‘There's no racism at my school, it's just joking around’: ramifications for anti‐racist education

Abstract

Racialization is a social process inscribed with power relations that tend to centre whiteness. This article draws on comments made about race and racism collected through interviews with 12 teenage girls, living in or near the Toronto area, on the broader topic of adolescence. Within these interviews, the young women were asked how adolescence might be experienced differently on the basis of cultural background and race. They were also asked if they believed there to be any racism in their schools. Three patterns emerged in their responses: they denied and downplayed racism in their schools; narrowly defined racism, privileging definitions of racism as individualized and violent over institutional and systematic; and conceptualized racism in a way that centred whiteness. This article presents the observations of these young women, reflects on the motivations behind them and discusses ramifications for anti‐racist education.