Abstract
In Should Schools be Colorblind? – part of Polity’s Debating Race Series – award-winning sociologist, Laurie Cooper Stoll, continues her quest of confronting issues of race and inequalities in education. Here, she discusses the volatile question of whether teachers should deal with overt and covert racism in schools by embracing colorblindness.
The answer, according to Cooper Stoll, is multifaceted. Theoretically speaking, she explains, the answer might be a clear ‘yes’. Differential treatment according to race should not, ideally, occur in real life so educational policies and schools in general, and educational staff in particular, should endorse colorblindness. However, in ‘reality’, she acknowledges, ‘society is stratified along racial lines’ (p. 67): racism is inherent in the structure of society and is part of everyday experiences. There are those who problematize racial differences and who support and promote stereotypes and racially based ideas of superiorities and inferiorities. From this perspective, claims Cooper Stoll, students of color are harmed when educators do not acknowledge the weight and meanings of race. Considering all this, she concludes, the most appropriate solution for educators (and other educational stakeholders) is not to preference colorblindness but, rather, adopt a color-conscious approach – a moral and practical stand that demands continuous, intensive, active engagement with issues of race, privilege, and stratification.
To conduct her investigation, Cooper Stoll mobilizes vast resources. She examines critical literature and taps into her decade of research in social inequalities in education, her longstanding expertise in working with educators on equality-based issues, and her experience as a publicly elected school board member. Intertwining knowledge and practice, Cooper Stoll gives a rich and insightful account that uncovers some of the complexities and difficulties in teachers’ (and schools’) engagement with issues of bias, prejudice and social justice.
The book is structured into three chapters. Chapter One – ‘Race and colorblindness in Schools Today’ – presents a multileveled analysis of colorblindness. In this, Cooper Stoll draws the differences between colorblindness as an ideology and colorblindness as an identity. She supplies the readers with a thorough introduction and offers her approach to the concepts of racism and of teachers’ biases. While I found this chapter necessary to establish the terminology and conceptual framework used in the next chapters, I was somewhat surprised not to find any indication or reference to Coleman’s Equality of Educational Opportunity (1966). This could have both supported the data and provided the reader, especially the non-North American reader, with a more comprehensive understanding of the socio-cultural and historical context of the study.
In Chapter Two – ‘Now You See Race, Now you Don’t’ – Cooper Stoll presents her own research to describe ‘what colorblindness looks like in schools today’ (p. 28). Through testimonials and data collected from two studies with teachers and students, she demonstrates how teachers move between seeing and not seeing race in classrooms and how racism in particular, and inequality in general, are often overlooked in the local context. The latter is one of the notable and valuable contributions this book brings to the conversation about the interaction between perception and discrimination in the era of post-racial politics. Particularly interesting, here, is her discussion on ‘the White backlash’.
In the third chapter – ‘Doing Antiracism in Schools’ – the discussion returns to the central question of the book. Cooper Stoll expands on her approach of applying antiracism in educational settings by drawing on, what she calls, the ‘three, non-negotiable, fundamental understandings of equity’. These are: (a) equity should never be an ‘add-on’ but the foundation of work; (b) no opting out is possible (responsibility is shared by all); and (c) operationalisation requires a coalition of like-minded people.
In the last section of the book, Cooper Stoll provides a set of recommendations for teachers, administrators, school board members, and community members on how to engage everyday racism and how to develop color-consciousness.
Educational professionals are the main audience at whom this book aims. However, the writing drifts from the academic realm into an activist-like domain; that is, it is more decisive, less formal, and less objective. Cooper Stoll’s own voice is present on every page and her passion, and maybe even her anger, are easily detectable. This is not to say academics will not find interest in it. The book can be useful for undergraduates exploring issues of racism, inequalities and social justice. It can also very usefully serve as a model for experienced scholars wishing to engage with the public.
Overall, Should Schools be Colorblind? offers new insights into the complex interaction between race and education in particular, and social justice in education in general. But, and maybe more importantly, Laurie Cooper Stoll shows how scholarship, when taken beyond academia, has the potential to benefit the wider public, especially educational professionals who stand at the frontline, trying to pave a safe path for their students to walk on.