase in foreign direct investment. The unemployment rate fell drastically, from over 15 percent in 1993, to six percent in 1999, to 4.2 percent in January of 2006 (EUROSTAT, 2006). By the end of the 1990s, economic experts were warning that a labor shortage could pose a serious problem to continued economic growth. In an effort to foster greater economic growth, the government reached out to so-called non-Irish nationals and returning Irish emigrants alike, in order to meet employers’ demands for labor. Simultaneously, social unrest in various parts of the world was forcing a small yet significant number of refugees and asylum seekers, primarily from African and Eastern European states, to seek refuge in Ireland. As the demographic profile of Irish society has diversified, so too has the incidence, and acknowledgment, of racist practices against a host of minority groups in Ireland. As a response to this, Irish educational policy has begun to reflect a commitment to interculturalism and anti-racism (Lodge & Lynch, 2004).
Intercultural education, which is defined as “a synthesis of the learning from multicultural and anti-racist education approaches…used internationally in the 1960s to the 1990s,” is increasingly viewed as a key mechanism through which social inequality in the guise of racism can be prevented in Ireland. Whereas earlier official policy documents on education have been critiqued for their failure to devote “substantive treatment of the issue” of diversity, (DES, 2002; p. 15), more recent policy documents privilege the notion of diversity and of intercultural education in particular as a means of underscoring “…the normality of diversity in all areas of human life.” Respecting, celebrating and recognizing diversity as normal” is identified as one of two “core focal points” of intercultural education, alongside the promotion of South-East Asia.
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“equality and human rights, challeng[ing] unfair discrimination, and promot[ing] the values upon which equality is built” (National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, (NCCA, 2005, p. 3).6 In recent years, a host of intercultural educational materials and guidelines have been produced by various statutory and non-statutory agencies. Most recently, the NCCA, the body with statutory responsibility for developing school curricula in Ireland, published intercultural guidelines for both primary and secondary schools which focus on “mediat[ing] and adapt[ing] the existing curricula to reflect the emergence of a more culturally diverse society in Ireland” (Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, 2005, p. 110).
Intercultural education is believed to “help prevent racism” (NCCA, 2005, p. 21), by
enabling students to “develop positive emotional responses to diversity and an empathy with
those discriminated against” as well as enabling them to “recognize and challenge discrimination
and prejudice” where they exist. As such, intercultural education is deemed “one of the key
responses to the changing shape of Irish society and to the existence of racism and
discriminatory attitudes in Ireland” (NCCA, 2005, p. 17). Finally, intercultural education also
seeks to reconfigure Irish national identity around a civic, rather than an ethnic ideal, such that
multiple “cultures,” “ethnicities” and “religious traditions” can be embraced (Tormey & O’Shea,
2003). The goal of cultivating civic nationalism is based in part on the criticism that the
“traditional view of Irishness—one that does not recognize the cultural and ethnic diversity
which has long existed in Ireland—has made many Irish people from minority groups feel
excluded” (NCCA, 2005, p. 13).7
This criticism stems from a long-standing perception that Ireland was a monocultural
society, despite the long presence of a host of racialized minority groups, including Travellers
6 In the NCCA’s intercultural guidelines, the phrase the “normality of diversity” appears no less than 10 times.
7 The idea of ethnic nationalism maintains that one’s belonging to the nation is based upon blood ties, common
origin, and specific cultural traditions that are not chosen, but rather obtained through the contingencies of birth and
inheritance (Montgomery, 2005). On the other hand, according to civic nationalism, it is civic rights and responsibilities which define and shape the nation, and which determine one’s belonging to it.
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(an indigenous nomadic group), Black-Irish, and Jews in Irish society.8 Related to the idea of stressing the normality of diversity, then, is the intercultural project of cultivating civic nationalism.
Findings: The Abnormalization of Diversity
As stated, one of the main arguments I seek to advance in this paper is that contrary to interculturalism’s aim of “normalizing diversity”, curricular materials and intercultural practices ironically have an abnormalizing effect. This abnormalization of diversity is partly achieved through a set of discursive acts which inform readers, listeners, and/or participants that Irish society has only recently become multicultural, thereby implying that a homogenous society is seen as the norm and that that diversity presents a deviation from this norm (Blommaert & Verschueren, 1998).
The following representation of the Irish nation and recent statutory initiatives to promote “anti-racism” in Irish society is illustrative of the abnormalizing logic of intercultural discourse in recently produced curricular materials. The following example, which describes recent demographic changes in the Irish landscape, is taken from a Civic, Social and Political Education textbook, titled Taking Action Revised (Quinn, Misteal & O’Flynn, 2004). Ireland has undergone major changes in the past few years and has become a multicultural society i.e., a society made up of several different cultures. In response to reports of racist incidents in Ireland and to promote the message that minority ethnic groups are a positive part of Irish society, the Irish government has started a National Anti-Racism Awareness Programme, called KNOW RACISM. (Taking Action Revised, p. 26; bold emphasis in original; italics added).
In the forgoing passage, the repeated use of the adverb of time “now,” and the depiction
of Ireland as having become multicultural in “the past few years,” combined with the
emphasis on change (Ireland has undergone major changes in the past few years/ Ireland
8 This illusion of cultural homogeneity was instrumental to the Irish nation-making project of the first half of the
twentieth century following Ireland’s independence from Britain. 8 has underdone many changes in recent years”), implicitly paints Ireland as a hithertofore homogenous society and explicitly proclaims diversity as a recent phenomenon which has altered the Irish demographic and social fabric.
Similarly, in the New Religion for Living Series, Religion Book 1 (Duffy, 2004) the failure to recognize religious diversity as a feature of Irish history is apparent in the following extract through the use of the adverb of place, “now” which explains:
The majority of people living in this country belong to the religion of Christianity. Yet people of other religions live here too. Many families come to this country to find new jobs and a better way of life. Some even come here to escape war and violence in their own countries.
When people settle in a new place, they bring their religious beliefs and a way of life with them. So the religions of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism have become part of life here now (New Religion for Living Series, Religion Book 1, p. 63, emphasis added).
The foregoing description is followed by a photograph of a woman wearing a head scarf holding hands with a small child in a shopping centre with green posters handing from the roof saying “St. Patrick’s Day.” Beneath is a caption which reads: “People of many religions live here now.” The use of the adverb of time carries the implicit message that “people of many religions” who “live here now” did not live “here then,” thereby denying the normality of diversity and the rich tradition of diversity that intercultural educational policies are so eager to demonstrate.
In other religious texts I examined, the representation of the Irish nation contributes to the marginalization of racialized groups by projecting a normalized image of the nation that is Christian and specifically, Catholic. Exploring Faith, (Goan & Ryan, 2004), for example provides a quotation from a prominent religious figure in Ireland, which conflates Irishness with Catholicism.
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If the proper measures of Catholicism are faith and devotion, then the Irish are still Catholic. There has been no change in their belief in God, heaven, miracles and life after death in the last decade, and church attendance rates are still the highest in Europe (Exploring Faith, 2004, p. 245; emphasis added).
The phrase “the Irish are still Catholic” in particular is a striking illustration of the deployment of a narrowly conceived sense of ethnic citizenship—supporting an exclusionary and restrictive definition of Irishness as Catholic by conflating Irish identity with Irish Catholic identity. If those who are Irish are also Catholic, then those who are not Catholic, must be somehow less Irish, or not even Irish at all. While the text claims to represent the “…rich and varied religious traditions of contemporary Ireland,” the discourse of Catholic Ireland has the effect of denying religious diversity as an historical feature of Irish society which intercultural educational resources are at pains to point out.
Similarly, school occasions, including BHC’s anniversary celebration and its graduation ceremony which I observed during the course of my fieldwork, are used to heighten the salience Similarly, school occasions, including BHC’s anniversary celebration and its graduation ceremony which I observed during the course of my fieldwork, are used to heighten the salience of a reimagined “multicultural” “Celtic Tiger” Irish national identity. On such occasions, BHC is explicitly characterized and advertised as a multicultural environment. The guest of honor at 10 the school’s anniversary celebration, Paul McDermott, a member of Ireland’s political establishment, explicitly cast this newfound multiculturalism, or “lived difference” as an opportunity to extend a welcoming hand to the ‘others’ who are now among ‘us.’9 When I went to school there was one nationality, maybe two. But growing up […] I learned about difference in books. You live it. You have the opportunity to befriend them, to offer Fáilte [welcome] to them, to meld them.
Despite its ostensibly inclusionary content, the you-them discourse prevalent in this “glib” celebration of cultural diversity has the effect of entrenching the boundaries between national i.e., Irish students and “other” “non-national” students (Goldberg, 1993). While Ireland is referred to as “our country,” and “the best Ireland we’ve ever had,” the discursive positioning of “other nationalities” as “them” separates the “them” from the “you” or “our” majority and relegates “them” to the margins of the imagined community that constitutes the Irish nation. Furthermore, the use of the phrase “to meld them” is suggestive of an assimilationist, as opposed to a truly inclusive ethos, whereby the mythically homogenous dominant cultural group gets to “live” multiple nationalities, by melding them, thereby granting them the power to manage diversity, and to feel enriched by it, without having to disrupt the power imbalances that exist between racialized majority and minority groups. The command that the national ‘we’ befriend the non-national ‘them’ belies the fact that minority students are themselves active agents who have their own role to play in negotiating friendships and/or that ‘they’ might have friendship groups that the dominant majority might want to join.
Moreover, while this discourse is ostensibly inclusive, to the extent that it rhetorically
and symbolically “welcomes” and celebrates its culturally diverse student body, it
9 The exact details of the anniversary, such as when BHC was established, as well as when the celebrations were
held, have been omitted, as have identifying details of the political figure’s real name and title to protect the identity
of the school.
11 simultaneously abnormalizes diversity, in the sense that it represents it as a new and aberrant phenomenon, and therefore as something which is at once unusual and alien to the Irish nation. In this sense, rather than normalizing diversity, the discourse of “welcoming” and “belonging” serves to marginalize and abnormalize racialized minorities within the Irish national space.
As Hage (1998) puts it:
The ‘we appreciate’ diversity, we value ethnic contributions, etc., attitudes which abound….[in multicultural discourse] create a gulf between the ‘we’ and that which is appreciated and valued. In so doing, they work to mystify the real possibility, grounded in the very composition of [Irish] society, of a national ‘we’ which is itself diverse. (Hage, 1998; p. 139).
BHC’s culturally diverse student body was a similarly important theme of the Deputy Principal, Mr. O’Meara’s speech at the graduation ceremony. Like the rhetoric of McDermott mentioned above, the discourse of welcoming and embracing diversity is evident once more here. Hage’s (1998) distinction between “different modalities of national belonging” (p. 51) is helpful as a means of unpacking the kind of acceptance that multicultural discourse bestows upon others in the national space. It is a discourse deriving from Hage’s (1998) concept of governmental power, i.e., the power to have a legitimate view concerning the positioning of others in the nation,” including an opinion on “who should ‘feel at home’ in the nation and how…,” which is claimed by those who are in a dominant position (p. 46).10 Mr. O’Meara’s exertion of governmental power is enacted in the following statement about “belonging.”
These flags represent the nationalities of the graduating class of 2005. They represent a story of belonging. Each one of those flags and each of those students belongs in Ireland.
10 Hage clarifies that although “the holding of state power can be an efficient mode of governmental power,” the
“power to govern which derives from governmental belonging is not equivalent to formal state or ‘government’
power” in that the notion of governmental power incorporates the sense of entitlement which certain individuals
possess in routine, informal contexts, to make unofficial managerial statements about the nation, and its ‘others.’
(Hage, 1998, p. 46).
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Implied in such statements is that “‘international’ students” can be part of our Irish family too i.e., that they belong here even though they are outsiders and even though they are different to us (Ang, 1996). This discourse which seeks to assure minorities of their (passive) belonging, has the effect of positioning the culturally dominant group, represented by O’Meara, at the centre of the Irish cultural map, around which ‘otherness’ is located (Hage, 1998). The relegation of minority groups to a relative position of marginality is also symbolically achieved by the central location of the Irish and EU flags as major focal points at the top of the stage, relative to the positioning of the 12 “other” “international” flags along either side of the hallway. While explicit attention is drawn to these 12 flags (“These flags represent the nationalities of the graduating class of 2005”), nobody in the audience is, nor needs to be reminded of what the Irish and EU flags represent, or that they are indeed part of the “the story of belonging.” More importantly, perhaps, the discourse of belonging positions culturally dominant groupings in Irish society in the role of the acceptor, decreeing the acceptability of the ethnic other (Hage, 1998). Those utterances which bestow acceptance thus have the effect of entrenching power relations between the acceptor and those whom they accept. The very expression of acceptance (as opposed to an acceptance which goes without saying) implies that it is conditional and that it could be withdrawn, were migrants to be deemed somehow undeserving of this acceptance (ibid). Indeed, as the following quotation from the BHC yearbook reveals, the construction of the presence of students from “different nations” at BHC is at once presented as an “unprecedented challenge” and as offering “positive possibilities.” This implies a conditional, as opposed to wholehearted acceptance, such that “their” presence is to be welcomed so long as it does not become too challenging and/or so long as the positive possibilities “they” offer “us” materialize.
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In keeping with the development of Ireland as a multicultural society, BHC is proud to be alma mater to [a host of] different nations. We have responded to this unprecedented challenge by engaging in projects designed to open all our minds to the positive possibilities this offers us (BHC yearbook; emphasis added). Once again, the characterization of Ireland as a “developing” “multicultural society” (which is reminiscent of the discourse in curricular materials (as well as that articulated in the broader social policy field), normalizes and sustains the myth of Ireland’s former homogeneity. Furthermore, while “the presence of representatives of “different nations” at BHC is to be valued from the point of view of the “positive possibilities this offers us” it is precisely this enriching function that positions “outsiders” in a space of objectified otherness (Ang, 1996; Hage, 1998). Hage maintains that the discourse of cultural enrichment assigns to minority cultures “a different mode of existence,” such that whereas the dominant cultural group simply exists, minority cultures exist purely for the benefit of the dominant groups. In other words, the worth of minority groups comes to be defined in terms of their function as enriching cultures (Hage, 1998, p. 121).
The Misrepresentation of “Race” Racism, Anti-Racism and Racialized Minorities Another problematic aspect of interculturalism in the curriculum which I wish to highlight is the representation of “race,” racism, anti-racism and racialized minorities in school texts and classroom contexts. Through the interviews I conducted with minority students, it became clear that educative materials that are held up as promoting core intercultural values of tolerance, understanding and respect can in fact have the adverse effect of misrepresenting and offending racialized minorities, by advancing erroneous ideas about various aspects of their culture. Religious education in particular tended to pose problems for a number of minority students who participated in the research. A number of self-identified Muslim students expressed frustration that the knowledge students were being taught about Islam information was “wrong,” “false” or “incorrect.” Still others relayed stories which suggest that minority students’ 14 knowledge of their own faith is at times undermined or invalidated in the classroom. As the following example illustrates, those who did approach their teachers to contest these misrepresentations often did so in vein.
Asmitha: We were actually doing something about the Hindu religion last year in class and there, she [the teacher] was just talking about cremation and everything and she was saying something about cremation I told her that it wasn’t true and we don’t do that and she was like…she wouldn’t believe me. She said “no I went to India and I saw it actually happen.”…The whole class thought it was totally sick and everything what she told us, and I was like it’s not true. But she was like it is and the students would be more liable to believe her than me because she’s the teacher… While teachers can play a significant role in altering misperceptions about the cultures of racialized minority students, this particular story suggests that they can also play a detrimental role in devaluing the primacy of students’ personal knowledge and experiences, and hence deligitimating what students know and bring to the classroom. In privileging her own personal experience (“I went to India and I saw it actually happen”) the teacher simultaneously dismissed Asmitha’s knowledge of her own culture as incorrect or irrelevant, while promoting the ideas that feed racism. In other words, she legitimates her own view by linking the subject matter to her own experience while delegitimating Asmitha’s experiences of her own faith. Another feature of the discourse of interculturalism I identified in the Irish curriculum is that it is based “common-sense” ideas that it is natural, understandable and legitimate even, for example, to be fearful and intolerant of those who are racially or ethnically “different.” One such explanation for why racism exists, which appears in Civic, Social and Political Education text Connected, at once individualizes the phenomenon while simultaneously linking it with “social changes” which took place in Europe in the 1990s.
During the 1990s, Europe experienced much social change. Social change often gives rise to increased levels of fear and insecurity in people, especially those who wonder ‘why can’t things remain the same?’ We can express our 15 feelings of insecurity as mistrust, suspicion, prejudice and discrimination against people who are in some way ‘different’.
Prejudice refers to unshakable beliefs and attitudes about people. Discrimination concerns actions against people belonging to particular social groups. Discrimination against people who are ‘different’ takes many forms. Xenophobia is hatred of people from another country, simply because they are of different origin.
Ethnicism is discrimination against people whose culture is different. Racism is a form of bigotry based on skin colour. However, the word ‘Racism’ is often used to include the many different kinds of bigotry experienced by persons or groups” (Connected 2, 1999, p. 124; emphasis in original).
The foregoing explanation associates racism with a period of social change and increased levels of fear and insecurity, and suggests that “feelings” of “prejudice,” “discrimination” “xenophobia” “ethnicism” “racism” and so on would be unlikely in times of social stability, i.e., if indeed things had just stayed the same. Furthermore, locating the source of racism in “fear” “insecurity” “ignorance” supports a minimalist and individualist definition of racism and excuses, to some extent at least, the racism that is admitted to exist, by constructing it as a natural, and not a racist response.
Elsewhere, the association of racism with the recent arrival of asylum seekers and “other non-nationals” lends credence to the erroneous idea that racism is somehow the product of present patterns of migration. The following explanation of racism in New Complete Geography, for example, maintains that:
Racially-motivated crime has been on the increase in our major cities. Ignorance of and racist attitudes towards asylum seekers and other non-nationals have been largely responsible for such crime (New Complete Geography, p. 266). Explanations of this nature place the blame for the experience of racism squarely onto racialized minorities themselves, i.e., the explanations are couched in an implicit understanding that there is something about the nature of the racializied minorities that caused the racism they experienced and about the number of minorities who have recently arrived. The consistent linking of 16 immigration and racism, which “explains” prejudice, discrimination and racism as consequences of the arrival of “foreigners ” “living in and coming to Ireland,” conceals a variety of state policies and practices which have resulted in deteriorating working conditions, higher cost of living and poorer quality of life more generally for many in society and which provide a more systemic framework to explain racism in contemporary Irish society. In other words, if intercultural policies, practices and curricular content continue to advance individualized understandings of racism which fail to acknowledge the role of the state in constructing and sustaining racial and ethnic divisions in the first instance, they will ultimately fail to ameliorate the problems of racism in society (Connolly, 2000).
From this vantagepoint, recent moves to integrate discussions of racism and anti-racism into the curriculum, while ostensibly working against racism, are unlikely to achieve this goal because these discussions typically portray racism as an individual phenomenon dislocated from the broader structural context within which it is generated and sustained. Furthermore, the idea of “race” as a social construct is “both obscured and present” in the various textual representations of race and racism (Willinsky, 1998, p. 163). In other words, to the extent that efforts to convey that “race” is, in fact, socially constructed are made, they tend to be deeply ambiguous and to obfuscate more than they illuminate. Most of the definitions of racism which appeared in the school texts I analyzed were of the “racial inferiority/superiority couplet” variety, which portrays racism as equaling discrimination plus a sense of racial superiority (Mac an Ghaill, 1998, p. 3). In CSPE text Impact, (Barrett & Richardson, 2003), racism is defined as “a form of discrimination…faced by ethnic minority groups. It maintains that “Racism is based on the false belief that some ‘races’ are superior to others. Racism denies people basic human rights, dignity and respect” (Impact, 17 emphasis in original, p. 182).11 Other definitions of racism, while not referring explicitly to the idea of “race,” continue to naturalize “race” by evoking the salience of color, thereby promoting an erroneous notion that racism is primarily about color or visible difference while eclipsing considerations of power. CSPE text Connected 2, (De Búrca, & Jeffers, 1999), for example, defines “Racism [as] a form of bigotry based on skin color. However, the word ‘Racism’ is often used to include the many different kinds of bigotry experienced by persons or groups” (Connected 2, p. 124).
While definitions of racism are common in school texts, the term, “race,” is rarely defined in such instances. In CSPE text, We Are The World (Cassidy & Kingston, 2004), in a unit on “Rights and Responsibilities,” students are provided with “15 definitions that you will need to understand in this unit.” Among these is a definition of racism which it describes as “negative behavior towards members of another race” (We are the World, 2004, p. 6). At no point, however, in the chapter are students informed that they “need to understand what “race” is. The failure to define “race” promotes an understanding of “race” as a “normal” commonsensical idea—a natural, unproblematic, objective reality which therefore does not require explanation or interpretation of any sort (Montgomery, 2005).
Contrary to the above definitions, which implicitly convey “race” as an objective reality, some accounts of racism in school texts actually do attempt to portray “race” as a social construct. One of the more elaborate and complicated definitions of racism is presented in RE text All About Faith.
We may define racism as: prejudice against people of another race or ethnic group.
11 In an accompanying footnote it is explained that “An ethnic minority group is a group of people whose skin color,
religion or culture is different from the majority of people living in the same place.”
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Racism has proven to be one of the most destructive forces in human history. Racists believe that all human beings can be divided up into separate racial groups.
Most of these groups will be considered inferior, while the group to which the racist belongs will be identified as superior, perhaps the only superior race. Scientifically speaking, this is nonsense. Differences in skin color, facial structure and so on are of no real significance. All people are members of the same biological species—the human race.
Hostility towards people of other races can range from mild dislike to an extreme hatred, which can be expressed in acts of violence in passing laws to deprive people of their rights. Where racism is put into practice in this way, it is called racial discrimination (All about Faith, 2005, p. 296; emphasis in original). The foregoing representation of racism is a particularly vivid illustration of how efforts to denaturalize the very notion of “race” can revert to a hegemonic understanding which continues to add authenticity and legitimacy to the idea of separate and fixed human “races.” In other words, race-thinking i.e., the belief that the world’s population can be divided into “races,” such that every individual can be classified as belonging to one “race” or another, is inscribed into the very discourse that aims to challenge this view. In other words, even this relatively sophisticated definition of “race” which dismisses, as “nonsense,” the idea that differences in skin color, facial structure and so on, have inherent meaning, i.e., “that all human beings can be divided up into separate racial groups,” continues to reinforce race-thinking through its repeated and unmarked use of the term “race” (e.g., “We may define racism as: prejudice against people of another race or ethnic group;” “Hostility towards people of other races can range from mild dislike to an extreme hatred…”; “Jews were instructed to treat other races with respect” (All About Faith, emphasis added; p. 296); “a person’s race or gender are unimportant to God.” “People are usually discriminated against on the grounds that they belong to a particular; race, religion, and gender (usually female), age (especially the elderly), disability (physical or mental)” (All About Faith, p. 295; emphasis added).
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In other words, although the above passage apparently has every intention of refuting the erroneous belief that humanity can be meaningfully divided into discrete “races,” it actually succeeds in replicating the very racist fiction it seeks to expose by continuing to encourage or impose race-thinking by repeatedly using the term “race” in a way which banally reinforces assumptions about inherent “racial” difference. Thus, constant repetition of the word “race” has a “naturalizing effect;” far from promoting anti-racism in education, this account of “race” and racism encourages young people to think uncritically in racialized terms (Hall, 2000; p. 222). What undermines these efforts most, perhaps, is that if we take the term “racial group” to be synonymous with “race,” then the authors of this passage, to the extent that they continue to deploy language consistent with the idea of discrete racial groups, are “racist” according to their own definition i.e., that a racist is someone who “believe[s] that all human beings can be divided up into separate racial groups” (p. 296).
The above passage can be further critiqued for its reductive explanation of racism in terms of the prejudice/discrimination framework, which fails to address adequately, if at all, the material causes and consequences of racist oppression. Indeed, the overall passage appears under the section heading “prejudice and discrimination.”
The section concludes with a section on “the way forward” which maintains that:
All people are God’s children. All people are of equal value in God’s sight. Perhaps the only way forward for the human race in the twenty-first century is for people to finally accept that they are all members of the one family of God. People must not try to evade their responsibilities to respect one another and treat one another with compassion and generosity. This is the only way that lasting peace and justice can ever be achieved. (All about Faith; p. 298; emphasis in original).
While it is a religion book, and hence, not unusual that the “answer” to racism will be framed in religious terms, this “solution” reduces racism to the realm of an individual moral failing, which can be prevented if individuals “finally accept” God and a moral responsibility 20 “not to try to evade their responsibilities to respect one another to treat one another with compassion and generosity.” This representation of racism as an individual moral failing has the effect of obfuscating the embeddedness of racism within social structures and institutions (Troyna, 1993, p.30). Furthermore, this opposition to racism evokes a universalistic framework which posits that all human beings are “members of the one family of God.” The universalist position maintains that human differences are superficial and thus “race” is deemed to be something that is—or at least should be— irrelevant and invisible (Blauner, 1997; Montgomery, 2005). In All about Faith, it is expressed in the form of a biblical reference:
A person’s race or gender are unimportant to God. As Paul wrote:
So there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free men, between men and women, you are all one in union with Jesus Christ. (Galatians 3:28). This “we are all the same” rhetoric helps to create and sustain the illusion of a “colorblind” meritocracy, and as such provides legitimacy for a system which wishes to demonstrate that structural barriers for racialized minorities do not exist (Troyna, 1993). Consistent also with national anti-racist policy, curriculum materials and BHC’s policy of positive interculturalism, students tended to ascribe the existence of racism in society to individual ignorance, a lack of appreciation or awareness of other cultures, or “not being used” to “difference.” Their understandings of racism are shaped by a “discursive logic” which divides humanity into discrete ‘races’ of black, brown or white people, and according to which they define themselves in opposition to others. Indeed, most of the understandings of racism provided by students are indicative of the taken-for-grantedness of ‘race’ as a meaningful category, and an associated lack of understanding of ‘race’ as a social construct. Similarly, the kinds of ’antiracist’ solutions that students and the school more generally advocated were highly reflective of the kinds of solutions put forward in state-sanctioned anti-racist educational campaigns, and in school texts. To this extent, the understandings of racism which are articulated at the school-21 level cannot be blamed on social actors within schools, but are rather influenced by broader institutional and statutory silences and mystifications about ‘race’ and racism in general.
Pedagogical and Non-Pedagogical Implications
The intercultural educational approach sketched above assumes that knowledge about “other cultures” as well as about racism will result in positive social change, yet the embedded assumptions about “race” that are actively produced and reproduced by such knowledge are rarely called into question. In other words, the role of intercultural education in enabling racial difference to acquire and sustain meaning is rarely scrutinized. A necessary starting point for realizing curricular justice along racial-ethnic lines, therefore, would be to dismantle the current representations of “race” as a self-explanatory, unproblematic, pre-determined given, and to demonstrate more effectively that the designation of humanity into distinctive racial categories is untenable. Consideration of the historical racialization of Irishness in the UK and the US in school texts, for example, could be effectively used to denaturalize concepts like “race” and “whiteness” and more specifically to problematize the contemporary hegemonic conflation of Irishness with whiteness. Relatedly, whereas the current comparisons drawn between Irish emigration and present day immigration to Ireland in school texts are superficial at best, this knowledge could be re-constructed in such a way as to highlight the common elements of the immigrant experience, and the common racialization processes that often accompany that experience. Collectively, elaboration of these themes could potentially provide young people with alternative explanatory frameworks for racism which both foreground the socially constructed nature of racial categories and which help promote genuine understanding and empathy for those who are oppressed. Finally, based on the research evidence presented above which suggests that the inclusion of intercultural content often comprises inaccurate and disproportionately uneven knowledge about “other” cultural groups, this curricular knowledge 22 should be reconstructed by, and from, the perspective of racialized minorities living in Irish society (Connell, 1993).
Ultimately, however, while educational reform could serve as an important device in the pursuit of social equality, it should never be taken to be the primary one. In other words, while stressing the need for pedagogical approaches grounded in a curricular justice perspective, the findings presented here also raise important questions about whether schools are, in fact, the best place to promote knowledge about racism and how to combat it in the first place, at least within the present regressive political and economic climate in Ireland, wherein the interests of a small political and economic elite are privileged over the well being of ordinary citizens (Rizvi, 1993). In and of themselves, therefore, curricular and pedagogical approaches which are grounded in curricular justice and which displace race-thinking with conceptions such as racialization that denaturalize ‘race’ will not significantly alter the prevalence of racism in societies characterized by increasing polarization of income and wealth, which are institutionalized via global capitalism. Within such regressive contexts, the response to racialized minorities is not likely to be influenced to any significant degree by educational interventions, but is rather contingent upon the extent to which indigenous and dominant cultural groups feel that their jobs, living standards or livelihoods are threatened, or secure (Rizvi, 1991). In the Irish context, a new politics of uncertainty and insecurity is evolving (Ball & Vincent, 2001), as a consequence of altered patterns of employment like systems of performance-related pay and fixed-term contracts. These developments coincide with, and are complexly related to, an increasing trend of in-migration, and the new configurations of racism against indigenous and exogenous Others which accompany these trends. Such conditions make the middle-classes increasingly conscious of the need to accumulate and valorize the ‘right’ kinds of cultural capital if they are to secure their privilege and relative competitive advantage within this system (Drudy & Lynch, 1993).
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Indeed, in the past, the middle classes in Ireland, as a large and politically mobilized group, have proven highly successful in employing the education system to perpetuate their own class power. From this perspective, it is the wealthier middle classes, not the least advantaged and marginalized in society who exercise political and economic resources in the hope of impacting the education system in ways that will ensure that their competitive advantage is passed on to their offspring.
Speaking about class-based inequalities in the educational system in Ireland, Drudy & Lynch (1993) have argued that egalitarian educational reform is typically accommodated only in so far as it does not alter existing patterns of privilege distribution. In support of this claim, they discuss the role of the development of alternative vocational programs of study in response to working class demands for a more culturally appropriate and meaningful curriculum. They suggest that far from having a genuinely egalitarian outcome, the development of these alternative curricular tracks fulfilled a political function of providing an educational palliative to the working classes while preempting resistance and thereby reproducing existing relations of educational consumption. In other words, they conclude that educational resistances, such as demands for the validation of working-class culture in the curriculum, are often counter-resisted and give way to accommodations, rather than radical change, precisely because the power and influence of those with the political resources to mediate the educational system are “dependent on recycling resistance into institutionally non-threatening forms” (Drudy & Lynch, 1993, p. 113). In much the same way, I maintain that similar mechanisms could be at play in the current trend towards intercultural education, including the incorporation of curricular content about various racialized minority groups in an effort to appease and accommodate minority groups’ concerns about their lack of representation in the curriculum while preventing disruption of the status quo. Within this context, the relegation of social problems such as racism to schools may 24 at best have the effect of easing the polity’s conscience while creating a ready scapegoat that can be blamed when racism persists (Page, 1994).
Finally, it needs to be borne in mind that classrooms and school curricula are not always the most meaningful and effective contexts in which to engage those students most in need of alternative ways of conceiving and responding to ‘difference’ (O’Donnell & Sharpe, 2000). This is in part because the ideologies that inform racism are deeply internalized and are therefore not easily susceptible to change as intercultural educational philosophies would have us believe.
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