Confronting White privilege: the importance of intersectionality in the sociology of education

2020/08/17 by Kalwant Bhopal · 3 citations
Social Sciences · #Critical Race Theory in Education #Gender Roles and Identity Studies #Global Education and Multiculturalism

paper · doi:10.1080/01425692.2020.1755224

Abstract

This article explores how White privilege and a hierarchy of oppression have resulted in competing identities in which gender has been given greater importance compared to race. I argue that the sociology of education needs to adopt an intersectional approach that travels in different directions if it is to remain valid. The article examines how gender, perpetuated by White privilege, continues to play a key role in the positioning of Black and minority ethnic staff, students and pupils within a range of stereotypes that operate to marginalise their life trajectories. The article argues that if sociologists of education are unwilling to challenge White privileged populist discourses and their own positions of White privilege, then they will become complicit in maintaining a socially unjust status quo.

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• Critical Race Theory: Confronting, Challenging, and Rethinking White Privilege
• Towards critical anti-racist praxis in education: interdisciplinary perspectives on studying and doing anti-racism
• Minoritised migrant women in academia as translocational outsiders within: an analysis of four structures of exhaustion

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