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Education Policy and Racial Inequality as an Act of White Supremacy in the Education System

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Education Policy and Racial Inequality as an Act of White Supremacy in the Education System
Vanquishing new worlds, victors from the West acquired more than just land and subjects—they also gained sumptuous avowal of their creed of superiority, reinforced by the sight of foreign coloured people whom they perceive to be the object of their hegemonic motives. Securing their victory did not cost them more and more artillery. It was only a matter of influencing the ideology of the conquered people—a strategically optimised scheme of maintaining their dominance. The battles and the arm struggles may have ceased or diminished but the war of ideology versus ideology perpetuated. White supremacy, a racist ideology, was the conqueror's secret weapon that struck its victim unwary. It is a system of belief that places the white race above all the other races.
First, to describe white supremacy, a critical distinction between "whiteness" and "white people" needs to be addressed. By detaching the belief from the believer, we clarify that white supremacy is not necessarily congruent with "white people." This ideology of racism is nothing more but a social construct which spawned to secure some sort of competitive advantage in society. In the words of Noel Ignatiev, author of the book "How the Irish Became White":
Just as the capitalist system is not a capitalist plot, so [is] racial oppression not the work of "racists." It is maintained by the principal institutions of society, including the schools (which define "excellence")….The simple fact is that the public schools…are doing more harm to black children than all "racist" groups combined (Ignatiev, 1997: p. 2).
Ivory Coast, a fertile land in the African continent, caught the economic interest of French traders in the 19th century. At first the relation between the French and the Africans of the Ivory Coast was merely trade until eventually France realised that it would gain more if it had control over the entire land. The Ivoirian Africans fought to defend their territory by retaliation of the advancing French



References: Althusser, L. (1971). Lenin and philosophy and other essays. New York: Monthly Review. Bassey, M.O. (1999). Western education and political domination in Africa: a study in critical and dialogical pedagogy. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Bordieu, P. (1999). Acts of resistance: against the tyranny of the market. New York: The New Press. Bowles, P Dlamini, SN. (2005) Towards and Empowering Education System in South Africa: Youth and the Struggle for Knowledge, unpublished. Farahmandpur, R. (2004, March). A Marxist Critique of Michael Apple 's Neo-Marxist Approach to Educational Reform. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 2(1), from http://www.jceps.com/index.php?pageID=article&articleID=24 Gillborn, D. (2005). Education policy as an act of white supremacy: whiteness, critical race theory and education reform. Journal of Education Policy, 20(4), 485-505 Education: on the ropes Hill, D. (2005). Controlling our minds: the educational ideological and repressive state apparatuses, global imperialistic and materialistic neo-liberalism, and education policy. Public Resistance 1(1), 42-64. Hill, D. (2005). New labour and education: ideology, (in)equality and capital. London: Tufnell Press. Mansfield, E., & Kehoe, J. (1994). A critical examination of anti-racist education. Canadian Journal of Education, 19(4), 418-430. Mathonsi, P. (1988). Black matriculation results: a mechanism of social control. Bramfontein, South Africa: Skotaville. McNeil, L. (2000). Contradictions of school reform: educational costs of standardized testing. New York: Routledge. Naicker, SM Tomlinson, S. (2001). Education in a Post-Welfare Society. Buckingham: Open University Press. Wolff, R.D. (2004). Ideological State Apparatuses, Consumerism and U.S. Capitalism: Lessons for the Left. University of Massachusetts Dept Weiler, K. (1988). Women Teaching for Change: Gender, Class and Power. Massachusets: Bergin & Garvey

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