The war on schools: NCLB, nation creation and the educational construction of whiteness

Abstract The study of whiteness in education is receiving increased attention. This essay argues that the No Child Left Behind Act is an example of color‐blindness par excellence. NCLB's hidden referent of whiteness makes a casual pass at racial explanation that sidesteps race as a causal explanation for educational disparities. In this sense, NCLB is an 'act of whiteness' and perpetuates the innocence of whiteness as a system of privilege. It is a form of whiteness as policy. Its white common sense deems racial disparities as unfortunate outcomes of group competition, uneven social development, or worse, as stubborn cultural explanations of the inferiority of people of color. The essay argues for a color‐conscious perspective that problematizes the otherwise race‐neutral discourse of NCLB. It ends with a discussion of the future of whiteness by engaging the debate between the abolition and rearticulation of whiteness. Notes 1. Color‐mute is borrowed from Mica Pollock's Colormute(Citation2004). It signifies racial discourse, such as California's Proposition 209, which outlaws mention of the existence of racial categories despite the fact that they exist in practice. 2. Color‐blindness is not actually the 'inability to see race' and is therefore an imperfect term. In the USA, color‐blind people cannot fail to see race, but they choose to see it in a particular way. In asserting that race should not matter in either social policy or transactions, color‐blind people—especially whites—experience what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. Color‐blindness prevents them from dealing with the racial conditioning of their behavior, which is considered as incidental rather than causal. Racial consequences may then be dismissed as unintentional or the common refrain expressed that actions or words have been 'taken out of context.' Be that as it may, color‐blindness is useful as a term to describe people's attempts to avoid race as an explanatory framework. For this reason, I will use it for the remainder of the essay. 3. David Gillborn delivered a symposium titled 'It's not a Conspiracy, it's Worse than That,' for the Center for Multicultural Education, University of Washington, 9 November Citation2005.