This 1970 Bettmann Archive photograph captures a second-grade classroom where a teacher and her students stand with hands over their hearts for the Pledge of Allegiance. At first glance, it reflects a quintessential image of American schooling: discipline, patriotism, and the early shaping of civic identity. Yet within the composition lies a deeper narrative. Black and white children stand side by side during an era when the promises of Brown v. Board of Education remained contested and unevenly realized. The teacher’s presence at the front, guiding the ritual, underscores the role of educators as mediators of national values, even as the classroom became a site where ideals of equality were tested against the realities of segregation, racial tension, and the ongoing struggle for educational justice.
The American flag has long been a fixture in U.S. classrooms, positioned as both a symbol of national unity and a tool of civic socialization. Its presence in the daily ritual of the Pledge of Allegiance tied schools to a broader project of cultivating loyalty, discipline, and shared identity among young people. Yet this ritual has also exposed the contradictions of American democracy, particularly for students of color, immigrants, and those excluded from the full promise of citizenship. In education, the flag functions not only as a patriotic emblem but as a contested symbol. It is one that evokes pride, sacrifice, and belonging for some, while reminding others of marginalization, unfulfilled freedoms, and the struggle to reconcile national ideals with lived realities.
This course investigates the relationship between race and education through a broad array of race theories, examining how racial hierarchies are constructed, maintained, and challenged within the U.S. public education system and in dialogue with global traditions of anticolonial and decolonial thought. While Critical Race Theory serves as an anchoring framework, a variety of theories will be explored not as static frameworks, but as living traditions engaged in ongoing struggle, resistance, and reimagination.
Using an interdisciplinary approach that draws from law, sociology, philosophy, history, cultural studies, and education, the course pushes students to interrogate the political, epistemological, and material foundations of schooling. Students will be expected not only to understand these theories but to actively engage with them—to apply, extend, repurpose, and imagine their use in policy, curriculum, pedagogy, and community action.
Throughout the course, students will reflect on their own educational experiences and those of communities historically excluded from power. Together, we will analyze how schools function as both instruments of racial stratification and sites of possibility. With an emphasis on historicity, lived experience, global perspectives, and theoretical creativity, this course challenges common sense assumptions about race and education and cultivates new visions for justice-centered schooling.
Identify and explain major race theories used in the study of education, including Du Boisian thought, colonial and anticolonial frameworks, racial formation, racial capitalism, Indigenous/settler colonial theories, colorblind racism, community cultural wealth, Afro-pessimism, and Critical Race Theory.
Learning Goals
Situate these theories historically and globally, recognizing how they emerged in specific political and social contexts and how U.S. race theories both draw from and diverge from international traditions of anticolonial and decolonial thought.
Analyze the mechanisms through which racial hierarchies are constructed, reproduced, and challenged in U.S. public education, with attention to curriculum, policy, pedagogy, and structural forces.
Interrogate the epistemological assumptions underlying different theories of race, considering whose knowledge is valued, excluded, or erased in educational discourse and practice.
Apply theoretical frameworks to interpret educational policies and practices, developing nuanced critiques of how race operates within contemporary schooling.
Engage in comparative analysis by examining how race theories from different traditions (U.S. and global) converge, diverge, and inform one another in the struggle over education.
Reflect on personal and collective educational experiences in light of theoretical traditions, connecting lived experience to structures of racial stratification and possibility.
Develop and defend a policy recommendation that leverages race theory to address a current educational issue, articulating both the theoretical rationale and a practical mechanism for rethinking existing policy.
A
Academic Honesty
You are expected to be familiar with, and to follow, the University’s policies on academic integrity. You are expected to be honest in all of your academic work. Please consult Brandeis University Rights and Responsibilities for all policies and procedures related to academic integrity. Allegations of academic dishonesty will be forwarded to Student Rights and Community Standards. Sanctions for academic dishonesty can include failing grades and/or suspension from the university. Citation and research assistance can be found on the university library website.
Accommodations
Brandeis seeks to create a learning environment that is welcoming and inclusive of all students, and I want to support you in your learning. If you think you may require disability accommodations, you will need to work with Student Accessibility Support (SAS). You can contact them at 781-736-3470, email them at access@brandeis.edu, or visit the Student Accessibility Support home page. You can find helpful student FAQs and other resources on the SAS website, including guidance on how to know whether you might be eligible for support from SAS.
If you already have an accommodation letter from SAS, please provide me with a copy as soon as you can so that I can ensure effective implementation of accommodations for this class. In order to coordinate exam accommodations, ideally, you should provide the accommodation letter at least 48 hours before an exam.
Learning Expectations
I recognize that students in this program are working professionals balancing multiple responsibilities. This course has been designed with intentional spacing, a week between most sessions, to provide time for reading, synthesis, and reflection away from class meetings. To support balance with professional responsibilities, students are expected to use the time between sessions for readings, written assignments, preparation for discussions, and other course activities.
Student Hours and Communication
Held virtually, student hours occur by appointment and can be scheduled via my calendar. Students are encouraged to email the professor with any questions and/or if they cannot find a suitable time to meet using the link provided.
Attendance and Lateness Policy
Class activities are meant to be completed in real time. Absence from class results in an inability to contribute to class discussion and a reduction in participation points. Unavoidable, emergency, unforeseen, and scheduled class absences should be discussed with the professor to determine suitable arrangements for recouping participation points.
Student Support
Brandeis University is committed to supporting all our students so they can thrive. If a student, faculty, or staff member wants to learn more about support resources, the Support at Brandeis webpage offers a comprehensive list that includes these staff colleagues you can consult.
Course Materials
The course readings include a diverse range of multimedia sources such as journal articles, research working papers, policy briefs, book chapters, and news articles. To ensure that all students can access the required materials without financial burden and to promote a fair and inclusive learning environment, links are provided to all mandated course resources.
Library Services
The Brandeis Library collections and staff offer resources and services to support Brandeis students, faculty, and staff. Librarians and Specialists from Research & Instructional Services, Public Services, Archives & Special Collections, Sound & Image Media Studios, MakerLab, AutomationLab, and Digital Scholarship Lab are available to help you through consultations and workshops.
Religious Observance Policy
The professor strives to support students’ observance of their traditions by allowing absence from classes for such purposes by endeavoring to ensure that examinations, written reports, oral reports, or other mandatory class assignments are not scheduled for or due on holy days and by providing ample opportunities for students to make up work missed on such occasions, without penalty. Should a student need to miss class for religious reasons, the absence will be excused. Classes missed for travel plans are not considered excused absences. Only the dates of the holidays themselves are considered excused absences. Students should communicate any religious observances at the start of the class.
Statement on Respectful Environment
Brandeis University is committed to providing its students, faculty and staff with an environment conducive to learning and working, where all people are treated with respect and dignity. Please refrain from any behavior toward members of our Brandeis community, including students, faculty, staff, and guests, that intimidates, threatens, harasses, or bullies. Please consult Brandeis University Rights and Responsibilities for all policies and practices related to a respectful environment.
CoursePolicies
Attendance and Participation
Seminar courses require consistent attendance. It is an expectation that students attend class prepared to contribute to the synthesis of understanding and discourse. With the exception of presentation sessions, each week, students will be asked to bring forward an artifact of their choosing that relates to their understanding of the readings. These artifacts will serve as a starting point for our weekly discussions. Think BIG! Free yourself of any confinements or rigidity.
Reading Acknowledgments
This course sets out to provide students with a comprehensive bibliography of resources to develop their understanding of race theories, both as a racial lens to examine the world and as it pertains to the field of education. This syllabus contains more weekly readings than students are required to complete. The weekly readings are composed of anchor texts that the entire class will read and additional materials from which students can choose. At the start of each class, students will be asked to denote which of the readings they completed and provide feedback on the usefulness of that reading. This activity is intentionally scheduled within the first 10 minutes of class and is used as a point of attendance record keeping, group work structuring, and anecdotal data.
Weekly Discussion Artifact
Students are asked to come to class prepared to discuss the readings of that day. As part of class preparation, students are asked to bring and be prepared to discuss one artifact that relates to the readings or media that they engaged in during the week. The goal of this task is for students to complete the readings and see where that knowledge or new information takes them. Artifacts can be anything. The goal of this activity is to make connections with the course content and current understanding and then share those connections with classmates. Each student will incorporate their artifacts into the class discussion. Think “show and tell” but in a much more sophisticated format. Artifacts should be linked/uploaded to the readings posted in Perusal so that classmates have access to the artifacts during the class discussion.
EvaluativeElements
Learning Activities
Each class will include structured activities designed to deepen engagement with the theories under discussion. These may include small group exercises, simulations, mapping activities, role plays, or case study analyses. Students are expected to participate fully, contribute thoughtfully, and demonstrate preparation and respect for their peers’ contributions. The emphasis here is on active engagement and willingness to take intellectual risks in applying theory to practice.
Exit Ticket
At the end of each session, students will complete a brief reflection (“exit ticket”) to consolidate their learning. This may take the form of a written prompt, a short policy application, a lingering question, or a conceptual mapping exercise. Exit tickets are designed to gauge comprehension, highlight areas of curiosity, and encourage continuous synthesis across weeks. They will be collected weekly and contribute to the overall class grade.
Draft Policy Memo | 400 points
For the midterm, students will complete a 2–3 page draft policy memo that applies course theories to a contemporary educational issue. The memo should be addressed to a specific audience or set of constituents such as a school board, state department of education, community organization, or advocacy group. In this draft, students will clearly identify and articulate the educational problem, policy gap, or inequity they wish to address, grounding their description in evidence from data, reports, or lived experience. They will also contextualize what is currently occurring by explaining the existing policy or practice landscape, and then outline a range of potential solutions or strategies, drawing on race theories explored in class as interpretive or guiding frameworks. The emphasis at this stage is on framing the problem and generating possible approaches rather than producing a single polished recommendation. Students will receive feedback on their drafts to strengthen their thinking and guide development of the final policy memo and campaign.
In the final two class sessions, students will deliver a 10–12 minute presentation of their policy memo and theoretical campaign. This presentation is an opportunity to translate their written work into a clear and compelling oral format, demonstrating both their understanding of the chosen issue and the ways in which race theory informs their analysis and proposed solutions. Students should aim to engage their peers as if they were the intended policy audience, highlighting the significance of the problem, the theoretical lens being applied, and the strategies being advanced. Creativity, clarity, and the ability to connect theory to practice will be key measures of success.
Final Policy Memo & Theoretical Campaign | 1000 points
The culminating assignment for this course is a comprehensive policy memo and accompanying theoretical campaign design. Building on the midterm draft and class presentation, students will submit a polished, 6–8 page memo that clearly defines an educational issue, analyzes it through one or more race theories, and advances a specific, actionable policy recommendation. Alongside the memo, students will design a campaign that demonstrates how their recommendation could be communicated and mobilized among targeted constituents. The campaign component may take many forms (e.g., a public-facing narrative, media plan, or organizing strategy) but should reflect careful thought about audience, feasibility, and theory-to-practice translation. This assignment is intended to synthesize the semester’s learning, challenging students to use race theory not only to critique existing structures but to imagine and advance justice-centered alternatives.
SessionOne
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What is Race?
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Systema Naturae (first published in 1735)
Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist
Race is a classification of human populations based on physical characteristics such as skin color, hair texture, and geographic origin. Linnaeus classified races into four main varieties: Europaeus (European), Asiaticus (Asian), Americanus (Native American), and Africanus (African), each characterized by specific physical traits.
Crania Americana (first published in 1839)
Samuel George Morton (1799–1851), 19th-century American physician and natural scientist
Race is a classification of human populations based on physical characteristics, particularly cranial measurements. Morton believed that these physical traits, such as skull size and shape, could be used to categorize human races into distinct groups, each with its own inherent characteristics and capabilities.
During the early 20th century, the eugenics movement gained prominence, promoting the idea that some races were genetically superior to others. This movement led to discriminatory practices and policies.
This session introduces students to theory as a way of seeing, questioning, and reshaping the world rather than as an abstract or distant exercise. Theory provides the language and tools to make sense of social realities, expose hidden structures, and imagine new possibilities. By engaging Du Bois’s articulation of double consciousness and early PanAfrican and Négritude thought, students will consider how theory emerges from lived experience and political struggle. In this way, theory is not static—it is produced in context, debated across generations, and mobilized as a resource for resistance. Understanding “what theory is” allows us to see education not simply as policy or practice, but as a site where knowledge, power, and identity are contested and remade.
ObjectiveIn this opening session, students will orient themselves to the structure and expectations of the course while developing a shared understanding of what it means to engage with theory. Drawing on foundational texts, students will examine how theory functions as a lens for interpreting the world, a method for questioning assumptions, and a framework for generating new knowledge. The objective is to recognize theory not as abstract or distant, but as a dynamic tool that shapes inquiry, organizes thought, and guides educational practice and critique.
Theory is not an escape from reality but a way of imagining it otherwise.
Theory is a set of assumptions about how societies function and how change happens.
A theory is not truth but a framework— something to be tested, challenged, and reimagined.
All theory is situated… its value lies in the struggles it helps us to name.
Reveals hidden structures
Shows how race, class, gender, and power shape education beneath the surface.
Names what we feel but can’t yet articulate
Provides language for lived experiences of inequality and resistance.
Connects ideas to action
Frames how policies are designed, how curricula are written, and how teachers teach.
Guides critical questions
Helps us ask why things are the way they are and who benefits.
WhyTheoryMatters
Challenges neutrality
Reminds us that “common sense” explanations are often political choices.
Prevents repetition of harm
Helps us learn from history so we don’t reproduce the same injustices in new forms.
Expands possibility
Allows us to imagine alternatives— different schools, different futures.
What word or phrase from session one is still on your mind?
SessionTwo
Objective
In this opening session, students will orient themselves to the structure and expectations of the course while developing a shared understanding of what it means to engage with theory. Drawing on foundational texts, students will examine how theory functions as a lens for interpreting the world, a method for questioning assumptions, and a framework for generating new knowledge. The objective is to recognize theory not as abstract or distant, but as a dynamic tool that shapes inquiry, organizes thought, and guides educational practice and critique.
Alfred Du Bois, W.E.B. Du Bois’s father, came from a lineage of free Black landowners of mixed French and African descent. Although his background carried the prestige of freedom and property ownership, Alfred’s life was marked by instability. He left the family when Du Bois was still very young, creating an early absence that shaped the boy’s understanding of loss, resilience, and independence.
Alfred Du Bois
Du Bois grew up in a single-parent home after his father moved away to Connecticut. To help augment the household income, he took on small jobs like mowing lawns while remaining dedicated to his studies. This balance of responsibility and ambition sharpened his resolve, and even as a young man he set his sights on Harvard, a goal that reflected both his intellectual promise and his belief in education as the pathway to uplift and recognition.
In this 1888 letter written as a student at Fisk University, a young W.E.B. Du Bois appeals for admission to Harvard to pursue a Ph.D. in Political Science. At just 20 years old, Du Bois outlines both his academic ambitions and his financial limitations, noting his willingness to teach in order to fund his studies. The letter reveals his early self-awareness as a “Negro student” navigating the barriers of race and class while striving for intellectual recognition. It also foreshadows his lifelong commitment to linking scholarship with racial uplift and the belief that education could serve as a pathway to leadership and social transformation.
This 1888 “Parents or Guardian’s Certificate,” signed by Du Bois’s relative James T. Burghardt in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, certifies that the family could not afford to support his studies at Harvard College. The form was a requirement for students seeking financial aid, underscoring how Du Bois’s pursuit of higher education depended not only on intellectual promise but also on the acknowledgment of financial hardship. The certificate reflects both the economic constraints faced by free Black families in the North and the structural hurdles that shaped Du Bois’s path toward becoming a scholar.
These Harvard course applications, filled out by Du Bois in the late 1880s, document his early academic trajectory and intellectual ambitions. They list his prior preparation at Fisk University and Great Barrington High School, his proficiency in English, French, and German, and his enrollment in advanced history and political economy courses. Du Bois identifies his special interests in topics such as slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction—subjects that would later anchor his scholarship on race and democracy. The forms not only capture his diligence as a student but also foreshadow the critical, historical lens that became central to his career as a sociologist and theorist of education and race.
German Education: While studying in Berlin (1892–1894), Du Bois encountered Kant’s philosophy directly in lectures and texts, absorbing ideas about reason, morality, and the structure of knowledge.
Moral Law & Duty: Kant’s notion of a universal moral law shaped Du Bois’ conviction that racial equality was not only a political demand but also an ethical imperative.
Categories of Understanding: Kant’s focus on how humans perceive and order the world influenced Du Bois’s own efforts to explain the “veil” and “double consciousness” as ways of seeing and being seen in a racialized society.
The Influence of Immanuel Kant on W.E.B. Du Bois
The Influence of G.W.F. Hegel on W.E.B. Du Bois
Berlin Years: At the University of Berlin, Du Bois engaged deeply with Hegelian philosophy, especially the Phenomenology of Spirit and the “master–slave dialectic.”
History & Progress: Hegel’s belief that history unfolds toward freedom influenced Du Bois’s view of racial struggle as part of a broader human quest for liberation.
Collective Spirit: Hegel’s idea of the “World Spirit” resonated with Du Bois’s later work in PanAfricanism, where he saw the destinies of Black people linked across continents and history.
This handwritten outline by Du Bois sketches his ideas on “Ideals of Education.” In it, he identifies the “central problem of education” and lays out methods such as teaching for work, efficiency, and self-development. The notes list categories of workers, from house servants and stenographers to skilled journeymen and managers, suggesting Du Bois was thinking critically about how education prepared individuals for different roles within a stratified economy. These fragments reflect his ongoing effort to balance vocational training with broader ideals of personal and social uplift, a tension at the heart of his debates with contemporaries like Booker T. Washington.
This second page of Du Bois’s notes continues his outline on the “Ideals of Education,” with a focus on vocational training. He highlights efficiency, intelligence, and principles as guiding aims, alongside the practical needs of food, clothing, and shelter. At the same time, Du Bois warns that education must prepare individuals for “higher vocations” such as voters, parents, and participants in shaping public opinion. By linking the everyday labor of workers to civic responsibility, Du Bois demonstrates his conviction that schooling was not only about economic survival but also about cultivating informed citizens capable of sustaining democracy.
In this brief handwritten fragment, Du Bois insists: “We must not organize simply to make others act—that is hopeless, often impossible. We must organize to act ourselves, ready.” The statement captures his philosophy of self-determination and collective agency, reflecting his belief that Black communities could not wait for white society or political institutions to deliver justice. Instead, they needed to cultivate their own leadership, institutions, and strategies for action. This principle underpinned Du Bois’s advocacy in education, politics, and Pan-African organizing, emphasizing empowerment from within.
Through his role as editor of The Crisis, the NAACP’s flagship magazine, Du Bois used journalism and public scholarship as tools to champion education as the cornerstone of racial uplift. His editorials regularly called for expanded access to quality schools for Black children, challenged the inequities of segregated education, and highlighted the achievements of Black teachers and students as evidence of intellectual promise and cultural strength. Beyond the magazine, Du Bois’ essays and books emphasized that education was not simply individual advancement but a collective necessity. His publications were instrumental in cultivating leadership, sustaining democracy, and confronting the color line. By fusing advocacy with scholarship, Du Bois positioned education as both the battlefield and the hope for racial justice.
1910s
Du Bois uses data to show structural roots of inequality, not innate deficits. Argues that education must be the lever for collective racial advancement.
Advocates for a cadre of highly educated Black leaders who would uplift the masses.
As editor of The Crisis (1910–1934), Du Bois highlights Black achievement in schools and pushes for equal access. Emphasizes liberal arts, cultural pride, and leadership cultivation.
Clash with Marcus Garvey: From his platform at The Crisis, Du Bois denounced Garvey’s separatist “Back to Africa” program as misguided, while Garvey attacked Du Bois as elitist and disconnected from the masses. Their rivalry (1920–1924) highlighted deep tensions over strategy, class, and the meaning of education in Black liberation.
1920s
Growing disillusionment with the limited progress of the Talented Tenth idea. Calls for broader, mass education and critiques capitalism as a barrier to true racial uplift. Expands vision to global Pan-African education and anti-colonial struggle.
1930s – 1940s
Moves to Ghana (1961), supports Nkrumah’s educational and nation-building projects.
1950s
How does it feel to be the problem?
Return to My Native Land)
Originally written in the 1930s, first published in 1939, and revised multiple times.
A long, lyrical poem blending autobiography, political philosophy, and surrealist imagery.
Chronicles alienation, despair, and renewal upon returning to colonial Martinique.
Explores themes of dispossession, double consciousness, cultural pride, and revolt.
Seen as a foundational text of Négritude, offering a vision of Black identity as both wounded by colonialism and strengthened through cultural memory.
Educational impact: pushes readers to imagine schooling not as assimilation, but as awakening to collective history and dignity.
MarcusGarvey (1887–1940)
Jamaican political leader, journalist, and entrepreneur.
Founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) — the largest mass movement in Black history.
Advocated Black pride, economic self-sufficiency, and Pan-African unity.
Promoted the “Back to Africa” movement, envisioning the creation of a strong, independent Black nation.
Clashed with leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois over strategy, but left a lasting legacy in global Black consciousness, civil rights, and Rastafarian thought.
Jacques-Garvey, A. (1923). Philosophy and opinions of Marcus Garvey.
The Crisis
A modern day adaptation
In this activity, students stepped into the role of Du Bois as editor of The Crisis. Drawing on the session’s themes of double consciousness and diasporic visions, each student chose a contemporary issue in education (such as book bans, standardized testing, curriculum representation, or policing in schools) and crafted a short editorial in the style of The Crisis. Their editorials highlight the significance of the issue for students and communities while also considering its broader implications for people of other races and American democracy as a whole. The exercise is designed to demonstrate how theory can extend beyond the classroom to inform public discourse, advocacy, and crossracial solidarity.
Code Switching
Double Consciousness
asaTheory
At its core, double-consciousness explains the internal conflict experienced by marginalized or oppressed groups (especially African Americans) when navigating a society that imposes racialized stereotypes and devalues their identity.
W.E.B. Du Bois (1903, The Souls of Black Folk) first theorized this concept as a “two-ness” of being both Black and American, forced to see oneself through the eyes of a dominant white society while also maintaining a self-defined identity.
Key Tenets:
Two-ness of Identity: the simultaneous experience of being both Black and American, holding identities that are often positioned as incompatible.
Looking at Oneself Through the Eyes of Others: the awareness of how white society views, judges, and stereotypes Black people, shaping self-perception.
Internal Conflict & Striving: the tension between one’s authentic self and the imposed identity of inferiority or “otherness” constructed by the dominant culture.
Aspiration Toward Wholeness: the struggle to reconcile these divided identities, striving for a unified self that resists imposed hierarchies and affirms dignity.
Colonialism and Theory
SessionThree
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Chapter 1 (“The Negro and Language”).
Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (1950), (pp. 31-78).
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind (1986), Introduction (on language, culture, and education).
U.S. Indian Civilization Act (1819) | Chap. LXXXV.
Reading Acknowledgement
Students will analyze colonialism as a theoretical framework, focusing on how power, culture, and knowledge were structured to sustain empire. Building on Du Bois’ concept of double-consciousness as review, students will engage key texts and media (Fanon, Césaire, Said, Spivak) to understand colonialism’s psychological, political, and educational dimensions. By examining historical policies (e.g., Macaulay’s Minute on Education, the U.S. Indian Civilization Act) alongside critical theory, students will learn to see education as both a mechanism of imperial power and a contested site of identity formation.
Objective
Theme
This session examines how colonial powers used education as a central tool of domination, cultural assimilation, and social control. By engaging with theorists such as Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, students will explore how language, curriculum, and pedagogy became battlegrounds for shaping subjectivities under empire. We will also consider how anticolonial thinkers reimagined education as a site of resistance and cultural survival, situating schooling within the broader struggles for decolonization and selfdetermination.
Background
Born: January 5, 1938, in Kamiriithu, Kenya.
Novelist, playwright, essayist, literary theorist, and professor.
Known for: Foundational voice in postcolonial studies and African literature.
Core Ideas
Language as a tool of colonization and liberation.
Advocated writing in African languages (e.g., Gikuyu) to reclaim cultural identity. Critiques of neo-colonialism in African education, literature, and politics. Push for African cultural renaissance through literature and performance.
Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties.
It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence.
Apache. children on arrival at the carlisle Indian School (Pennsylvania), 1886
Apache. Children on arrival at the Carlisle Indian School four months later, 1887
Colonialism
Colonialism as Theory
At its core, colonialism theory explains how power, economics, culture, and knowledge are structured to benefit colonizers at the expense of colonized peoples.
Key tenets: Domination & Exploitation → colonies as sources of labor, raw materials, and markets.
Cultural Hegemony → colonizers impose their language, religion, and values as universal.
Racial Hierarchies → justification of control through scientific racism and social Darwinism. Knowledge Production → academia, media, and literature shape colonial narratives (Said).
Colonialism
Definition → The practice and system of domination where one nation politically, economically, and culturally controls another.
Focus → How colonizers build and sustain power (through exploitation, racial hierarchies, knowledge production, cultural hegemony).
Theorists → Aimé Césaire (Discourse on Colonialism), Albert Memmi (The Colonizer and the Colonized), W.E.B. Du Bois (early critique of empire), Frantz Fanon (Black Skin, White Masks).
Key Concern → The structures of domination.
Theorists and their contributions
Theorists and their contributions
Theorist
W.E.B. Du Bois
Aimé Césaire
Frantz Fanon
Albert Memmi
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
Dates
1868–1963
Edward Said
Gayatri C. Spivak
1913–2008
1925–1961
1920–2020
1938–1935–2003
Key Work(s)
The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
Discourse on Colonialism (1950)
Black Skin, White Masks (1952); The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
The Colonizer and the Colonized (1957) Decolonising the Mind (1986) Orientalism (1978)
Homi K. Bhabha
1942–1949–
Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988)
The Location of Culture (1994)
Theory Alignment Core Ideas | Contributions
Double-Consciousness: the “two-ness” of identity (Black & American); seeing oneself through the eyes of others; education as uplift and racial consciousness.
Colonialism dehumanizes colonizer & colonized; “thingification”; links colonial violence to fascism in Europe.
Psychological effects of colonialism; violence as necessary for liberation; national consciousness; critique of assimilation
Dependency and oppression in colonial relations; colonizer’s need to dominate vs. colonized’s forced inferiority.
Language as tool of colonization; reclaiming indigenous languages as resistance; literature as site of liberation.
“Orient” as Western invention; knowledge + power; cultural representations sustain imperial domination. The “subaltern” (silenced, marginalized) cannot easily speak within dominant structures; critiques Western feminism & representation
Hybridity, mimicry, ambivalence; cultural negotiation in the “in-between” spaces of postcolonial life.
Precursor →
Colonialism (identity under domination)
Colonialism
Colonialism → bridge to Anti-Colonialism
Colonialism
Postcolonialism
Postcolonialism
Postcolonialism
Postcolonialism
On Violence
SessionFour
Theme
This session centers on Paulo Freire’s conception of education as a practice of freedom, contrasting it with models of schooling that reproduce domination By situating Freire’s ideas alongside the work of Henry Giroux, bell hooks, and Antonia Darder, we consider how liberationist pedagogies have been taken up across different contexts to challenge hierarchy, cultivate critical consciousness, and affirm human dignity. At the same time, we reflect on how law and policy shape the conditions of teaching and learning, raising questions about cultural autonomy and the role of education in sustaining or resisting social orders.
Students will analyze how pedagogy functions as both a site of oppression and a tool for liberation. They will examine Freire’s concepts of conscientization, dialogue, and praxis, and connect them to broader traditions of critical pedagogy and engaged teaching. By engaging with legal cases, testimonies, and literacy campaigns, students will explore how educational practices rooted in liberation theory can transform not only classrooms but also communities and democratic life.
a TEACHER
Teacher
From Old English tǣcan = to show, point out, demonstrate Related to Proto-Germanic taikijan = to show with signs
Implied role → The one who points the way (authority, direction, demonstration)
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Argued against funding traditional Sanskrit or Arabic learning.
Quote: Teachers should “form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.”
Takeaway: Teacher as cultural broker, manufacturing colonial subjects.
Minute on Indian Education (1835, British India)
Lord Lugard
The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (1922): A foundational text for British indirect rule.
Quote: Colonial education should “train the youth of the ruling race to appreciate the benefits of European civilisation and to carry them to their own people.”
Takeaway: Teacher as agent of assimilation, tasked with transferring “European civilisation” while preserving social hierarchy.
Jules Ferry
Ferry, a key architect of French colonial schooling in Africa and Indochina.
Quote: “We must speak to these populations in our language, in the language of France, which is the language of liberty and civilisation.”
Takeaway: Teacher as missionary of French language and culture, framed as “civilisation.”
Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (1879, U.S.)
On Native American boarding schools.
Quote: “By educating the children of the tribe in the English language, these schools… will gradually supplant the barbarous dialects and obliterate tribal traits.”
Takeaway: Teacher as eraser of Indigenous identity, enforcing linguistic and cultural assimilation.
Laws of the Indies (1573)
Codified how missionaries/teachers should operate in the Americas.
Quote: “Indians are to be gathered into settlements… and instructed in the Spanish language and in the doctrine of our Holy Catholic Faith.”
Takeaway: Teacher as religious and linguistic enforcer, binding education to Christianity and Spanish empire.
Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Banking vs. Problem-Posing Education → education as depositing knowledge vs. dialogical co-investigation.
Conscientization → the process of developing critical awareness of social, political, and economic contradictions.
Praxis → reflection + action directed at transforming oppressive reality.
Dialogue → authentic, reciprocal exchange as the basis of liberatory pedagogy.
Henry Giroux
Hidden Curriculum → unspoken lessons, norms, and values transmitted through schooling (discipline, hierarchy, conformity).
Reconceptualization → schools as contested terrains where domination and resistance co-exist; teachers as intellectuals who can cultivate critique.
Making Race Making Knowledge
If race isn’t biological, what keeps it so powerfully real?
What Makes a Race?
Core propositions
Race = “an unstable, decentered complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle.”
Racial formation = the process through which social, economic, and political forces determine the content and importance of racial categories. The racial state manages these categories through law, census, and policy.
Post-Civil War → Jim Crow → immigration acts: state codifies race (e.g., Ozawa, Thind).
Civil Rights → colorblind era: race rearticulated via “neutral” policy and data.
Contemporary moment: race managed through bureaucracy— check boxes, algorithms, and achievement metrics.
Racial Formation
In the United States
PRE-MODERN FOUNDATIONS: COLONIALISM AND SLAVERY (1600S–1865)
Race emerges as a global project of European expansion.
THE RACIAL STATE AND THE CODIFICATION OF RACE
THE RACIAL STATE AND THE CODIFICATION OF RACE (1865–1945)
The state becomes the central organizer of race. organizer race.
MID-20TH CENTURY RACIAL “CRISIS” AND REFORMATION (1945–1970S)
Racial projects are challenged, but not dismantled
THE CONTEMPORARY ERA: NEOLIBERAL AND COLORBLIND RACISM (1980S–PRESENT IN THEIR FRAME)
THE CONTEMPORARY ERA: NEOLIBERAL AND COLORBLIND RACISM (1980S–PRESENT IN THEIR FRAME)
The “new” racial formation disavows race while reproducing it. “new”
RACIAL FORMATION AS AN ONGOING PROCESS
There’s no “end” point.
Weekly Artifacts | Reading Acknowledgement
Racial Capitalism Theory
World Systems Analysis
World Systems Analysis
Synthesizing the Readings
Pit: Education Edition (Part 1) Break
Pit: Education Edition (Part 2)
Pit Debrief
Reflections | Exit Ticket
Capitalism did not emerge in a race-neutral Europe; it evolved through feudal hierarchies already ordered by ethnicity and religion.
Modern capitalism requires difference. It assigns value unequally to human life and labor.
“Capitalism was racial not because of its origins but because racialism permeated its emergence and structure.”
–Cedric Robinson
Race is therefore a tool of accumulation: organizing who labors, who benefits, and whose humanity is expendable.
Robinson | Black Marxism in Context
Challenges Marxism’s claim that class alone explains exploitation. Introduces Racial Capitalism: economic value depends on racial ordering. Centers the Black Radical Tradition as both a survival strategy and an epistemology that resists capitalist rationality. Key takeaway: You cannot dismantle capitalism without confronting race; they are co-constituted systems.
Testing & accountability → mechanisms of extraction and control.
Meritocracy = ideological cover for racialized distribution of opportunity.
Question: Who becomes the “cheap labor” of the educational economy—students, teachers, or communities?
Robinson Applied to Education
The Black Radical Tradition
The Black Radical Tradition is the collective, historical, and intellectual practice of Black resistance to racial capitalism — a continuing struggle for liberation that emerged from the specific experiences of African peoples under slavery, colonialism, and racial domination.
It is not a single movement or ideology, but a tradition of thought and action that has evolved across time and geography, carried forward by ordinary people as well as thinkers, artists, and revolutionaries.
Core Ideas
Continuity of Resistance
Black people have continuously resisted enslavement, colonial rule, and racial hierarchy — not merely by imitating European revolutionary ideas but by drawing on their own cultural, spiritual, and communal logics.
This includes maroon communities, slave revolts, Pan-African movements, anticolonial uprisings, and Black feminist organizing.
Epistemological Independence
The Black Radical Tradition carries its own ways of knowing — rooted in collective memory, spirituality, and ethics that reject Western rationality’s reduction of people to labor or property. It’s a critique of both liberalism and orthodox Marxism for ignoring the racial foundations of capitalism.
Racial Capitalism as the Target Robinson argues that capitalism has always been racial — it could not exist without the exploitation and differentiation of peoples by race.
Therefore, Black radical thought resists both material exploitation and the ideological systems that justify it.
Communal and Humanistic Vision
The tradition values collective survival, reciprocity, and spiritual wholeness over accumulation and competition. It is a humanizing project — a vision of life beyond racial and economic domination.
Revolts & Revolutions: Haitian Revolution; slave insurrections; Garveyism; anti-colonial struggles in Africa and the Caribbean.
Cultural Expression: Spirituals, jazz, hip hop, oral history, and diasporic storytelling as vehicles of resistance and imagination.
Intellectual Lineage:
W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Frantz Fanon, Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, and many unnamed community organizers, artists, and teachers.
The Black Radical Tradition is the living archive of Black resistance — a countersystem of knowledge, survival, and solidarity forged against racial capitalism.
Wallerstein | The World-System
“The capitalist world-economy is a single system with an axial division of labor between core and periphery.”
Replaces nation-state analysis with world-systems analysis.
Core: wealthy zones that monopolize production, technology, and knowledge.
Periphery: zones providing raw materials / cheap labor.
Semi-periphery: buffers that stabilize the system.
Sustained by unequal exchange surplus flows upward.
From World-System to School-System
World-Systems
Concept
Core vs Periphery
School Analogue
Elite districts vs under-resourced schools
Unequal exchange
Funding flows through property taxes
Dependency “Failing” schools depend on state/federal aid
Surplus extraction
Ideology of progress
Data & test scores used to justify reform intervention
“College-and-career ready” narrative of merit and mobility
Connecting Robinson + Wallerstein
Wallerstein: Explains how the capitalist world-economy organizes inequality. Robinson: Explains why that organization is racialized and enduring.
Together → Racial Capitalist WorldSystem
Economic accumulation + racial hierarchy = mutually reinforcing. Education sits at this intersection a racialized market managing access to “futures.”
Policy Implications
Policy Text What it Reveals Through Theory
A Nation at Risk (1983)
Panic over “productivity” reframes education as national economic capital; invokes meritocracy to justify surveillance & competition.
San Antonio v. Rodriguez (1973)
Court rules education is not a federal right → legalizes structural inequality; mirrors worldsystem logic of local dependency.
Accountability Reforms
Market vocabulary (“choice,” “efficiency”) entrenches racial hierarchies under guise of improvement.
