Politics of Anti-Racism Education: In Search of Strategies for Transformative Learning

Politics of Anti-Racism Education is a book that engages the tough questions of anti- racism practice: How do we recognize anti-racism when there is no prescription or recipe for transformative practices? How does anti-racism resist the imperial divi- sive practices at various sites of difference while simultaneously amplifying the saliency of race? How do anti-racism educators challenge and support each other to do the ongoing work of anti-racism to guard our work from being consumed by hegemonic status quo agendas? What does it mean to name that which is incommensurable – experiences of race and racism? These are among some of the questions the contributors in this book engaged both in dialogue in the classroom, as well as in the chapters presented here. In sharing our stories as framed through the counter-narrative of anti-racism, our purpose is threefold: to hold anti-racism policies, practices, and theorists accountable to the necessity for transformation in anti- racism work; to contribute to a community for those who want to do the tough work of anti-racism education; and to challenge the urge among those who want to move beyond questions of race to reconsider dismissing racism as a thing of the past. We argue that there is a need to retool anti-racism and challenge the epistemological gatekeepers who want us to confine anti-racism discourse to the trash bins of his- tory. This book pursues a crucial search for strategies for engaging a critical anti- racism education for transformative learning. Contributors in this collection generate important enquiries into the praxis of anti-racism education, working through conversations, contestations, and emotions as present(ed) and live(d) in a year long graduate course, The Principles of Anti-Racism Education. The chapters present  multiple journeys – journeys of decolonization – of those who are coming into a critical anti-racism praxis; they speak to the politics of anti-racism education as a dialectic of struggles and desires for transgressive learning spaces that are open to difference.

Contents

1. Introduction to the Politics of Anti-Racism Education: In Search of Strategies for Transformative Learning
George J. Sefa Dei and Mairi McDermott

Part I Intersectional Analyses: Rethinking Anti-Racism Education, Masculinity and the Politics of Sexuality

2. A Prism of Educational Research and Policy: Anti-Racism and Multiplex Oppressions
George J. Sefa Dei

3 Homonormativity Inside Out: Reading Race and Sexuality Into an LGBT Film Festival Opening Gala
David Pereira

4 Progressive Discipline, Regressive Education: The Systematic Exclusion of Black Youth In and Through Expulsion Programmes
Camisha Sibblis

Part II Policy and Curriculum: Questions of Whiteness, Aboriginal Education, and Indigeneity

5 Moving Towards an Anti-racism Curriculum
Chrissy Michelle Deckers

6 “Aboriginal Education” in Teacher Education: Beyond Cultural Inclusions
Susanne Waldorf

7 Indigenous Education in Colonizing Space: Reflections on the Law, Education, and Indigenous Rights in Chile
Ximena Martínez Trabucco

Part III Representations: The Media, Discursive Authority, and Counter Narratives

8 ‘You Make Our Lives Better’: Education and the Detention of Tamil Refugee Children
Gillian Geetha Philipupillai

9 The Single Story of Somalia and Western Media Misrepresentations
Hodan Yusuf

10 Multiculturalism: The Missing Bodies and Voices
Ayla Raza

11 To Speak, Know, Live and Feel ‘Asian’: For an Anti-racist Approach on the Study of Asians in Canada
Kenneth Huynh

Part IV Autoethnography: On Coalition Building, Identity and Belonging, and Decolonization

12 Honoring Gaswentah: A Racialized Settler’s Exploration of Responsibility and Mutual Respect as Coalition Building with First Peoples
Min Kaur

13 Entre el Aquí y el Allá: International Schooling and the Colonized Mind
Alexandra Arráiz Matute

14 (Re)Turning Home: An Exploration in the (Re)Claiming of Identity and Belonging
Theresa Smith

15 Mo(ve)ments of Affect: Towards an Embodied Pedagogy for Anti-racism Education
Mairi McDermott