Economies of racism: grounding education policy research in the complex dialectic of race, class, and capital

The intent of this paper is to interrogate the current theoretical discourse in education concerning issues of race and class. The authors maintain that in recent years educational theory and critical policy discourse have unintentionally become splintered in such a way that race and class theories are employed separately, without much analysis of the concomitant ways race and racism are both embedded in and productive of the material processes of production and exploitation that characterize capitalism. The authors propose the framework of economies of racism to make sense of the complex unity that brings white supremacy and capitalist accumulation together in a single dialectic. Drawing from recent work on race and class in critical social theory, the authors first make their case for the theory and formulation of economies of racism in society and education, and follow this with an analysis of current educational policy research via the theoretical lenses posited through this dialectical framework.