The explanatory power of examining race and class in educational settings

Abstract

Introduction: This special issue aims to drive fresh conversations around the intersection of race and social class within the global sociology of education and beyond. In recent years, post-racial ideologies that deny the existence of structural racism and colonial legacies have gathered pace across societies in the global north. At the same time, in countries such as the UK, race and class-based inequalities have been pitted against each other by invoking the educational performance of ‘white working-class boys’ solely through the lens of class. These discourses not only fail to grasp the complexities of the issues in hand but actively deflect attention away from the way racial and classed inequalities within education, health, and job markets are interlocked and co-constituted. The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing cost-of-living crises across the globe have laid bare deep-seated racial and classed inequalities. These pose challenges to existing sociological frameworks in terms of thinking about the operations of inequalities in daily lives, the effects of neoliberalism and growing social injustices. Indeed, sociological analyses of classed and racial inequalities in contemporary societies draw attention to their interconnected and global dimensions. Against this backdrop, it is more relevant than ever before to bring together new cutting-edge scholarship on the intersection of social class and race to reflect on the current state of affairs, chart new ways of thinking about these issues, and thus contribute to our collective struggle for a more just and equal society. This special issue aims to do just that, and it therefore has significant potential to take sociological debates on the intersection of race and class within educational settings in new directions.