Articles | Postado em: 13 December, 2023
The case for educational reparations: addressing racial injustices in sustainable development goal 4
Highlights
- The absent presence of race in development reflects how issues of race and racism are erased from discourses about SDG 4.
- SDG 4 does not address the colonial legacy in education, which is reflected in enduring racial disparities.
- The case for educational reparations requires recognising the colonial legacy in education.
- Reparations must redress racial disparities, decolonise curricula and be more inclusive of people of colour in governance.
- Reparations require working through and beyond the universalising assumptions of the SDGs so as to achieve racial justice.
Abstract
This paper presents an examination of the education Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 4) through the lens of race. It argues, at this mid-way point of the SDGs, that race continues to be erased, acting as an absent presence, in global educational policy, practice and goals. To address this, the paper calls for a radical review of contemporary development discourse such that the SDGs, and in particular SDG 4, are framed in ways that acknowledge histories of colonial exploitation and epistemic violence. Acknowledging these histories and their reproduction in the Western-led development project, the paper advocates for reparative redress. It argues for the re-orientation of SDG 4 in the interests of racial justice in education by calling for the material redistribution of resources, challenging the hegemony of the Western episteme in curriculum and languages of instruction, holding international agencies and governments to account and reforming the governance of SDG 4 in ways that prioritise racial justice. The paper takes the position that while education has been detrimentally implicated in the Western colonial and development project, it has a key role to play in challenging racist systems as the global community looks towards the 2030 Agenda and beyond.
1. Introduction
As the SDGs reach a mid-way point, the aim of this paper is to offer a critique of the way that the education SDG (SDG 4) has been conceptualised and measured from a racial justice perspective. By racial justice, we mean an approach to global education policy that takes account of and seeks to redress the colonial legacy in international education, perpetuated through the development era. Racial injustice, we argue, is manifested in stark disparities in opportunities and outcomes for differently racialized groups. It also manifests in the forms of epistemic violence in which the knowledge systems, values, cosmologies and languages of populations subjected to previous and contemporary forms of colonialism and racism are marginalized or completely destroyed.
This commentary commences by considering the absent presence of race in dominant discourses about development. This absent presence provides a context for then considering how issues of race and racism are erased from discourses specifically about the education SDG. We argue it has the effect of reinforcing racial disparities and perpetuating epistemic violence through global education policy including SDG 4. We argue that the failure of the international community to engage with ideologies of race, processes of racialization and the material effects of racism, presents a limitation in realising SDG 4. The paper concludes by setting out our case for reconceiving aid to education in terms of educational reparations, which we argue are not only in the interests of racial justice but are a necessary precondition for realising SDG 4.
2. The ‘absent presence’ of race in development
Race is a social and political construct that functions alongside and articulates with other ‘social facts’ such as gender and class to create and reproduce racial identities, racism and racist outcomes for individuals and communities (Hill, 2008, Wade, 2002). Furthermore, we stress that racial ideologies and material realities concern power and dominance. Our understanding reflects Omi and Winant’s (2015) account of racial formations, whereby racial meanings and identities are formed, transformed and destroyed through social, economic and political processes in different geographical and historical locations. At a general level, as the American feminist, Audre Lorde (2015, p.16), notes, racism is ‘the belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance’. Racial meanings and realities, however, have what Stuart Hall (1997) describes as a ‘floating’ quality; race has real-world consequences impacting people’s life chances in education, health and housing, for example, while having no fixed meaning, or essentialist relation to human bodies. Racial dominance prevails through processes of racialization which render individuals and populations as immutable ‘racial’ groups through markers such as culture, nation and religion (Hall, 2006, Balibar and Wallerstein, 1991). Racism, therefore, can find its expression in the desires of global capital, state formation and ethnonational identities.
The history of Western colonialism since the beginning of the period of European colonial expansion in the 15th and 16th centuries is a key point of reference, especially given its significance, in the context of this commentary, in relation to the development and spread of modern education systems. However, racial thinking and racism are not only prevalent in countries affected by Western colonialism. Forms of racism have also underpinned other forms of colonialism, imperialism and regional domination. These include but are not confined to the legacy of Japanese imperialism, Russian hegemony in the context of the former Soviet Union and subsequently, the treatment of Muslim and other cultural and linguistic minorities by the Chinese government, the oppressive nature of the Zionist Israeli state with respect to Palestinians, or South African exceptionalism in the post-apartheid era which has contributed to xenophobic violence.
The last few decades have seen a consistent focus on racism and racial discrimination by the international community in global development discourse. In 1972, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly declared the Decade for Action to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination. Since then, the commitment by Member States for effective actions and measures, internationally and nationally, to eradicate racism and its effects has led to a series of UN-Sponsored World Conferences initially held in Geneva in 1978 and 1983. Subsequent years included the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban in 2001, with a review of progress in 2009. These have been followed by high-level, one-day meetings in New York in 2011 and 2021 to mark the tenth and twentieth anniversaries of the adoption of the Durban declaration and programme of action.
This consistent focus on racial discrimination paints a picture of a global community with a shared determination and a growing understanding of the necessity to tackle racism. That understanding, as we indicate below, however, is not yet fully and concertedly shared. In a recent speech to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in March 2021, the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, declared racism as alive ‘in all regions and all societies.a vicious global pandemic’ expressed as anti-blackness, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-Asian discrimination, and the oppression of Indigenous people and other ethnic minorities (United Nations, 2021). In this regard, and despite efforts within the international development community to address racial discrimination, there remains an obdurate resistance to fully recognising how racism has blighted human development. Indeed, progressive developments including a call for reparations for the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and a condemnation of Zionism, have also resulted in complex backlashes. For example, a number of countries boycotted the Durban conference, deeming it as racist and antisemitic (Borger, 2009; CBC News, 2021; White, 2002).
In many respects and despite global initiatives, talking about race in development continues to constitute breaking a taboo (White, 2002). As such, race acts as an absent presence in development discourses. It is often absent, for example, as a category of analysis in the institutional lives of development organizations and programmes. White (2002, p.408) describes the silence surrounding race as a ‘determining silence that both masks and marks its centrality to the development project’. Through seeing itself as being outside of the politics of race and adopting a race-evasive stance, or what others have called a ‘colorblind’ approach (Gillborn, 2019) the field of international development functions as a continuation of the European colonial project, propagating a Western imaginary of the world order and of the accumulation of capital.2 White’s (2002) claims strike at the foundations of the development project – its symbolic and hegemonic hold over how the world is constituted and experienced by those in its divided parts – the Global North and South. Subsequent critiques have specifically addressed this enduring taboo and silence by drawing attention to colonial legacies; the material, symbolic and discursive dominance of the power of whiteness; and the continued production of unequal outcomes along racist lines (Kothari, 2006; Sriprakash et al., 2019; Wilson, 2017). For example, drawing on the work of Charles W. Mills, Sriprakash and colleagues argue in relation to the declared contemporary ‘Global learning crisis’ (UNESCO, 2013) that the silence or ignorance of racism in our field, far from being a passive absence or simply referring to ‘not knowing’, has an epistemology that produces and normalizes racism as a political system. This position is what Mills, 1997, Mills, 2015 calls an ‘epistemology of ignorance’. Ultimately, the silence surrounding race is dishonest, especially given the ubiquitous nature of racial inequality fomented through colonialism and imperialism (Wallace, 2023) as we illustrate below with respect to SDG 4.
3. SDG 4 and histories of racial erasure
It is in this wider context of race as an absent presence in development discourse that the issue of race and racism with regard to the SDGs needs to be interpreted. In this section, we review in more depth how these silences and erasures manifest in relation to SDG 4 and the implications for racial justice. It is also argued, however, that education has a key role to play in challenging racist systems and we turn to this discussion in the concluding section.
3.1. The erasure of colonial legacies
As a recent report by the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance has noted, there is a silence in the discourses and policy pronouncements on the SDGs of key multilateral agencies concerning the colonial legacy (Achiume, 2022). This silence is reflected in relation to the education SDG. This is especially pertinent because education has played an important role both under colonialism and during the ‘development’ era in reproducing racial inequalities and epistemic injustice both in former colonized and in former colonizing countries. Education was central to the colonial project both in terms of providing the human capital required by segregated, colonial labor markets, but also in producing racialized subjects who knew their place within the colonial social and political order. At an epistemological level, as we discuss below, education also played a key role in the spread of the Western episteme in the form of Western languages, knowledge systems and religions at the expense of the knowledge systems, values, cosmologies and languages of the colonized.
3.2. The erasure of racial disparities in access to and outcomes from education
In advocating for inclusive, high-quality education for all, the education SDG, at least at face value, appears to take account of issues of race equality. Yet, whereas there is specific mention of inequalities relating to gender, disability and Indigeneity, the words ‘race’ and ‘racism’ do not appear in the official texts describing the goal and its ten targets (United Nations, n.d.). This is extraordinary and requires explanation. It is apparent that despite their scale, magnitude and persistence, acknowledging, let alone engaging in policy terms with, racial disparities remains taboo. UNESCO’s flagship mechanism for monitoring progress towards SDG 4, i.e. the Global Education Monitoring Report (GEMR), regularly reports on socio-economic and gender disparities, as well as other disparities including those relating to disability, and has had special issues of the report dedicated to these important topics. This is not the same with race and racism. At a global level, the countries most often cited as falling behind in achieving the targets are in Africa and Asia, regions profoundly impacted by European colonialism. Within settler colonial states such as the US and Australia–and countries of the former metropole such as the UK–Black, Indigenous and people of colour often continue to be disadvantaged in terms of access to and outcomes from education.
In developing our arguments we are not seeking to assert that racial disparities are more or less important compared to other forms of oppression and disadvantage in education. Rather it is to argue that by eliding issues of race and racism, the international education development community is failing to recognise and address a burning form of disadvantage. Further, it is often the intersection between racism and other forms of disadvantage that is crucial to grasp when seeking to address disparities of different kinds, a point we will return to below.
3.3. The erasure of epistemic violence in and through education
A third form of erasure relates to the continuing legacy of colonial epistemic violence. Target 4.7 explicitly refers to the need to inculcate respect for cultural diversity as a basis for global citizenship. Whilst this is undoubtedly a positive aspiration, from a racial justice perspective it is impossible to implement until such a time as the full extent of epistemic violence perpetuated through education is addressed. As noted, education has been a major vehicle for the global hegemony of the Western episteme (Western knowledge systems, values and languages) as the basis for curricula around the world. Of course, this episteme is not singular or, put differently, without contradiction. In its worst conceits, however, it undermined or in some cases, completely erased in the process, Indigenous languages, knowledge systems, religions and cosmologies. Indeed, the hegemony of a Western monoculture in the way that students engage with the natural and social worlds through modern education systems can be seen as a key ideological tool in reinforcing the wider project of capitalist modernity through embedding as common sense, Western views of ‘development’, ‘progress’ and ‘time’ (see, for example, Mills, 2014, discussion of ‘White Time’).
The particular importance attached to Western scientific knowledge is significant in relation to discussions of race and racism in education. Whilst the absolute hegemony of Western scientific knowledge and ways of thinking have undoubtedly contributed to the fight against poverty and disease, they have also had more negative implications. Firstly, as Achille Mbembe (2019) and other decolonial scholars have pointed out, the long shadow of scientific racism, now widely acknowledged as a pseudo-science (Levine and Bashford, 2010, for example), continues to play an ideological role in legitimizing racial inequalities. The legacy of scientific racism is seen not only with respect to the perpetuation of the idea of ‘race’ itself as a supposedly meaningful way of assigning differences in intelligence and aptitude but also in its implications in other areas of biopolitics (see Wilson, 2017, for example).
In education, scientific racism is enacted through ‘intelligence’ and ‘competency’ tests biased towards ‘white’ cultural standards (Martschenko, 2021, Gillborn, 2010). As has been strongly argued by decolonial and Indigenous activists and scholars, the tendency in dominant approaches within Western science to objectify the natural and social worlds has played an important legitimating role in the perpetuation of racism and patriarchy as well as in environmental destruction (e.g. Hutchinson et al., 2023). The exclusion of Indigenous and other more synergistic ways of perceiving the relationship between human beings and the natural world can itself be seen as a form of epistemic violence.
Closely linked to the predominance of a Western episteme is the hegemony of Western languages as languages of teaching and learning around the world. As has been clearly evidenced, the use of a subtractive, bilingual approach in many formerly colonised countries that promotes English and other Western languages at the expense of local and Indigenous languages can be seen as a form of linguistic imperialism in that it further reinforces Western interests within the Western-led development project (Phillipson, 2010). This linguistic imperialism is significant in reproducing disparities in educational outcomes both for learners in the global South but also for refugees and other minoritized groups of learners in the global North. Denying learners the opportunity to learn through the medium of their home language places them at a cognitive disadvantage compared to native speakers of English and other global languages (see, for example, Milligan and Tikly, 2016). Crucially, promoting Western at the expense of home languages has a negative effect on learner identities and has the further effect of denying all learners insights into the funds of knowledge that can be accessed through Indigenous and other, non-Western languages.
4. Call for action: the case for educational reparations
In light of the above, for all too many around the world, development is a failed political project, and a consistent reminder of promises unfulfilled or even denied. This failure is because, as Arathi Sriprakash (2023, p.1) contends, development “protects rather than challenges the hierarchic ordering of the world.ignoring the material and ideological connections between colonial domination, capitalist exploitation and development itself.” Owing to the historical failures of development to remedy–rather than reduce or reproduce–long-standing structural and political-economic inequalities around the world, a new reparative approach is necessary that disrupts development as we know it, and ushers in a more consequential, historically informed set of actions in support of racial justice (see, for example, Paulson, 2023; Sriprakash, 2023; Strong et al., 2023, Wallace, 2023; Gerrard, Sriprakash and Rudolph, 2022; Táíwò, 2022). This growing body of literature and action argues for a reparative approach to education framed in terms of a ‘moral debt’ to students who have been detrimentally impacted by ‘the structurally unjust features of schooling and society’ (Sriprakash, 2023, p.783). A reparative approach requires a backwards-looking focus in order to identify, acknowledge and challenge historical harms, but it also promises a ‘future-facing’ and reconstructive agenda (Táíwò, 2022).
In conclusion to this commentary, we set out five key priorities that we believe are necessary for re-orienting SDG 4 in the interests of racial justice in education. These priorities draw inspiration from the above literature, which outlines areas of redress – material, epistemic, and pedagogic – as well as the need to recognise and adopt a processual and relational approach that favours collective and dialogic forms of action (Paulson, 2023, Sriprakash, 2023). These priorities also draw inspiration from the long history of struggles against racism and colonialism in education over many decades (see Walker et al., 2021, for an overview of some of these intellectual currents).
The first of these priorities is the need to pay close, careful attention to histories of educational disadvantage and their impact on the contemporary moment. Attention to histories of education disadvantage demands a radical review of contemporary development discourse. Attention requires a paradigm shift in the way that concepts such as a ‘global learning crisis’ are framed so as to acknowledge histories of exploitation and epistemic violence. There is a need to challenge the ‘universalist’ assumptions informing the very formulation and articulation of SDG 4 itself, refusing its presentist orientation, which approaches our contemporary challenges as if they have no history. Central to such a concern would be a redefinition of what a good quality, lifelong education means–reorienting towards an education that seeks to redress the colonial legacy of racism in education and is fundamentally and unapologetically anti-racist in orientation (see for example, The Transformative and Anti-Racist Educational System project).
Secondly, there is a need to provide strategic planning for the material redistribution of resources to nation-states exploited through colonialism and racial capitalism3 well beyond 2030 as a means for redressing racial disparities in education. Underpinning such a strategic realignment would be a commitment to reframing aid for education in terms of reparations. There is also a need to incentivise governments in the global North and South to redistribute educational resources to groups that have historically been subject to racism.
Thirdly, there is a need to address epistemic violence in education. Histories of educational disadvantage are violently reproduced through curriculum content that excludes multiple ways of knowing. This suggestion involves going beyond the concern expressed in target 4.7 with respecting cultural diversity to instead fundamentally challenge the Eurocentric nature of the curriculum in many parts of the world. Anti-racist and decolonising educational approaches in education are transformational by definition, resulting in curriculum and pedagogical practices that overturn the legacy of colonial structures by first enabling a shared consciousness of the dynamics of racist social systems (see Blakeney, 2005; Hutchinson et al., 2023; Jansen, 2019; Mbembe, 2016, for example). As exponents of language rights have argued over many decades, there is a need to challenge the hegemony of Western languages in education and to find practical means to actively promote plurilingualism in education (see, for example, Alexander, 2000; Brock-Utne 2000; Wa Thiong’o, 1986).
Fourthly, there is a need to develop targets that can assist in holding international agencies and governments to account in the area of racial justice in education. These could include, for example, targets related to reducing racial disparities in education or to promoting epistemic and linguistic diversity. There is also a need, however, to decolonise the collection and use of educational data itself (Gorur et al., 2023). There are two related aspects that are important here. The first is to avoid universalising assumptions in the design of assessments and metrics relating to access, quality and outcomes from education. Secondly, there is a need to collect data that can capture racial disparities in access to and outcomes from education and can assist in targeting educational resources to groups that have been subject to racism as well as data relating to epistemic and linguistic pluralism.
Fifthly, and finally, there is a need to reform the governance of SDG 4 with respect to issues of racial justice. The recent Futures of Education Report (UNESCO, 2022) has called for a new social contract in education governance as a basis for reimagining just educational futures. Such a contract must, according to the document, draw on a plurality of voices and knowledge systems. As Mills (1997) has argued, however, racism is at the core of the social contract at least as it has often been enacted in societies affected by colonialism: it is not an exception or anomaly to an otherwise just political system. UNESCO and other organisations involved in the governance of SDG4 must engage with the legacies of racism and coloniality within their own institutional structures. They also need to recognise the active silences on issues of race and racism in their programmes and seek to promote the voices and lived experiences of communities affected by racism. In this respect, just educational futures must by their very nature be reparative futures. This vision requires us to work through and, as a matter of urgency, go beyond the sustainable development goals.
Author: Sharon Walker, PhD, BA (Hons), PGCE, MPhil. Centre for Comparative and International Research in Education. Lectuer in Education (Racial Justice and Education), School of Education, partner of SETA project
