CRT, the possibility of change and the under-theorisation of agency

In this section I argue that despite the accusations of CRT as being too deterministic, it has demonstrated its usefulness to challenge the status quo and make changes in the educational system. However, as I argue further, CRT

1 _{English Baccalaureate is a group of traditional subjects taken at GCSE level (examination at the end of} high school, usually at age 16) which are often seen as facilitating access to prestigious universities and used by the government in creating school league tables.

has not adequately engaged with the conceptualisations of agency of students acting against the racist structures, precisely because of its focus on structures.

In the simplest terms, the structure versus agency debate can be described as the issue of determining whether an individual acts freely or as directed by social structures (Archer, 1995). In other words, to what extent structure and to what extent agency determines choices and opportunities. In the current study structure can be understood as a pattern of social arrangements normalising whiteness and disadvantaging people of colour in education, while agency can be understood as the degree to which students are able to act with or against the racist educational structures and achieve educational success (Archer, 1995; Cintron, 2010; Gillborn, 2008). Given the structural character of CRT, it is perhaps unsurprising that it has concentrated on theorising structures and the possibility of changing them, rather than agency of individuals.

Critical Race Theory, as the name suggests is critical of the current status quo. However, it has been argued to be overly pessimistic (Cole, 2012a; Driver, 2011) – given its emphasis on structural, deeply ingrained nature of racism which is said to be impossible to eradicate and giving little agency to people of colour (Gillborn, 2008; Leonardo and Harris, 2013). Some CRT scholars are extremely doubtful about racism ever becoming a thing of the past, claiming that “Black people will never gain full equality” (Bell, 1992, p. 373) and all the efforts to eliminate racism will only be partial and temporary victories. For example, Delgado (2011) says that one of the biggest issues nowadays is that Black people are supportive of the status quo, because they were co-opted into the racist system by being given mid-management positions by White people. Using interest convergence, one of the CRT’s analytical tools discussed above, this can be explained as White elites ‘sacrificing’ some of the White middle-class people for the (limited) benefit of Black people, so that the latter do not rebel (perhaps even violently) against the entire system and overthrow White elites. According to Delgado, Black people are being used here to speak the ‘master’s voice’ (p. 1276). I argue that to say that Black people were given jobs by White people, as opposed to them taking the jobs fails to recognise their agency, activism, intellect, knowledge and skills.

The response of CRT to the accusations of being overly deterministic is that through the critical analysis of the oppressive structures of racism it does not only describe the world but challenges its assumptions and therefore disrupts the status quo (Rollock and Gillborn, 2011; Yosso, 2005). This happens by, for example, re-telling narratives from the perspectives of people of colour, thus giving them voice (Zamudio et al., 2011). As Stovall (2013) argues such counter-narratives acts “as a conduit by which to communicate issues and concerns, [it] encourages us to engage practical means by which to address issues brought forward by racism.” (p.564). Another way in which the status quo gets disrupted is by applying analytical tools such as interest convergence to understand the motivations shaping education, other social institutions and the society at large (Bell, 1980; Delgado, 2011). However, having the sheer knowledge of how racism operates (i.e. CRT informed analysis) does not equal taking action in order to ameliorate the situation of people of colour, and as Gloria Ladson-Billings (1999) argues people of colour cannot afford CRT being limited to theoretical contemplations if these do not translate into practice. Therefore, CRT scholarship, which by its nature is committed to social justice, necessitates moving beyond the rhetoric and developing models of praxis

(Stovall, 2013). This mostly happen via two avenues (1) activism and (2) Critical Race Pedagogy (CRP).

Critical ‘race’ theorists argue that CRT’s language and tools to deconstruct everyday assumptions as racist rather than neutral give voice to activists (Yosso, 2005) which can then lead to changes in educational policies, practice or even law. Indeed, it has been argued that CRT was the driving force for activism in higher education in 1980s in the US which led to boycotts, changes to academic recruitment practices and creation of courses based on CRT (Baber, 2016). CRT has also been argued to be crucial for community activists bringing attention to racialised issues in educational policy and praxis, by for example, working towards setting up schools which resist post-racial discourses and neo-liberal colour-blind policies (Stovall, 2013, 2005).

Critical ‘Race’ Pedagogy (CRP), stemming from CRT, is seen as focusing on empowering students. It has been argued to be crucial in challenging the

there are power dynamics in every situation, including power of students, albeit limited, to influence what and how they are taught and thus challenge the status quo (Lynn et al., 2013). CRP then postulates that teaching should be socially engaged, rather than presenting ‘cold’, dispassionate facts and that reflexivity, i.e. knowing one’s positionality, can help challenge the status quo (Lynn et al., 2013). As Solórzano and Yosso (2000) further argue university experiences of students of colour as being on the margins can be a source of strength.

However, the above employment of CRT to help change educational policy and practice seems to be mostly limited to and dependent on people educated in CRP and/or activists. While the ultimate goal of these (theoretical and practical) efforts to change the educational system is for students of colour to be able to achieve educational success on a systemic level, I argue that such

concentration of efforts under-theorises the agency of students of colour within the current system, especially those who are not CRT/CRP trained. In other words, tenets and tools of CRT have shown faults within the education system and how these could be addressed, however, they failed to sufficiently theorise how students of colour already achieve educational success in the current system. Thus, more nuanced mechanisms of agency have to be explored to supplement these theorisations. As I argue later in the chapter these can stem from combining CRT with the Bourdieusian framework, such as the CCW

framework and perspective capital. For this reason, Bourdieusian thinking tools, which also engage in the structure versus agency debate, are discussed next, after which a fuller conceptualisation of agency, as understood for the purposes of this thesis, will be outlined.

In summary, the tenets of Critical ‘Race’ Theory help examine how lived experiences of students, staff and policy makers are being influenced by endemic racism and White privilege, as well as how educational policies and practices are being shaped by processes of interest convergence and

divergence and the discourses of meritocracy which maintain whiteness. To help find sources and mechanisms of agency, as well as to supplement the theorisation of the reproduction of privilege through the discourses of