Race, Culture, and Politics in Education

Book excerpt: This autobiographical volume will foster a deeper understanding of racism, discrimination, and inequality in all its subtleties. Through storytelling, framed within the life journey of a South African sociologist of Indian ancestry, this book examines how marginalized communities lived with, fought, and braved racial engineering under apartheid. Moodley shares her experiences of living, studying, and teaching race, ethnicity, identity, nationalism, and critical multiculturalism in five countries: South Africa, the United States, Germany, Egypt, and Canada. Everyday experiences are blended with academic interpretations, so readers gain insights from what is in part memoir and in other parts educational lessons drawn from numerous micro experiences. Subjects range from indentured labor to expropriation, the influences of Gandhi and Mandela, anti-Semitism in Europe to welfare colonialism in Canada, sectarianism in the Middle East to strategies for combatting bigotry in America. “A tour de force. Moodley’s journey gives readers new hope that educating for political literacy might reduce the insidious web of societal racism.” —Rhona S. Weinstein, University of California, Berkeley “A delicate stitching together of social theory, political commentary, and memory.” —Crain Soudien, CEO, Human Sciences Research Council “Combines an unfailing eye for telling details with an insightful social analysis of race and culture. A remarkable journey through historic junctures on three continents.” —John Willinsky, Stanford University