Institutional Racism

• Individual racism

  results from the prejudiced views of an individual.
• Institutional Racism

  discrimination that's built into the way an institution operated - it is systemic. It is more subtle and harder to identify or tackle.
• Critical Race theorists argue that racism is an ingrained feature of society, and kind of 'locked in'.

  Gillborn: applies this concept of locked in inequality to education—racial discrimination is so deeply rooted in the education system that it happens inevitably.
• Institutional Racism:

  •1. Marketisation Policy

  •2. Assessment

  •3. Access to Opportunities

  •4. The Ethnocentric Curriculum
• •Moore and Davenport: Marketization policies (such as the publication of league tables/Ofsted reports) have given schools the scope to select pupils from certain backgrounds.

  •Better schools favour white pupils, recruiting these and avoiding taking on ethnic minority pupils.

  •Primary schools did so by screening out pupils whose parents were non-English speaking.

  •Link to Bartlett: ‘cream-skimming’/‘silt-shifting’.

  •What did these terms mean? 

  •Cream skimming = enrolling the students which are most likely to achieve high grades (white students), as this will improve ranking on league tables.

  •Silt shifting = refusing to enrol students which are most likely to achieve low grades (black students), as this will bring the school’s ranking down on league tables.
• AO3 to Marketisation policy: Pupil Premium – this government policy helps to counteract this process of cream skimming white British students and silt-shifting students from ethnic minority backgrounds. This is because it encourages schools to enrol students from disadvantaged backgrounds by providing a financial incentive to them.
• Gillborn: the ‘assessment game’ is rigged - if black children succeed, the rules will be changed so they are failing again. An example of this was the introduction of foundation stage profiles in 2003...

  •Test given to pupils when they began compulsory primary schooling

  •Black pupils achieved desirable grades

  •Foundation Stage Profiles (2003 onwards)

  •Tests given to students at the end of reception

  •Suddenly, black pupils were doing significantly worse
• Gillborn argues there are two reasons for the change in assessment:

  •Foundation stage profiles are based entirely on teachers’ judgements rather than written tests, allowing for teacher racism to impact results.

  •2. Timing

  •Foundation stage profiles completed at the end of reception year, whereas baseline assessments were at the start, and therefore takes place after a year of pupils being influenced by teacher labelling/stereotypes
• •As the Foundation Stage Profiles are based on teacher judgements, this is arguably more of an example of how individual teacher racism can impact the achievement of students from ethnic minority backgrounds, rather than institutional racism.

  •It could also be argued that due to improved equality and diversity training that teachers now take, they will not be assessing students from ethnic minority backgrounds in an unfair and racist way.
• Access to opportunities

  •Some sociologists argues that school is designed to limit the opportunities given to black Caribbean individuals. For example…

  • ‘Gifted and Talented’ Programme— a government scheme aimed to meet the needs of more able pupils. Gillborn: white pupils are 2x more likely to get onto this than Black Caribbean individuals and 5x more likely than Black African individuals
• AO3 for access to opportunities:

  •It is teachers who decide who is enrolled in these programmes, again suggesting this is more of an issue of teacher racism than institutional racism.

  •The gifted and talented programme has since been scrapped in 2010 to reallocate funds towards helping disadvantaged students to attend university. Therefore, the argument that it disadvantages students from ethnic minority background is no longer relevant to the current system. 
• What is meant by the ethnocentric curriculum?

  Ethnocentric’ refers to the fact that the curriculum in the UK gives priority to the dominant ethnic group (white British), disregarding others.
• What are some examples of the ethnocentric curriculum?

  •Languages—Troyna and Williams: little provision for teaching Asian languages in comparison to European languages.

  •History—Ball: National Curriculum is not ethnically diverse and instead promotes ‘little Englandism’, e.g. with history teaching of a ‘mythical age of empire and past glories’, ignoring the history of black and Asian people.
• How does the ethnocentric curriculum lead to underachievement?

  Coard: history presents the British as bringing ‘civilisation’ to the ‘primitive’ peoples they colonised, creating an image of black pupils as inferior. This may damage a pupil’s self-esteem and lead to failure
• The solution to an ethnocentric curriculum has been 'decolonising the curriculum'. What does this mean?

  Decolonising the Curriculum refers to the process of critically examining and restructuring educational content, teaching methods, and institutional practices to challenge and remove colonial biases.
• Examples of how to decolonise the curriculum:

  1. Changes to the history curriculum - exploring the damage caused by Britain’s colonial era, not just celebrating Britain’s achievements.
  2. Diversifying reading lists to include work written by (or focus upon) individuals from a wider range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds
• AO3: The New Right argue that ethnocentrism is a good thing as it leads to a shared national identity.
• There have been various efforts to tackle institutional racism. Examples include…  

  •Employing more teachers from a range of ethnic minority backgrounds. 

  Providing teachers with training on the issue of racism.

  Additionally, The statistics can be used to critique these arguments - Indian and Chinese achievement is above the national average. If the education system was institutionally racist, then we would not expect these groups to achieve so highly.
• Gillborn: responds to the point regarding the official statistics by arguing that the high achievement of Indian and Chinese students simply performs an ‘ideological function’.

  What is meant by ‘ideological function’?

  It acts (functions) to control people’s ideas and conceal the truth.
• Evans: to fully understand the relationship between ethnicity and underachievement, we must consider how ethnicity, class and gender interact with one another. Paying attention to only institutional racism is not enough. Ethnicity, social class and gender are all factors which impact achievement and sociologists must treat these as interconnected if they wish to properly understand differences in statistics.
• General Analysis to Institutional Racism:

  There have been various efforts to tackle institutional racism. Examples include…  

  •Employing more teachers from a range of ethnic minority backgrounds. 

  •Providing teachers with training on the issue of racism. 

  •Rewriting school policies to ensure both institutional racism are minimised and taken seriously when identified. 
• The statistics can be used to critique these arguments - Indian and Chinese achievement is above the national average. If the education system was institutionally racist, then we would not expect these groups to achieve so highly.
• Gillborn: responds to this point regarding the official statistics by arguing that the high achievement of Indian and Chinese students simply performs an ‘ideological function’, acting to conceal the truth.
• In what ways does the high achievements of Indian and Chinese students perform an ideological function?

  It makes students and society think that the system is fair/meritocratic – it presents the idea that these groups simply work harder and therefore do well. This functions to justify the failure of other ethnic minority groups – it suggests they haven’t worked hard enough and that is why they failed. This distracts attention away from the unfair system and puts the ‘blame’ on individuals/groups, therefore contributing to the myth that meritocracy exists.
• Evans: to fully understand the relationship between ethnicity and underachievement, we must consider how ethnicity, class and gender interact with one another. Paying attention to only institutional racism is not enough. Ethnicity, social class and gender are all factors which impact achievement and sociologists must treat these as interconnected if they wish to properly understand differences in statistics.