Imagining a Monocultural Community: Racialization of Cultural Practice in Educational Discourse

In recent times reports into incidents of racist violence in Britain identified a prevailing institutionalized racism and social segregation (Cantle, 2002; MacPherson, 1999). In this article I present an analysis of authoritative educational discourse in the form of school inspection reports, focusing on a single issue: the cultural practice of minority ethnic families visiting their heritage country. Using critical discourse analysis, I suggest that the discourse of the inspection reports racializes the cultural practices of the Asian minority, defining them as the alien and foreign. In this discourse an uncontested, common-sense discourse emerges, which blames minority families for the presupposed harm done to their children's education by visits to the heritage country. I conclude that such cultural practices become an emblem of difference, whereas the dominant ideology in official discourse is one of homogenization. This discourse implies that for minority ethnic families to be part of the imagined community of successful learners in Britain, this cultural practice will have to stop.