Dave Hill is Professor of Education Policy at the University of Northampton, also at Middlesex University as well as Chief Editor, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies www.jceps.com . He has written this piece of which I am publishing the introduction and conclusion. The theoretical and Policy/ Political Implications section is only briefly developed. He develops this more in `A Marxist Critique of Culturalist/Idealist Analyses of ‘Race’, Caste and Class’ in the Indian Marxist online journal Radical Notes, at http://radicalnotes.com/content/view/68/39/.

Dave is interested in readers’ comments.

Summary

In this paper I critique what I analyse as the misuse of statistics in arguments put forward by some Critical Race Theorists in Britain showing that `Race’ `trumps’ Class in terms of underachievement at 16+ exams in England and Wales.

I ask two questions, and make these two associated criticisms, concerning the representation of these statistics:

1. With respect to `race’ and educational attainment, what is the validity of ignoring the presence of the (high achieving) Indian/ Indian heritage group of pupils- one of the two largest minority groups in England and Wales? This group has been ignored, indeed, left completely out of statistical representations- charts- showing educational achievement levels of different ethnic groups.

2. With respect to social class and educational attainment, what is the validity of selecting two contiguous social class/ strata in order to show social class differences in educational attainment?

At a theoretical level, using Marxist work (2) I argue for a notion of `raced’ and gendered class, in which some (but not all) minority ethnic groups are racialised or xeno-racialised) and suffer a `race penalty’ in, for example, teacher labelling and expectation, treatment by agencies of the state, such as the police, housing, judiciary, health services and in employment.

I critique some CRT treatment of social class analysis and underachievement as unduly dismissive and extraordinarily subdued (e.g. a critique I make of Gillborn, 2008). I offer a Marxist critique of Critical Race Theory from statistical and theoretical perspectives, showing that it is not `whiteness’, a key claim of CRT, that most privileges or underprivileges school students in England and Wales.

This analysis has policy implications regarding school/ school district/ national education policies, and also wider social and economic policies such as social cohesion, exclusion/ inclusion, and addressing wider economic and power inequalities in European societies (Booth, 2008; Toynbee and Walker, 2008; Hill, 2009a, 2009b; Hill and Kumar, 2009).

Accepting the urgent need for anti-racist awareness, policy and activism- from the classroom to the street- I welcome the anti-racism that CRT promulgates and analyses, while criticising its over-emphasis on `white supremacy’- and its statistical misrepresentations.

Expected Outcomes

This paper is a contribution to a Europe wide debate about race and class exclusion from educational success and alienation from/ integration into school success, entry to higher education, and social cohesion and stability. It also relates to the political debate about whether a focus on anti-racism is enough, for anti-racists, or whether (as Marxists argue) the focus should also be on creating class unity, similar to the `Black and White, Unite and Fight’ anti National Front activism of the 1970s, which focussed also on class politics. The debate will continue. It is a debate among academics, equality activists and governments concerned about `social cohesion’. It is also a debate among political groups in the UK, and elsewhere, today.

The findings of this paper are that `white supremacy’ as a CRT form of explaining inequalities is not only not supported by statistics, but that in terms of theorising and deriving policy from theory, such a term is too blunt, ignores xeno-racism, and the racialisation of the poor white working class (as, for example, `chavs’- a perjorative term used to describe and vilify unskilled and poor sections of the white working class-) and downplays social class factors in educational and social alienation.

………… Introductory Extract ends

……… Concluding and Theoretical/ Political Conclusion begins….

Gillborn is concerned with press and publicity that highlights the underachievement of `poor whites’. If Gillborn wishes to look at statistics that are not drawn from Free School Meals data, data which rely on differential take-up by different ethnic groups) then the data to compare the academic performance levels of the White Working Class (the manual section of it, anyhow) with the Minority Ethnic Working Class (again, the manual section of the working class), then the figures are readily available. They are contained, though rarely highlighted, in Gillborn’s own earlier work, in Gillborn and Mirza, 2000 (to repeat, this is presented in Figure 20, below).

FIGURE 20: Educational attainment by class (manual and non-manual) and by ethnic group (White, Black, Indian, and Pakistani-Bangladeshi). From Gillborn and Mirza, 2000

This table below, Figure 21: GCSE attainment by social class and ethnic origin, England & Wales 1988-1997 (five or more higher grade (A* – C) passes) Manual Class only (Hill, 2009); below is the second key table in this paper. It does show that (in 1997) the White manual Working Class pupils did indeed outperform Black manual working class pupils at GCSE level. But it also shows that not only did the Indian manual working class pupils outperform Whites, but so did the (combined) Pakistani/Bangladeshi manual working class pupils.

This situation, of working class underachievement as well as underachievement by some minority ethnic groups, is reported by successive government reports and commentaries. For example the written commentary in the DES Report SFR 04/2007 National Curriculum Assessments, GCSE and Equivalent Attainment and Post-16 Attainment by Pupil Characteristics in England 2005/06(Revised) (Online at www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000708/SFR04_2007v1.pdf)- the source actually for Gillborn’s various sets of statistics (e.g. Gillborn 2009a) states that this 2006 report:

…presents the latest statistics and research on black and minority ethnic pupils in the education system. It provides details on the BME school population (2006), attainment and progress in 2005 (compared to previous years…

Key findings include:

· 21% of the maintained primary school population and 17% of the secondary school population in 2006 belonged to a minority ethnic group.

· Gypsy/Roma, Traveller of Irish Heritage, Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi pupils consistently have lower attainment levels than other ethnic groups across all the Key stages.

· Indian, Chinese, Irish and White & Asian pupils consistently have higher levels of attainment than other ethnic groups across all Key Stages.

The 2007 reports that `Chinese, pupils of Mixed White and Asian heritage, Irish and Indian pupils consistently achieve above the national average across Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4’. This echoes the 2006 report, Ethnicity and Education: The Evidence on Minority Ethnic Pupils aged 5-16 (DfES, 2006)

These figures are surprising for they show that, despite institutional and personal racism, the White population performs at around the same level as the population as a whole despite it being more middle class than almost all other ethnic groups (other than Indian and Chinese).

The astonishing and un-disguisable characteristic of these various sets of statistics- in contrast to the impression given by David Gillborn- is not one of white overachievement compared to the population as a whole.

This is actually very surprising, Racism, as highlighted by many books and articles by David Gillborn himself, The Institute for Race Relations, in journals such as Race Equality Teaching, political magazines such as Searchlight, and indeed textbook chapters I have edited and co-written (e.g. Cole Hill and Shan, 1997, Hill and Cole, 1999, 2001; Hill and Robertson, 2009) is clearly alive and kicking in Britain.

There is no doubt that Britain is a racist society, that there is institutional racism in schools universities, prisons, employment- in all state institutions and in society. That is incontrovertible. I am not denying racism and its perniciousness and pervasiveness. (4) The election successes of the BNP in recent years, culminating in the June 2009 election of two BNP Fascist/ Racist MEPs , together with the racist anti-Islamic rioting engineered during the summer of 2009 in Luton and other towns by the `English Defence League’ and its BNP cohorts, are deeply disturbing. (5)

Theoretical Analyses

These data are important. They feed into and inform theoretical analyses concerning the impact of `race’ and of class on educational achievement, and hence into arguments and theoretical analyses concerning the severity of the impact of race and class discrimination, oppression in society. Hence to the legitimacy of on the one hand Marxist, and on the other hand Critical Race Theory analyses of society.

Thus such theories, based on statistical data, inform, or can inform, government and local education authority and school policy in the sense of either focusing primarily on combating race discrimination, or alternatively, on combating poverty and social and economic inequality (regardless of ethnicity/ `race’).

At a theoretical level, using Marxist work such as that by Motala and Vally in South Africa (2009), by the African-American writer Oliver Cromwell Cox (1948, and in Reed, 2001), by Young in the journal Red Critique, classical Marxist work by Zavazardeh (2002)), I argue, in Kelsh and Hill, 2006 and in Hill, 2008 (Caste, Race and Class: A Marxist Critique of Caste Analysis, Critical Race Theory; and Equivalence (or parallelism) Explanations of Inequality. Radical Notes (Delhi, India)) that is online at : http://radicalnotes.com/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/ for a notion of `raced’ and gendered class, in which some (but not all) minority ethnic groups are racialised or xeno-racialised) and suffer a `race penalty’ in, for example, teacher labelling and expectation, treatment by agencies of the state, such as the police, housing, judiciary, health services and in employment.

In this paper (Hill, 2009a) I therefore seek to add to a Marxist critique of Critical Race Theory (see Hill, 2008a, 2008b, Cole, 2008, 2009; Cole and Maisuria, 2007) from a statistical perspective.

Gillborn (e.g. 2008) gives specific recognition to the analysis that social class is `raced’ and gendered (e.g. p. 46), but gives relatively little – in fact very substantially less- explicit (other than implicit) recognition that `race’ is classed (and gendered). While his work is not silent on social class disadvantage and social class based oppression, his treatment of social class analysis is dismissive and his treatment of social class underachievement in education and society, extraordinarily subdued.

Other CRT theorists (such as John Preston, e.g. 2007, 2009) do see the dangers of grouping all whites together. Thus, Preston notes,

Whiteness is not monolithic (except in very bad examples of CRT) and it would not necessarily surprise me if the white working class do not perform as well as other groups (and it probably is to do not only with class but also with the re-racialisation as ‘chavs’ etc).  In terms of the argument about the white working class I would say that they are being Re-racialised to the margins of ‘respectable’ whiteness to the position they were in at the beginning of the 19th Century. Hence the white working class are becoming visible as a group in terms of their educational (under) performance. (6)

Political Strategies

The statistics used or misused by academics can impact on the foci of political action- street action, propaganda, and programmes of progressive and egalitarian political parties and groups.

Theories of oppression and of exploitation, with their statistical underpinnings and justifications, also impact on progressive political action. This is exampled in the recent, June 2009, European Parliament election campaign and current political action and developments in Britain.

The question for progressives, egalitarians, socialists and Marxists is the balance between focusing on anti-racist campaigns (currently, such as `Hope not Hate’, and the Unite Against Fascism (UAF) campaign which said, for example during the June 2009 European election campaign, `vote anyone but the BNP’. On the other hand, some socialist/ Marxist/ Communist campaigns such as the NO2EU-YestoDemocra
cy and the SLP campaigns which prioritise(d) class based campaigns, of working class unity, while also being anti-racist and anti-sexist for example. In strategic terms this is the difference between a Popular Front and a United Front. (7)

Two alternative political strategies- or to be more precise, for the many Marxists who participated in both, two alternative emphases of focus, of balance, were evident in the 2009 European election campaign in Britain. The first strategy, (that of Unite Against Fascism (UAF), the `Hope Not Hate’ campaign, and the tactical voting urged by some sections of RESPECT (such as Salma Yaqub and the declared position of the North-West region of RESPECT) was that the most important issue of all in the European election campaign was the anti-racist issue, to `Stop the BNP’. Hence the call by the abovementioned sections of RESPECT to `Vote Green’ to `stop the BNP’.

This particular view would seem to theoretically align with the view of Critical Race Theorists that `race’ and racism are the key forms of structural discrimination and oppression and exploitation in Britain, as, they argue, in the USA. David Gillborn’s insistence, like the Racism Awareness Training theorists of the 1970s, and like the various incarnations of black separatists and nationalists in various countries, seeks to blame all whites, and serves to divide the working class, black from white. At the political level this was paralleled by the various groups within the socialist and Marxist Left seeking to prioritise anti-racism who were furious with NO2EU for `splitting the anti-racist vote’ during the 2009 European election campaign.

A class-based Marxist analysis is that it was the collapse of New Labour’s vote- due to its abandonment of working class interests in the interests of neoliberalism- that depressed the voting turnout, enabling the BNP to get elected -even though the BNP gained fewer votes than in the previous European elections. Gillborn’s prioritising of the `race’ issue is in contrast to the view of Marxists operating within for example the NO2EU-YestoDemocracy campaign (supported principally by the RMT trade union, the Socialist Party,the Communist Party of Britain with its Morning Star daily newspaper, and the Indian Workers Association, together, (ultimately) withSocialist Resistance, (to which I belong).

During that campaign, as a lead regional candidate for NO2EU-YestoDemocracy (8), at various venues, from doorstep campaigning, to addressing the Trades Union Congress national conference of Trades Councils (local TUCs), to conversations with Greens at the Regional Election count, I was one of those who advanced the view that anti-racism was/ is a key policy/ focus, but that there are others, such as resisting/ opposing/ stopping privatisation of public services, opposing the European Union’s privatising policies such as the health services Directive and the Postal Services Directive (which demand of member states the marketisation of Health and Postal Services), renationalising formerly public services such as the Railways; stopping/ reversing the Posted Workers’ Directive which, along the principles of the Bolkestein Directive, allows groups of workers to be imported by employers into member states and paid at the wages of the originating member state, thereby undercutting trade union national agreements.

The final aim of much of the NO2EU campaign, for many of its participants, was to set up a new Workers’ Party, backed by trade unions, as a socialist party, defending working class interests, (of workers of all colours and creeds) occupying the space to the left of Labour. (9)

Thus the major political focus made by socialists and Marxists in Britain during the period of the May-June 2009 European parliamentary election campaign was between two positions.

The first was prioritising the ‘Don’t Vote BNP’ campaigns. The Socialist Workers’ Party, the largest of the Marxist parties in Britain, with around 5,000 members, took this perspective highlighting race.

The second position, held by other parties (such as NO2EU and its constituent/ supporting organisations, and the Socialist Labour Party) took the class perspective. (Respect in its membership and organisationally, was split over the issue). This class perspective (at least that held by the Socialist Party constituent part of NO2EU) was about developing/ setting up a new Workers Party on the other, one that would unite various socialist political parties, groups, individuals, with trade unions. That is, to prioritise working class issues on behalf of / with the `raced’ and gendered working class. This view, that I am advancing here, is to fight the class struggle for all workers, black, white, brown, or, to echo the anti-fascist slogan of the 1970s, `black and white unite and fight, smash the National Front. To echo an international slogan of working class revolutionaries and Marxists across different countries, `o povo unido jamaos sera vencido’, `the workers united will never be defeated’.

This is not to deny the existence of `white privilege’. Yes, Whites do have white privilege because of the colour of their/ our skins. But the poor white English, East Europeans, Portuguese, African Caribbean, Black African, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Chinese have more in common in terms of the material conditions of their daily existence than they do with sons and daughters of the millionaire white English, East European, Indian, Pakistani, African Caribbean or Chinese millionaire. As Bob Crow, leader of NO2EU-yestoDemocracy, and of the RMT says, `I have got more in common with a Chinese labourer than I have with Sir Fred Goodwin’ (the multimillionaire ex-`boss’ of the Royal Bank of Scotland) (Hattenstone, 2008).

Conclusion

David Gillborn has a long and highly honourable and admirable history in writing against racism. He is arguably the leading academic writer exposing racism within the education system in England and Wales. His books over the past two decades have been, quite rightly, very influential on students of education and (as much as any academic books are) on teachers practice and on some aspects of government policy.

In his recent work, in his progress into Critical Race Theory, he has gone beyond exposing and excoriating racism and how racism works, and how anti-racism can and should work. He has now extended into a theory of `White Supremacy’, arguing that the very political basis of the state is White Race supremacy.

Many Marxists disagree, arguing, in contrast to a succession of black separatist, `blame all whites’ and (now) Critical Race Theorists, that the very political (and- importantly- economic- basis of the state -to which Gillborn scarcely refers) is capitalism, the exploitation of the labour power of the working class, black, white, men, women. Of course capitalist classes use reserve armies of labour- women, `guest workers’, `illegal immigrants’, imported ex-colonial peoples, to increase their profits, and have often, historically, been happy to use racism, and racist divide and rule tactics, to minimise their wage bills and maximise their profits.

Marxists accept much of the CRT criticism of racism in society, its operations, and its terrible effects, and welcome the exposures and highlighting of these operations and their effects. However we cannot accept the theory of `White Supremacy’ as the dominant form of oppression and
exploitation in capitalist society.

Marxists, in contrast, propound a class perspective, recognising that

• The capitalist class, in its quest for ever more surplus-value, seizes upon any opposition that, owing to historical developments preceding or within capitalism, enables the production of more surplus-value.

• As Marx argues, the “division of labour seizes upon, not only the economic, but every other sphere of society and everywhere lays the foundation of that all engrossing system of specializing and sorting men” (1867/1967a, p. 354).

• These socially constructed and ideologically naturalized and enforced oppositions – those involved in race, gender, sexuality, age, ability, and so forth – are folded in to the core opposition of labor and capital.

In order to develop and critically evaluate theorisation and arguments about race and class, and the political tactics and strategies that might be based on those theories, then it is incumbent on us all to avoid statistical misrepresentation. Anti-racism is too important to be the subject of flawed and misleading statistics.

Notes

This paper develops on Hill, 2008a, b, c, 2009a.

1. For example, work by the African-American writer Oliver Cromwell Cox (1948, also Reed, 2001), Zavazardeh (2002), Kelsh and Hill (2006), Young (2006), Cole and Maisuria, (2007), Cole (2008, 2009) Kelsh, Hill and Macrine (2009), Motala and Vally in South Africa (2009).

2. I have seen David Gillborn present his arguments at two separate conferences- the April 2009 AERA (American Educational Research Association Annual Conference in San Diego, California) and at the Race(ing) Forward: Transitions in theorising ‘race’ in education conference organised by The Higher Education Academy, in 2008, at the University of Northampton.

3. I have been actively involved in the anti-Fascist and anti-racist movement since the 1970s. From the Grunwicks mass picket in 1977, to being a local officer of the Anti-Nazi League in the 1970s, and being smoke bombed by NF supporters, to engaging in street confrontations against the National Front, and twice being physically attacked by Fascists. I was also involved in ARTEN, the Anti-Racist Teacher Education network late 1980s, and joined the march to close down the NF headquarters in Welling in 1993. More recently I took part in part and was a platform speaker at the 2009 anti-BNP rally at the national conference of the Trades Union Congress Trades Councils.

4. An anti-Muslim group calling itself the `English Defence League’ recently demonstrated outside mosques in London and Birmingham, chanting “Muslim bombers off our streets”. On Friday 11 September, over 2,000 people turned out to defend the Harrow Mosque against them. (Rainsborough, 2009; Jones, 2009; Choonara, 2009).

5. A Popular front is a broad-based multi-class alliance, involving for example liberal and even conservatives, in., for example, an anti-war movement, or an anti-fascist or anti-racist movement. While valuable in mobilizing (sometimes very) large numbers and forces, its politics are usually the politics of the lowest common denominator. Extremely important though that might be, the Popular Front is different from a United Front in that a United front is a coming together of socialist forces. It is class based, with a (working) class perspective. For a discussion of the differences between these two forms of organization/ political tactics, see, for example, Goldfield, 1999; Bensaid, 2007; Choonara, 2007. Choonara also points out the difference between the United Front and the revolutionary, Marxist, party. The United Front `is not a substitute for a revolutionary party. The United Front tactic can never, under any circumstances, mean the subordination of revolutionary politics and organisation to reformist politics and organisation’.

6. John Preston (2009) does, however, share Gillborn’s disquiet that `the white working class are the exotic failures of the month’ and that there is a `rediscovery of the white working class’. He quotes Gillborn (2009) approvingly in asserting that `the white working class are the new race victims’.

7. I was lead candidate for the NO2EU-YestoDemocracy campaign in the May-June 2009 European Parliament election campaign, for the SouthEast region of England. See http://www.no2eusoutheast.blogspot.com/ for some aspects of the campaign. The election leaflets in the SouthEast region highlighted anti-racism as one of the four key points of the campaign. See also the interview I did (Hill, 2009b) with Weekly Worker, online at the Respect blogspot, Interview with Dave Hill who tops the No2EU list in the South East at http://respectuk.blogspot.com/2009/05/interview-with-dave-hill-tops-no2eu.html. The main organisations supporting NO2EU-YestoDemocracy were the RMT trade union, Socialist Party of England and Wales, the Communist Party of Britain, the Alliance for Green Socialism, and the Indian Workers Association. Groups such as Socialist Resistance also gave their general support.

8. The RMT (Rail maritime and Transport) union, led by Bob Crow, called a national public meeting on 7 October 2009, Conference: Crisis in Working Class Representation. See Tucker, 2006; Hill, 2009b for arguments surrounding this development, which has led to the setting up of a Coalition of the Left to fight the 2010 General Election in the UK, as a trade unionist backed working class party, to the left of Labour. (Crow, 2009).

9. At a conference called by the RMT Union (the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union) a Coalition of the Left was announced. Its launch leaflet is at http://thejuniusblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/new-coalition-of-the-left-is-go/. As the leaflet says,

This coalition has the backing of the Communist Party of Britain, the Socialist Party, the Alliance for Green Socialism and is supported, all in a personal capacity, by Bob Crow (general secretary RMT), Brian Caton (general secretary Prison Officers’ Association), leading national officers of the PCS civil servants’ union, and national executive committee members of the CWU, UNISON, FBU and USDAW trade unions.