In times like these where racist and xenophobic discourses hold privileged positions of power, it’s essential to analyze their reach by casting a gaze towards the past, a gaze that allows us to see that such discourses are rooted in historical processes that may seem distant but whose social and cultural productions continue to constitute our present. Hence there is no doubt that reflexive and critical work necessarily must take on the dismantling of the epistemological frameworks of these discourses, since it is from there that xenophobia and racism continue to operate.

In this sense we hold education to be a human right and public good from whence it is possible to imagine a more equitable society. Those who don’t receive education have limited possibilities to exercise their rights and participate as citizens, such that in our current reality, where base conditions are constituted by an unequal distribution of knowledge, it is difficult to conceive of a social integration that recognizes multiple cultural and social. Similarly, we recognize that education has not only been a constitutive pillar but also a constitutive space that maintains hierarchical, unequal relations and privileges and the knowledges and power that these produce. In this context education as an institution and as discursive practice, must be critically rethought.

Thus we posit that if education is to be for all, it’s necessary to question how it has functioned as a reproductive space for dominant epistemologies and how its structures, pedagogical systems, programs, norms, and social relations have left out numerous subaltern groups. This then begs reflection on how to deconstruct education so as to articulate other perspectives that understand on principle that knowledge is constructed and manifested in configurations that are different than those that we’ve been subject to in metropolitan centers. It’s essential for us to decolonize knowledges so as to engage our realities and come up with situated and original explanations, strategies, and possibilities.

It is precisely in opening space in this magazine for Gisela Carlos Fregoso, Bruno Baronnet, and Fortino Domínguez Rueda to head a debate on the triad which gives the name to this issue, “Education, Racism and Interculturality”, that we hope to question an institution which agents and sustains national projects whose intention is to erase ethnic and cultural differences, and which fails to recognize alternative knowledges that go against hegemonic notions of society, relations, and subjects. It is also an institution that has been – or should be – a place to construct liberty and dissent. Diálogos sobre educación. Temas actuales en investigación educativa thanks the coordinators of this edition for having confided in the review as a space that is conducive to pushing an always opportune debate concerning all of that which impacts education but that goes largely unrecognized inasmuch as it is connected to notions such as development and social mobility. Issue #13 of this magazine seeks to reflect on the links and tensions between education, interculturality, and racism in light of situated research that give us access to concrete processes and experiences that provide alternative notions on education.

Author notes