A Violent Production: Racial Fantasies, No Child Left Behind, and Anti-Blackness

• In Event: Deconstructing Race, Racism, and Antiracism

Abstract

During a period in which institutions have refashioned to meet the demands of a complex social and political economy, No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has helped to alter the public educational system. As scholars and researchers examine the material effects of NCLB, efforts to improve the educational system and its effects must also explore the relationship between policy and racial ideologies (Leonardo, 2005) including discursive fantasies. Employing Lacanian psychoanalysis (Lacan, 1967; Lacan 1977) and race theory (Gladson-Billings, 1995; Fanon, 1967; Leonardo, 2007; Marriott, 2007) to examine the relationship between NCLB and racial fantasies of Black and Latino youth as problematic others helps education reform scholarship and advocacy to challenge the multiple levels of violence confronting today’s students.

Author

• Connie Wun, University of California - Berkeley