Rethinking race theory in education
Racial Value Theory (RVT)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12928757 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John Preston (0000-0003-1219-4108, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-27 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Power and Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1757-7438 • E-ISSN: 1757-7438 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/17577438261430824 |
| OpenAlex | W7131855351 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 42 |
Race theory in education is locked into a mode of critique that accepts conventional categories of political economy and essentialises race and education as timeless. Attempts to build economic factors into CRT (Critical Race Theory) and recent attempts to combine CRT with theories of racialised social systems to create Racialised Social Systems (RSS) Theory do not enable a negative critique of capitalism. Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) and Marxist theories of racialisation do engage with a negative critique of capitalism but could further consider the contradictions of capitalist society. This requires an understanding of capitalism, class struggle and race that transcends naïve materialism and enables an understanding of education, race and capitalism as locked into permanent crisis. Using metatheoretical critique, a new metatheory, Racial Value Theory (RVT) is presented. This shows how methods of ‘racial organisation’, racial categorisations and racial theories in education become archaic. For educators, RVT shows the redundancy of forms of practice and praxis but also the possibilities for revolutionary education
Capitalism · Critical race theory · Critical theory · Historical materialism · Marxist philosophy · Materialism · Praxis · Race (biology · Social theory · Critical Race Theory in Education · Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies · Global Educational Policies and Reforms
Racism as Policy
The Globalization of White Supremacy
Critical Race Theory
How Not to Skip Class
Crisis of Care? On the Social-Reproductive Contradictions of Contemporary Capitalism
The Ideological Condition
Rethinking Racial Capitalism
Critiquing Capitalism Today
Crack Capitalism
Intellectual and Manual Labour
Critical race theory in England
A prolegomenon to a critical race theoretical Marxism
Talk the talk, walk the walk
You got a pass, so what more do you want?’
Same old story, just a different policy’
Brown bodies, racialisation and physical education
Unspoken rules of engagement
The colour of numbers
The Abstract Slave
Critical race theory in education, Marxism and abstract racial domination
Mapping Present Inequalities to Navigate Future Success
Social reproduction theory revisited
Education and Race
Race, education and inequality
Scorched Earth
The Race for Class
An Overdue Theoretical Discourse
Rethinking White Supremacy
Critical Race Theory comes to the UK
Education policy as an act of white supremacy
Just what is critical race theory, and what is it doing in British sociology? From "BritCrit" to the racialized social system approach
Rethinking Racism
Intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, and the Primacy of Racism
Three Tensions in the Theory of Racial Capitalism
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |