Zeus Leonardo: The critical scholar of race in exile

The following chapter details the contours, major intellectual contributions, and legacies of Zeus Leonardo, an intellectual who is deeply anti-intellectualist, an elite social theorist who is also deeply anti-elitist. Originally trained as a Marxist scholar who was concurrently searching for race, Leonardo has a 20-year plus legacy of critically defining the contours of race, in particular Whiteness. Critically hopeful and also ambivalent in the sense of refusing dogmatism and rigidity, Leonardo's theorizing on race and its many intersections (e.g., raceclass), with a heavy Marxist influence, has been instrumental in demonstrating the embedded, racialized nature of educational environments. His work has been engaged in the disciplines well beyond education with the singular goal of eliminating oppression and humanizing educational space. Leonardo's work, in particular his theorizing regarding post-race, provides a vision forward on this ever-elusive goal, challenging anti-racist educators, philosophers, and activists to move through race in order to end Whiteness and its oppressive hold on educational institutions and society at large.