This event is part of the School of Education's Bristol Conversations in Education research seminar series. These seminars are free and open to the public.

Co-hosted by the Race, Empire and Education Collective and Centre for Comparative and International Research in Education (CIRE)

Speaker: Professor Paul Warmington

Moderator: Professor Arathi Sriprakash

For most of its forty-year history, Critical Race Theory’s home was in academia, as an analytical framework for understanding the ways in which racism remains embedded in our major social institutions. In recent years, however, discussion of CRT has moved well beyond the universities. Since the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, CRT has become a folk demon, a catch-all to signal conservative antipathy to ‘wokeness’. But what exactly is CRT and why has it affronted conservatives and liberals alike? This session explores CRT’s theoretical framework: its focus on ‘racial realism’ and ‘the permanence of racism’.

Paul Warmington was one of the first UK academics to explore Critical Race Theory, combining it with wider traditions in Black Atlantic thought. His writing on Black British intellectual and educational movements has been internationally influential. He has also written and researched on shifts in the coverage of race equality in UK education policy; Black/ white attainment gaps; tensions in understandings of race and class in social research. His most recent publications include the co-edited four-volume series, Critical Race Theory in Education: Major Themes (Routledge, 2018). His work has been covered in The Guardian, Times Education Supplement and The Voice. He recently contributed to BBC1’s landmark documentary Subnormal, on the historical scandal of the placing of Black children in ESN schools during the 1960s and 70s.

Each talk in this series will reflect on the following:

What is ‘unprecedented’ about this current moment in which there has been an outpouring of support in response to Black Lives Matter?

Are we failing to engage with a long history of critical thinking on race and racism, adopting a type of presentism in our responses to the current moment?

If you are interested in more work and events like this please look at the Race, Empire and Education Collective website and have a look at other upcoming REE events

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Professor Paul Warmington