August 10, 2005
Darder, Antonia and Rodolfo D. Torres. After Race: Racism After Multiculturalism. New York: New York UP, 2004.
In this book, Darder and Torres critique the concept of “race” in contemporary political and academic rhetoric as a mask for the class oppression that underlies late capitalist American society. “The problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of “race”—an ideology that has served well to successfully obscure and disguise class interests behind the smokescreen of multiculturalism, diversity, difference, and more recently, whiteness,” write Darder and Torres (1). Darder and Torres focus their Marxist analysis on the United States education system, and specifically on the key issues of bilingual education, standardized testing, critical race theory and Latino studies departments. They argue that if any real changes are going to be made in educational policy, the concept of ‘race’ must be dismantled and the underlying class issues revealed and critiqued.
In their introduction, Darder and Torres read ‘race’ as a construct used to disguise what is fundamentally class oppression: “…if ‘race’ is real, it is so only because it has been rendered meaningful by the actions and beliefs of the powerful, who retain the myth in order to protect their own political-economic interests,” write Darder and Torres (12). (This is a viewpoint they share with several critics and scholars, most notably sociologists Robert Miles and Ellen Meiksins Wood). Darder and Torres argue that since the 1960’s, the failure of most scholarly work on racism is that it ignores the historical connection between race and class. In subsequent chapters, Darder and Torres apply this essentially Marxist analysis to several contemporary issues in the U.S. education system.
Ch.3 “Language Rights and the Empire of Capital: An Analysis of the Decline of Bilingual Education in California”
In this chapter, Darder and Torres argue that recent efforts to remove bilingual education programs from California schools stem directly from a form of economic protectionism. Globalization and increased immigration have caused many Americans to develop an increasingly isolationist (and racist) worldview. Darder and Torres point out that efforts to obstruct minority-language development in the form of bilingual education programs, “tend to become most severe during times of imperial expansion and economic decline, when the ‘other’ language and culture is determined to be a detriment to national unity and the process of capital accumulation” (76). In order to save bilingual education programs, Darder and Torres argue, policy makers must take the larger, socioeconomic situation into account: “We posit that the struggle for an emancipatory education in general and bilingual education in particular must be grounded in an understanding of the contemporary political economic contexts that shape the lives of bilingual students and their families, communities and teachers” (76).
Ch.4 “Manufacturing Destinies: The Racialized Discourse of High-Stakes Testing”
In this chapter, Darder and Torres attack the increased emphasis on standardized or “accountability” testing as especially detrimental to working-class and minority students. They explain that standardized testing: 1) Does not measure students’ abilities to judge, analyze, infer or engage in critical thought; 2) That it is full of cultural and class biases; 3) That it reduces conversations between parents and educators to “accountability,” causing them to ignore more critical pedagogical issues; 4) That it rewards less skilled teachers and disempowers more creative teachers; 5) That it trains working class students to be passive consumers of knowledge, perpetuating the cycle of class oppression. “This prescriptive teaching hardens and intensifies the discrimination already at work in schools, as teaching the fragmented and narrow information on the test comes to substitute for a substantive curriculum in the schools of poor and minority students…Hence, standardized testing has historically functioned to systematically reproduce, overtly and covertly, the conditions in schools that perpetuate a culture of elitism, privilege, and exploitation,” write Darder and Torres (89).
Ch.5 “What’s So Critical About Critical Race Theory”
In this chapter, Darder and Torres attack critical race theory, an offshoot of critical legal theory that has recently become popular among educational theorists and policy makers. Darder and Torres argue that the use of “race” as a discursive or analytic category is “seriously problematic” (117) and that a “critical theory of race” simply reproduces this “specious concept” (117). Also, the idea of intersectionality, a central concept in critical race theory, is problematic because “a multitude of oppressions and identities are assigned ‘equivalent’ explanatory value outside class relations” (117). In other words, critical race theorists often ignore the class issues that are central to any discussion of power and oppression. “The continued neglect by critical race theorists to treat with theoretical specificity the political economy of racialized class inequalities is a major limitation in an otherwise significant and important body of literature,” write Darder and Torres (117).
Ch. 6: “Mapping Latino Studies: Critical Reflections on Class and Social Theory”
This final chapter provides a critique of Latino studies departments, arguing that as universities become increasingly dependent on corporate funding many departments—Latino studies departments among them—are losing their critical edge. Latino scholarship, Darder and Torres argue, needs to be “independent, critical, and infused with what C. Wright Mills (2002) terms ‘sociological imagination’—a pedagogical and investigative discourse that provides us with an agenda of policies and practices that can assist Latino studies scholars to map out the possibilities for economic democracy and social justice, particularly in the face of neoliberal excess and scientism” (119). This kind of independent and critical analysis, they argue, is particularly important as Latinos studies scholars face issues of globalization, late capitalism and the development of multinational corporations.
Hmmm…. this brief synopsis shows Darder and Torres dancing around a few issues. I’d have to say I agree with most *except* for their glaring assumption that bilingual studies should continue. I find it interesting their reference to bilingual studies leaves me feeling pity for the latinos who need these underfunded programs to continue. However, when I remember being raised in the Bay Area (Northern California) I seem to remember quite a few *other* ethnicities in schools that did NOT have bilingual education specifically set aside for their home-spoken language. Bilingual education that fits only one minority is attrocious and unfair to the other hardworking minorities in the United States. Just my $0.02!
Their reference to the class system is cause for some further thought, as the middle/upper class Latinos have almost ZERO accent on their perfect english and usually they have never made use of any of the bilingual servies (per my admittedly limeted experiences/discussions with the class of minority that is all too often ignored in these types of rhetoric). Of course this is just the experience/comments of middle class black engineer……(socially liberal / fiscal conservative)
I can’t get the first page of this site ever to print and it doesn’t matter which article I am printing.