Australian Association for Research in Education, Sydney 2000

PRESENTER: Jeanette Rhedding-Jones

Faculty of Education

Oslo University College

Oslo, N-0167, NORWAY

email: Jeanette.Rhedding-Jones@lu.hioslo.no

TITLE OF PAPER: Shifting ethnicities: foreign whites and others working on anti-racist pedagogies in early childhood education

(To be presented in the Symposium Negotiating Whiteness and Other Identifications, co-convenors: Julie McLeod and Lyn Yates)

There are no Blacks working as teacher educators on 'my' campus. Nor are there 'Asians', 'Indo-Asians', Indigenous people, people of colour or of other race/body differentiations from the Caucasian European normalization. This is not the case with the students, who include approximately 3% of Pakistani, Iranian, Phillipino and Hong Kong etc background. Embodied histories from Bosnia or Australia are audible not visible, as here in Norway where I now work, Whiteness is usual (Bonnett, 1998), though foreign accents are not.

The above represents a rather rude and certainly modernist catgorization of people, according to how they seem, based on who looks (or sounds) like who. It makes no allowance for where people were born, where they have spent most of their lives, which nation they are citizens of, which language they speak where, who they live with, how often they travel, if they are bi or multi lingual, what their children and their parents speak. Further it divides the raced people into either students or teacher educators. Although pay packets and academic qualifications (and arguably race and ethnicity) determine who is employed as the latter, there are other groups of people around the campus. These are the 'support staff' of administrators, 'leaders', secretaries, technicians, organisors, buildings maintainence and security people, canteen workers, librarians etc (amongst these you occasionally see someone from Sri Lanka or Lebanon); and the lesser paid staff of shift workers cleaning the floors and toilets (these are almost without exception people of colour, Blacks and 'Indo-Asians', speaking with foreign accents).

Having described the campus in this rough way I now describe the 'multicultural' offerings as coursework, in terms of who does what. At third year level about 30 of 300 students choose to study 'multicultural' matters in detail for a few months (Creaser and Dow, 1996; Siraj-Baltchford, 1996; Ungdommens mediesenter, 1998). I have been teaching in this course now for two years. Each year there are about six students who were born in another country, and a few who have lived all their lives in Norway, but who have Black or 'Indo-Asian' ancestry: some of these were adopted by Norwegian families as five month old babies, from Bangladesh for example.Amongst the 'Norwegians' who choose to do this study, some are married to or living with non-Norwegians, Blacks and 'Asians'. Others have lived outside Norway for some time, or have experienced marginalization as the rural (speaking a different dialect) or the deaf (using sign language and coming to class with two interpreters). There are of course other marginalizations that I don't know about. And there are other 'motivations' for doing the 'multicultural'. These may include Christian good-will, trendy curiosity about 'others', and the administative reasons of not getting to study or teach the coursework that was your first choice.

How, I ask myself, could 'Indo-Asians', Blacks and other foreigners get into the field, as the teacher educators, and as a larger percentage of the student numbers? 'They' are already beginning to write books, give talks and seminars for Norwegian Whites, work in the schools and preschools as teachers, carers and bilingual assistants. 'We', on the other hand, have been accepted from higher education's interviewing and selection processes, from the transcripts of our qualifications in a language that Norwegians can read (English), and from the bono fide nature of our prior professional experience (in English-speaking nations). Almost all of the small group of 'foreign Whites' working in the 'multicultural' field in Norway, however, have spent all of their working lives speaking Norwegian, and gained their academic qualifications and professional experience away from Anglo cultures. Raising critical questions (Cannella, 1997; 1999) must therefore take in the effects of the local and the global, the power of the dominant culture and the nature of the periphery, and the possibilities of change.

Shifting ethnicities, related to the above, involves changing who does the teacher educating, not only who does the coursework. Even getting Norwegian-ness to be seen and heard as an ethnicity would be a start. But to do this, a critical consciousness (Gandhi, 1998; Luke and Luke, 1999) would need to be built up: not just a critical consciousness of culture, but the uses of critical theories in the practicalities of academic work. For Norway, with its egalitarian and democratic rhetoric, where it is seen as ideologically sound that all persons are nominally acknowledged, respected and equally positioned, there is a big problem about what actually happens. To see that all is not well in the State of Norway, it may be necessary to step outside of it, at least in terms of what teacher educators read. For a homogenized culture then (Lingard, 2000), critique is difficult. Additionally, the campus where I work is largely (below the Professor level) a women's campus. The women's culture here includes a happy niceness, reflected in policy documents and curriculum statements, much socializing with each other and congratulatory attitude in the workplace. So to try and introduce critical theory, and apply it to the practices of (pre)schooling and higher education would then be seen, I think, as very bad taste. Norway with its four million inhabitants has worked hard for its totally Scandinavian set texts for undergraduate coursework, its community acceptance of 'research', and its media publicity of local places, local events and local achievements. Bringing in foreigners (non-Scandinavians in my definition) with (not without) their ideas and practices (as a resource), is thus not a part of 'multicultural' strategies. From this positionality it is easy to see how children and adults who are ethnically different from the Norwegian norm become either invisible (they/we are not valued as different, but are in rhetoric 'the same') or problematic (they/we require remediation, or in Norwegian rhetoric they/we lack competence).

Further, as changing patriarchy has shown, if minorities (women in a patriarchal workplace) are to be included at more than the lowly levels, then some of those in high places must go. To thus get the Pakistanis currently cleaning the campus toilets to be represented (or actually) working as teacher educators, and not only as a small minority of the students, would be difficult indeed. How are 'they' going to want to get the necessary education? How could 'they' survive the Norwegian workplace, with its emphasis on singularly Norwegian social values and ways of work sharing, let alone the socially constructed language? Even given the first two prerequisites, why stay in such a work force, away from your own kind, and unable to alter what happens, constantly positioned as the other?

To preach transnationalism, postcolonial discourse, glocalization, postmodern shift (Hage, 1998; Nederveen Pierterse and Parekh, 1995; Rhedding-Jones, 2000c; Viruru, 2000) is in this case far from adequate. We have to demonstrate them, live them, show how they work, what their effects are and how the workplace and individuals might thereby benefit. Shifting ethnicity then is not only about number crunching and who works where. It is about who thinks what: because of what is seen, heard and experienced. Beyond this it is about shifting our own ethnicity patterns and assumptions to uncover the discourses (Foucault, 1999) of invisible Whiteness, of prejudices around accents, of unmentioned class differences regarding how educated your parents were and how much money they had because of their race, their nation, their citizenship, language and religion. Shifiting ethnicities into a spotlight position thus illuminates the 'why' of how we became who we currently are, the 'what' of what we have not managed to achieve, of what the children we ourselves are parenting find difficult and easy.

I say 'ethnicities' as one word covering all of the above. Seen otherwise, there is no ethnicity, there is only what we decide to give allegiance to. Acknowledging Aboriginality, being Saami or Gypsy for example may be options, but complex and changing multiplicities of racial and national positionings underpin everything we do. What is an Australian's relationship to South East Asia, for example, because of being an Australian? How is this different from an Australian's experience of living half a lifetime in Europe? What is European when you know what your ancestors and their friends did to Australian Aboriginal people? These questions regard the guilty positioning coming from privilege, the beginning of ethnic awareness, the start perhaps of critical action. In this sense shifting ethnicities moves to shifting ethics, where critical reflection leads to political change, at the individual level and then at the institutional level. In this I am attempting to work against ethnocentrism, which involves 'implicit or explicit privileging of one ethnic region over all others (which are thus places outside the margins)' (Phillips, 2000, p, 76). 'The result of ethnocnetrism', continues Phillips, 'is usually a forgetting of the specific ethnicity of the centralized ethos (western culture).'

For foreign Whites, at least in Norway, our ethnic positioning might appear to be undifferentiated. Not having family histories of Norwegian-ness usually goes unremarked. Further, foreign Whites may not want to identity with foreign Blacks, Middle Easterners and 'Asians'. For example, in the Norwegian language classes offered free of charge by the State (nation of Norway), there are not as many Whites as you would expect taking the classes (as the students. The teachers are without exception White.) This, I discovered, is because White foreigners needing to learn Norwegian usually pay, and get a White class. Similarly, the almost entirely White associations of foreign women in Oslo (called 'International'), operate around perameters of linguistic and employment privileges. (I am currently a member of three of these groups, so that I can hear and speak English, feel 'normal', get support and advice if I need it.) So the category of 'foreign White', although not always a category, functions well for those who use it. For many Indo-Asians, Middle Easterners and Blacks, and for those transnations who are also transracials, it would appear that foreign Whiteness a category marked by privilege, particular forms of power and above all English (exceptions being the Francophone community in Norway, and immigrants from Eastern Europe and the Baltic).

For Whites who are not foreigners in Norway, my naming of myself as a foreigner (innvandrer) is often denied. "Oh no you're not", they say, because being a foreigner is a negative term, and I have a high status job, look like a Norwegian, even live with one. The desire to maintain one's foreign-ness, is not shared by all immigrants, however. For example, Americans and Canadians may keep company only with Norwegians, may speak only Norwegian at 'home', may not travel back very often, and hardly be using the email and the international telephone. Recent immigrants though will have more experience of the everyday postmodern, with fixed national choices not being necessary, with technological costs and ease not being so prohibitive, with more resistance to who/what is dominant, and more agency in decision making. A third positioning is the English-speaking immigrant who learns almost no Norwegian, socializes almost exclusively with non-Norwegians, and cannot get into the Norwegian workforce unless as an Anglophone (for example, a foreign Professor). In practice, what may happen is a mixture of these three positions, depending on the foreign White's level of tolerance, ambition, global contact and independence.

The foreign, though in everyday speech, including the discourse of Teaching English as a Foreign Language, is not so popular with theorists. We are more likely to read and write about the 'other' (after Freud, Lacan, Derrida) or the 'multiple' (the multicultural discourse, for example). I use the term 'foreign' confrontationally (Kristeva, 1991). In pointing out opposites and modernist constructions, what goes against the foreign is the familiar. For ethnicity, the family and the those of similar families comprise the non-foreign, the acceptable, the normativities that decide who gets what employment, whose exam paper passes well, whose views of the world are like yours. Being unfamiliar, with social and textual genres for example, thus undercuts so-called failure (to get the job you want, or the best possible mark.) One of the Black students of the 'Multicultural' coursework, a student who I found highly vocal in class, with relevant ideas and experience, an articulate mother, who wrote fluently, failed. The reason? Her exam paper was 'off the set topic'. She got carried away by her own ideas and life history. Didn't produce the writing within the boundaries of thematic acceptability. I am hoping her supplemantary exam paper shows her to be more what her examiners think she should be. A foreign piece of writing? Yes, it does not pay to be foreign to the rules, to the regulating practices of text production. Here a writer need not necessarily be foreign in the body: the body of the text demonstrates her 'incompetence'. Hence bringing in the wrong words, the wrong examples, the wrong references, the wrong structure, the lack the 'write' forms, constructs the examinor as the one who fails the student, and the system of examination as acting for the normalizations of the institution.

As I have been trying to show, there are degrees of foreignness, years and moments of foreignness, sometimes foreign places, sometimes foreign countries. There is also 'absolute foreignness (alterity, exteriority or, colloquially, the other, the outside)' (Phillips p. 150). Is being a foreign White not quite as bad as being a Norwegian White? Am I excusing my well paid presence (in Norway) by rationalizing away my privilege? As Singh says, White cultural identity is problematic. 'Whites as a racialised group and White racism are very fuzzy topics' (Singh, 2000; 124) 'In the USA Whiteness has now become highly volatile as its meaning has changed, with Whites constructing themsleves as racial victims and inciting efforts to build an exclusionary emotional community.' (p, 125) 'In Australia Whiteness plus nationality are still (mis)taken by some to equal Australianness.' (p. 115) I would say that in Norway Whiteness constructs Norwegianness and people of colour or odd accents as mutually exculsive categories in most people's minds. Here the normative assumption equates Whiteness (and pronouncing Norwegian language according to Norwegian insistence) with being Norwegian. Acknowledging the implications of an Indo-Asian, African and Middle Eastern diasporic presence' (p. 116) will thus come easily. In other words, the crossing of racial and linguistic borders creates problems (Karaman et al, 2000).

Alistair Bonnett (1996) says Whites' privileges are passive observation as research, and altruistic motivation. For the foreign Whites teaching in anti-racist education, as for the Norwegian Whites, this raises questions of who is not doing the teaching, marking the exam papers and designing the coursework. Excusing yourself by being foreign, may thus be yet another effort to avoid admitting the effects of power.

In Norway the dominant metaphor for an immigrant group now getting 'research' attention in teacher education is that of a bridge (Tefre et al, 1997; Karaman et al 2000; Skoug, 1999). The people who are being described as 'bridges' are mainly mature age women, earning quite a low pay, and without higher education in the country to which they have migrated (Norway). They have come from Vietnam, Samalia, Pakistan, Bosnia, Kenya etc, twelve or more years ago. One reason why they are being 'researched' is that Norwegians have research funding to report on 'multicultural' practices, and these women (there are a few men) are able to be interviewed in Norwegian, by Norwegians. The reason for the 'bridge' metaphor is that these women are presumed to be going between the two cultures of Norwegian and non-Norwegian languages, celebrations of annual occasions, unknown practices at home, like cooking and the making of clothes. Their paid employment is that is untrained bilingual assistants in preschooling (kindergartens and day cares). Some of these women I have spoken with (in Norwegian) say that on their first day at this new job they were suprised to not be cleaning the floors. Playing with children seems a strange way to earn an income, they say. What is more, the children have such expensive toys, and such fixed rules about where and when to sleep. It's just too bad that they have to go outside in the snow and ice to play in the winter. What these women know about the acquisition and development of home languages, literacies and cultures I have not dared ask. Nor have any of these paid 'bilingual' (multilingual quite often) assistants initiated talks with me about what they actually assist with, or whether they actually speak, write, read and hear more than one language at work. For the 'Norwegian' Norwegians the 'bridge building' appears to mean representation, as the responsibility of ethnic minorities.

One reason for the 'bridge' idea ( I think) is that Norway's coast-bound history made redundant the boat transport of earlier years, when engineering produced the technology to span the islands, fjords and outlying peninsula. Not that urban Oslo needed the bridges, mark you, these bridges were for the rural minority. When I suggest to 'my' students that perhaps the 'bridge' metaphor is problematic, I am met with blank looks and detailed explanations (in Norwegian) of how a metaphor works. Having had experience with metaphor I suggest a volcano. At this they laugh, and that ends the talk. I am quite serious though. Not only is the bridge of pedagogy's fantasy a one-way street (these women go to the very Norwegian workplace every day and fit in best they can, as do I). This bridge assumes and constantly constructs the island isolation of the cultures Norway has in mind. No-one who has migrated believes the monocultural myth of their own identity. So what is this island culture that is 'ours'? Is it our past, our remembered places and events? Is it what we now do in our (immigrants') homes/houses? What do we do with our religions and spiritual practices or their lack, and our languages which 'Norwegians' are not able to follow (try talking fast Strine here).

From Norway's point of view, having these women being or going over the bridge every day is quite convenient. ("Who goes over my bridge", roars the troll of Norwegian folklore.) Then Norway can continue being its continent self, without the messy inconvenience of the incontinence that transnationalism, hybridity and diaspora might threaten. More than this though, and here the metaphor becomes even more outrageous. The Norwegian language actually constructs these women as bridge builders. So I have misrepresented them as being the bridge or going over it. They must build the bridge. Quite a big task for a small pay and no accredited qualifications. Now no-one seems to think this is at all odd, and 'my' students routinely go out and interview these women for their course-work projects (not designed by me) and then come back and write about the 'bridge-builders'. Critical consciousness? What the bilingual assistants say (in Norwegian) is that they are happy building the bridges, which I take to mean is better than cleaning the toilets. What the (Norwegian educated) teachers and leaders say is that the 'bridge builders' tell them what to celebrate (and when) as alternatives to Christmas. Further, they help with the parents not yet skilled enough in Norwegian (they mean language. Culture usually goes unremarked.)

An alternative to the above, which may be read as nastiness, cynicism and rudeness, might be poststructural theory. If the one and the other (Norwegian and non-Norwegian cultures, religions and languages) are hopefully combining, transforming, in transit and temporary, then at least in theory bridges like boats become redundant. For this though, the volcano of my (phallic?) fantasy pours molten lava over all that was, a much more than deconstruction of practices, ideologies, institutions, regulations and discourses. In place of a volcano, afterwards, we get the fertile land, new growth, a never going back to how things were. I hang onto my fantasy, and continue to read the students' assignments and visit the places where the children are.

From the above it may be guessed that my position regarding antiracism is that not much is happening. This is not the case. (White) Norwegian pedagogical work initiates much positive change regarding attitudes and practices (R-96, 1995). But only some of the teacher students take this up. For those not doing so, antiracism might mean teaching children not to call other children nasty names, and not to be caught out when discriminating in the work place or the housing market. Or it might mean a visit to the 'Anti-Racist Centre' or its website (Senter mot etnisk diskriminering, 2000). Here the strategies involve fighting bias, locating particular cases and going through the legal system. Because race itself rarely appears in non-critical multicultural discourses, then racism is glossed over, rendered outside, seen to be only in other workplaces, other streets and other neighbourhoods. Our White Norwegian man-next-door said when we put the house on the market, "Don't sell it to a Pakistani". I tried, but it was White Norwegians who bought it. The uses of pedagogy? I notice the age difference between the well-meaning children who are the objects of early childhood education's 'multicultural' strategies, and the singularly racist neighbour on whom the government spends nothing for a reconstructed ideology. Blaming this man's childhood hardly helps today's situation and the effects he and his friends have on their grandchildren, despite the bilinguial assistants who may be dutifully building the preschool bridges through play.

A non-critical multiculturalism, with its softness, inclusiveness, naming of respect, desires for substitute Christmasses for Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, benevolent attitudes to garlic and saris, maintains the split between the 'them' and the 'us': a discourse of diversity without change. Anti-racism, by naming the problem, admits to political intent, and challenges the personal and the institutional. If you're not against racism then you must be for it, goes the modernist dichotomy. The problem is that without 'knowing', by the occasional lapse and omission, we're racist without want to be so. Is course work the panacia? Yes, if you believe in the power of reading and writing. Getting people to think otherwise, by textual and technological receptions, expressions, deconstructions and reconstructions are not new strategies for higher education. Nor are they new strategies for people responsible for their own futures, their changes of ideas, developments and metamorphoses. Richard Jenkins (1997) argues and explores ethnicity not as the exoticized 'other' (Rhedding-Jones, 2000b); nor as a 'them' in opposition to an 'us'. For him, ethnic identities involve dialectics of similarlity and difference. If education were here to pick up on Jenkins' theory, it would eliminate the constant notions of ethnic differentiation, and refuse the bridging and technologizing of notions/nations of fixedness.

Since I wrote the abstract for this paper, some of 'my' postgraduate students in Early Childhood Education, have begun to take up the critical in relation to 'the multicultural' (Jacobsen, 2000). By teaching critical theory, and by exemplifying my own current writing for various conferences (Rhedding-Jones, 2000e-i), a greater awareness is perhaps beginning. Critical theory, however, is mostly seen as beginning and ending with the Frankfurt School, and appears to rate no mention at all in current Norwegian texts on early childhood. Introducing the work of early childhood education reconstructionists Radhika Viruru and Gaile Cannella (2000), for example, is likely to meet not only resistance to its English but not to be recognized as critical. Further, what 'my' postgraduate students risk, if they present a dissertation based on theoretical work unknown in Norway, is not getting a 'good mark'.

Yet 'Critical Theory', says John Phillips (2000; 176), 'aims for an untiring vigilance against the sedimentation of thought'. Here a critical investigating the notion of the 'foreign' is intended to stir up the multicultural in relation to who is not of the family of the dominant culture, and what a modernist dichotomized thinking produces as practice. 'Much Critical Theory involves breaking down deeply held assumptions associated with an uncritical humanism' (Philip's italics) (p, 7). The humanism which lies at the heart of the dominant (Norwegian) discourse of multiculturalism has its parallels in the prevailing feminism, which results in affluent White women researching their own culture, with little regard for social class, privilege and power (Rhedding-Jones 2000d). Introducing critical theory, which 'puts all grounds of knowledge into crisis.' (Phillips 2000; 12) thus not only questions whose research gets published and praised, but whose work gets into the reference list.

Inserting critique into multiculturalism (May, 1999) directly develops anti-racisism, in theories and in practices. This multiculturalism requests new professionalisms for anti-racist and critical multicultural practices (May, 1999), rather than allowing the glibness of 'multiculturalism' to discursively produce yet another normalisation (R-96, 1995). Following this, ethnic minorities are not the objects of Norway's new multicultural policies for early childhood education. Instead they become the subjects of new discourses of positive action. Being critical and taking a global perspective in fact results in a reversal of the notion of 'minority'. Viewed as (the world's) majority children, rather than as (the local) minorities within a dominant White society, critical multiculturalism sets about educating Whites for the new glocalization (Robertson, 1995; Rhedding-Jones, 2000)

Hence instead of objectifying the bilingual assistant of preschooling, the uses of multiculturalism are contested. For local/global restructuring this is appropriate for a changing education. As I read Singh (2000), the various past and present uses of multiculturalism must give way to new practices and theories. The following is a shortened version of Singh's descriptions of different approaches to multiculturalism based on the 'differing political and ethical commitments of their adherents (p. 117, based on Kinlochoe & Steinberg 1997, p. 9-44) As he says, these approaches are not mutually exclusive.' 'My' students find these namings useful in deciding what is critical, what is not, and what might be. My added comments come from the location of Norway.

1. Conservatives use multiculturalism to depict the world from a White patriarchal perspective, as a weapon to keep non-Whites out. In Norway a cultural hegemony excludes, marginalizes and makes powerless Asians and Africans (and sometimes South Americans, Eastern and Southern Europeans). 'Conservatives [says Singh] oppose any use of multiculturalism to enable [racial minorities] to speak out against exclusion, marginalisation and powerlessness.' (p. 118)

2. 'Liberals use multiculturalism to render racial, class and gender differences invisible by emphasising the commonalities of all humanity. The liberal concern with sameness leads them to embrace colour blindness.' (Singh, p. 118) This is thus a denial of difference and domination. Liberals are 'reluctant to address racism or to engage in a critical analysis of power asymmetries' (Kinlochoe and Steinberg, 1997, p 12; Singh p. 118) In Norway this translates as the lack of critical analysis in research and in pedagogical documentation. This is easier than facing up to the power imbalances.

3. Pluralists use multiculturalism 'to celebrate the intrinsic value of cultural diversity' (Singh, p. 118) In Norway difference becomes exoticized and fetishized, a form of cultural tourism which waters down the harsh realities of race, class and gender dominations. This is confused with the Christian and 'psychological affirmation with political empowerment' (Kinlochoe and Steinberg, p. 15). As a result, such pluralists fail to problematize Whiteness and the Eurocentric norm, and fail to disrupt the dominant [Northern] narrative (Singh, p. 118).

4. Essentialists use multiculturalism to fix identities and practices round race and nation, assuming that ethnic groupings have 'unchanging, static, authentic properties around which identities and politics are formed' (Singh, p. 118) In Norway, essentialism denies changes over time and place, denies competing discourses, the complications of multilanguage use and positionalities regarding religions and sexuality. Essentialism fails to acknowledge hybridities and diasporas.

5. 'Social critics use multiculturalism to enable [African Norwegians, Pakistani Norwegians and Vietnamese Norwegians etc] to see themselves in relation to the world, naming the injustices of [excluding employment practices and pedagogies] and envisioning alternative futures.' (Singh, p. 119) 'Socially critical multiculturalism ... calls for appreciation and learning from [African Norwegians, Pakistani Norwegians and Vietnamese Norwegians etc and] engages in dialogue ... between wealthy northern cultures and impoverished southern cultures'. This treats as a resource the 'continuous emigration flows, subaltern and transient cultures' (Mclaren, 1997, p. 210) For Norway to act as if difference means informed and active citizenship rather than 'cultural authenticity' (Singh p, 119) would be a very big step. This would request socially critical forms of research and teaching to connect the local and the global, rather than only the national context as usual. This would raise the matters of 'the end of the nation-building state' (Singh, p.121) and the quality of 'democracy for many Indigenous and ethnic minority groups' (Singh, p. 122). Further it would end 'ethnic groups denied their language' (p, 122) and the relatedness of 'socially marginised groups' (p. 122)

Defined by what surrounds it as context (Rhedding-Jones, 2000e) the ethnic always shifts. A shifting ethnicity, in postmodernity (Dahlberg et al, 1999), includes the modernist fixing of identity, as related to race, religion, country of residence and citizenship. Added to this is the unpredictability of who is around us, and whether at one particular moment in one particular place what counts more than ethnicity is gender, class, able-bodiedness or age. Defined then as a discourse that constructs how we will act, what we will think and who we decide to identify with and against, ethnicity in relation to other discourses enables the taking up of sets of ideas, ideologies and practices. It also enables the rejection of these, as agencies establish themselves, and rationalisations and intuitions let logic and feelings make our decisions. In professional practices, these decisions and non-decisions resulat in the work that we do and how we do it. Hence differences in professional identities are caused, constructed and re-written according to which particular discourses of ethnicity, amongst others, are temporarily espoused. Hence dominant whites act as if dominance is normal; ethnic white minorites act to resist being located with other minorities; and ethnic groups more oppressed by race than by ethnicity or gender focus on this.

Following Spivak though, shifting ethnicities are not quite this. 'To assign a static ethnicity to the Other', says Spivak (1999; 110) is to foreclose. This foreclosure operates to preclude, to prevent, to take away the power. So allocating ethnic minority individuals and groups a fixed positioning regarding religions, languages, values about child-rearing etc is not only to do them/us a disservice. Such categorisation resists the qualities and the quantities of today's cultural shifts. Embracing diversities rather than looking for differences is thus a more radical and a more appropriate strategy for pedagogy, as for any discipline relating itself to practice. Tracking foreclosures, as Spivak does with her deconstructions of historical positionings, literary connotations and philosophical normalisations, is thus a useful research. By deconstructing, Spivak shows a recoding of the colonial subject: as the taking up of the position of the 'native informant' (1999; ix). Although Spivak develops the relocation of the indigenous in theory, she applies this to plural indigeneities and Aboriginalities. In postmodern worlds such nativities themselves shift geographically, so that origins and homes are plural.

Viruru, R. (2000, in press) Decolonializing Early Childhood Education, Thousand

Oaks, London & New Delhi: Sage.