Contracting race

Writing, racism, and education

Bibliographic Data

ID12905809
AuthorsZeus Leonardo (0000-0002-7719-5462, University of California, Berkeley, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume56
Issue1
Pages86-98
Publication date2014-11-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritical Studies in Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1750-8487 • E-ISSN: 1750-8495
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17508487.2015.981197
OpenAlexW2016340776
LanguageEN
Citations received24
References cited25

This article presents the main terms of the racial contract, as they appear in the subcontracts of Mills’ theory, such as the spatial, epistemological, cognitive subcontracts. It is important to keep in mind that these subcontracts are by no means separate and represent analytical moments of the main contract. Furthermore, other than its institutional form, education is not a separate sphere from the racial contract. Finally, I end with the racial contract’s gaps to determine the possibility of its own demise, which requires the active signing off from the terms of the contract. That is, I sketch ideas about ways to counteract (i.e., counter-write) the racial contract as part of a corrective to the history that interpellates people of color as its targets. Both Whites and people of color have a stake in the rewriting of the contract, where in the end they are imagined as neither Black nor White but free. In this last portion, I spend some text on what Whites’ role may look like in signing off the contract, such as the case of white ‘race traitors’ within the white abolitionist proposal, recast as the ‘epistemological traitor’ in education

Aesthetics · Demise · Political science · Politics · Race (biology · Racism · Rewriting · Sketch · Social contract · Sociology · White (mutation · Computer Science · Critical Race Theory in Education · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies