We Need to Talk About Racism
There are horrendous atrocities taking place in the world right now. And I am absolutely not talking about Coronavirus. Let’s put that to one side for a moment as there is a far more urgent and long standing issue, which it saddens me deeply to say, is one that will outlive the virus and has also preceded it for centuries. I am talking about systemic racism in the US, the UK and around the globe.
But before we move on from the virus let’s not forget the worst part about it. Whilst you may hear governments and world health officials telling you that no one is safe, using lines such as “Covid 19 doesn’t discriminate”, the irony is, that it does in fact, like so many humans around the world, discriminate. Evidence has shown that black people in the UK are four times more likely to die of Covid 19 than white people and people from Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian and other mixed heritage ethnicities have also been found to have a raised risk of death when compared to white people. And those are statistics from the UK alone.
The devastating story of Belly Mujinga is just one horrific example of that. Belly, a railway ticket office worker in London who died after a laughing commuter, claiming to have coronavirus, spat in the face of her and her unnamed colleague. Days later, Belly fell ill, needing to be hospitalised and after a brief period on a ventilator, tragically passed away. Whilst there isn’t yet factual evidence that this was a racist attack, it’s difficult to see how it wasn’t a hate crime to me. To spit in someone’s face is more than annoyance at being asked for a ticket. And to add further insult to an already hideous injustice, it was announced by the British Transport Police two days ago that no further action will be taken in relation to finding Belly’s murderer. News outlets couldn’t even call Belly by her name and referred to it simply as an “incident”. If the tables were turned and a white woman had died after being spat at by a black man claiming to be infected there are no guesses as to what that would be labelled as in the news.
The protests that have been taking place this weekend in response to the atrocious murder of George Floyd has made me carefully examine my relationship with racism and my role in the classroom as unfortunately the education sector is just another example of where structural racism in this country is rife. If the dismantling of racism is going to have any chance at success, teachers will have a big part to play, and as a caucasion teacher benefiting from white privilege this responsibility needs to be treated seriously. Especially when the disparity between teacher and pupil ethnicity is very visible. In the UK, 85.9% of teachers are white British whereas white British pupils only make up approximately 65% of students, the remainder from BAME backgrounds. In London diversity is higher meaning that put simply, young people from minority ethnic groups will rarely be taught by a teacher who is also from a minority group. This is problematic, especially when white supremacy in the classroom is, unfortunately, rampant in the UK. The problem starts with the overwhelmingly Eurocentric curriculum. Five years ago when I started teaching A Level at my current school, I was excited to see that the new prescribed text list for our exam board included an amazing play, set in Hackney, just a mile from our school, written by a phenomenal writer and spearhead of the arts world in both the UK and the US, Kwame Kwei Armah. This was a play that I had been to see when it had debuted at The National Theatre in 2003 and it had blown me away. It was also one that I felt would resonate with my class and I was keen to study a play written by a black writer as our school is committed to diversifying the curriculum that our students are exposed to. I never expected to find that Kwame was the only black writer in the list of seven playwrights on the A Level syllabus for our exam board and one of just four BAME writers in the whole list of twenty eight potential texts to study. This is just one example but unfortunately it is not an uncommon one.
And worse than this, racism in the classroom, it saddens me to say, is much more prevalent than you might expect. Anyone working in the educational sector will likely be aware of the statistics relating to pupil exclusions and the fact that black children are three and a half times more likely to be excluded than their white peers. But I’m not just talking about these bigger issues. There are also smaller but more insidious problems occurring everyday in classrooms across the country.
Teaching English will generally put you in the face of the history of racism more frequently than other subjects might, at the very least through some of the texts that are studied. Just take two of the most popular GCSE texts from the last decade, Of Mice and Men and To Kill A Mockingbird, both of which explore issues of racism in America in the 1930s, both of which present white characters using the N word frequently. In my classroom we have a rule. We censor potentially offensive language by agreeing on an alternative word together that does not trigger or upset but I have met teachers who do not take this approach, rather choosing to read the text word for word, and to be completely honest I am horrified by this. What is more traumatic for a young teenager, especially a black teenager, than seeing an adult who is supposed to be taking responsibility for their education, using one of the most damaging racial slurs in history for a prolonged period. One of the most heartbreaking anecdotes told to me by a current student is that a previous teacher of theirs had not only read Of Mice and Men without any trigger warning about upsetting language but that they felt as though the teacher had actually seemed to enjoy the excuse to use the N word during reading - not wanting to use it in their own lexicon but enjoying being allowed to say it nonetheless. I hope with every bone in my body that this was not true. But really whether it was or wasn’t true is irrelevant. What is relevant is that this young person felt that, because of an action of his teacher, that is something which should never, ever happen. We have a responsibility as teachers and especially if we are white teachers, to do everything that we can not to perpetuate any racism whether we are dealing with beliefs, attitudes, language or anything else.
Just to be clear, as a white teacher, I am including myself in this interrogation of racism. I am very aware that, like everyone, I often make mistakes. Whilst the thought of accidentally using racially insensitive words, making assumptions, thinking in stereotypes or being racist makes me sick to my core, I know I’ve done it, as we all have. When I think back to my first year in my current school I can remember a lesson that will always stay with me. I was teaching creative writing and needed a model paragraph that utilised descriptive imagery to assist my students with their coursework. I have always been in love with the landscape of many of the Southern African countries that I have visited and so without even thinking I quickly fired off a paragraph to use in my class. It wasn’t until I was in the middle of teaching the lesson that I realised how tone deaf I had been. As one of my students read out the paragraph, it didn’t matter how many impressive metaphors I had used to paint the picture of the scenery, the fact was, I had written a paragraph that was the epitome of a stereotype of Africa, and one which I am ashamed to say, focused on the poverty of a local village.
Someone who I recently met has been working hard to build a new charity that plans to work with educational institutions and teachers in London to dismantle institutionalised prejudice and inequalities that exist within schools, inevitably a large proportion of this work will centre on racism. Upon hearing about these plans, I felt very excited about how powerful a tool like this could be for me and my colleagues across the country, but my enthusiasm was quickly followed by a slight sinking feeling that the introduction of such a valuable service as this, might, frustratingly, put a lot of white teachers backs up, because in my experience, the majority of white people feel deeply uncomfortable when talking about racism. Whether this comes from a worry about saying the wrong thing, from a place of feeling that their opinion is meaningless or not wanting to be challenged, the fact is that none of these are good enough reasons. To quote Angela Davis - “It is not enough to be not racist, we must actively be anti racist.” Forget being neutral. If you are a white person and you think that racism isn’t your problem then unfortunately, you are a significant part of the problem. We need to be accountable and we need to do the work and here are some resources to get you started:
Books
Me and White Supremacy - Layla F Saad
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race - Reni Eddo-Lodge
White Privilege: The Myth of a Post-Racial Society - Kalwant Bhopal
Inglorious Empire by Shashi Tharoor
Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire by Akala
The Good Immigrant - edited by Nikesh Shukla
If you are not in the position to buy books then here are some social media accounts with some incredibly helpful content that you could follow. But please be respectful and don’t send DMs to these accounts for free education. All of the resources are available to us:
@rachel.cargle
@allysarochelle
@laylafsaad
@mona chalabi
@munroebergdorf
@candice braithwaite
@wp4bl
Some other things that you might want to do:
Donate to the George Floyd Memorial Fund - www.gofundme.com/f/georgefloyd
Donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund - https://minnesotafreedomfund.org/donate
Sign this petition - https://www.justiceforbigfloyd.com/
Go to the one or more of the upcoming peaceful protests in London - Wednesday 3rd June at 1pm, Hyde Park, Saturday 6th June at 1pm, Parliament Square, or Sunday 7th June at 2pm, US Embassy
Talk to the people in your life about the existence of systemic and structural racism
Right now so much seems hopeless. But there is some beautiful hope and it comes in the form of the young generation. Although I may be biased towards my amazing students, I genuinely believe that I have worked with some of the best young people in the UK, many of whom are white, who recognise their privilege and who are doing the work. Their presence pushes me to do better every day. We all need to do better and we need to be accountable. It is my belief that everything in life is a journey and if you haven’t started yours yet, rather than feel bad about it just commit to starting now because in the words of Ijeoma Oluo, “The beauty of anti-racism is that you don’t have to pretend to be free of racism to be an anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself. And that’s the only way forward”.
