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Critical Race Theory with David Gillborn - Talking Race Podcast

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Critical Race Theory with David Gillborn - Talking Race Podcast

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...Opening Spotify...

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Critical Race Theory with David Gillborn

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Listen to this episode from Talking Race on Spotify. In this episode of Talking Race, hosts Professor Vini Lander and Dr Daniel Kilvington speak with Professor Dave Gillborn about Critical Race Theory (CRT). He was one of the first people to use CRT in Britain.

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Critical Race Theory (CRT) - Nicola Rollock and David Gillborn

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Critical Race Theory (CRT) - Nicola Rollock and David Gillborn

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Equity in Education: What's CRT Got to Do with It?

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Equity in Education: What's CRT Got to Do with It?

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Equity in Education: What's CRT Got to Do with It?

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What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition - Emma Dabiri

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What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition - Emma Dabiri

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The Non-Performativity of Anti-Racism - Sara Ahmed

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The Non-Performativity of Anti-Racism - Sara Ahmed

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Non-performativity in anti-racism - Ahmed (2004)

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The white ally and the fight for racial justice - Penny Rabiger

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The white ally and the fight for racial justice - Penny Rabiger

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Navigating The ‘Decolonising’ Process: Avoiding Pitfalls and Some Do’s and Don’t’s – Harshad Keval

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Navigating The ‘Decolonising’ Process: Avoiding Pitfalls and Some Do’s and Don’t’s – Harshad Keval

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Harshad Keval
Decolonising the University and / or decolonising the curriculum (DTU/C) has come to occupy a contested space in recent debates. The need to change not only curricula but the University system is borne of a long standing problem of institutional discrimination. There is no shortage of of racial and ethnic inequality within higher education. As a number of student led movements around the globe have actively sought acknowledgement of the West's collusion in the colonial power relations that then shape education (e.g. Rhodes Must Fall Oxford and South Africa, "Why is my curriculum White" at UCL and , there can often be confusion about what decolonizing might mean. Meera Sabaratnam (2017) sums up some possible interpretations of what decolonizing curricula might mean for the uninitiated: Exploring shared assumptions about how the world "is" (in relation to a global colonial history), and how and why it came to be this way; the "relationship between the identity of the writer, what they write and how they write about it" and what a more diverse student and staff body might mean, as institutions reflect wider societies they are located and embedded within.

Rather than rule out knowledge that has developed in Western Europe and North America, it seeks to situate it as produced in relation to the range of knowledges outside of European thinkers, and as a result of colonial and imperial and power (Bhambra ; Grosfuogel ). The point of DTU/C is to co-produce an intellectual and academic endeavour that embodies inclusivity and re-positions who and what gets to occupy the centre and the margins of ideas and society, and re-balance power. There have been backlashes to the DTU/C momentum, with . Suffice to say what is at stake here is the position of knowledge itself - who and what gets marked out as 'identity' politics, and who and what simply recedes into the background of normalised systems of whiteness and mainstream knowledge.

This piece is partly a lighter hearted look at this important discussion, but with a serious intention: to explore the structural and systemic logics that create and maintain these positions in the first place, which are then consciously or unintentionally used. Rather than reflecting individuals or individual statements, the steps below reflect how ways of thinking and responding can become embedded and normalised into positions we might at some point in institutional life find ourselves taking, often without realising the implications.

Step 1: Don't use the terms 'diversity', 'inclusivity' and 'attainment' instead of talking about structural racism, neo-colonial narratives, and institutionally embedded bias.
These terms and initiatives have a place in wider, institutional frameworks but when used as substitutes for structural racism and gender discrimination, they remain impotent, relegated to outer reaches of higher education business. The inequalities has been in for some time now, and the racial barriers to staff and students are established, but the consistent manoeuvre around racism reflects of the concept and practice. The diversity agenda and the way in which institutional processes gloss over, ignore, and simplify important intersectional inequalities has been written about elsewhere. So there is a need to name what needs to be done, which requires a willingness to accept one's complicity in what has been going on. As Probyn-Ramsey quotes: "if we start with complicity, we recognize our ''proximity to the problems we are addressing'' (quoted in Ahmed 2012: 6).
Do ask: What power structures that I am involved in, more often than not roped into, where decolonising is actively ignored, can I help to dismantle? By not talking about racism, who is left out and what becomes normalised?

Step 2: Don't say: "It's really not my area...I don't know anything about this..."
Perhaps. But this is about more than something being outside of one's knowledge boundaries. It is about the nature of knowledge itself, and what we, as academics come to accept as normalised, central, mainstream, and therefore ' worth knowing'. For example, every social science academic position requires a high level of knowledge at broad and deep levels, spanning not only their own specific expertise but also in other related fields and disciplines (these are essential criteria for most academic positions). Why then is the vast range of social science, research, philosophy and theory that currently exist outside of these criteria not part of what a social scientist should know or be interested in? Social science training, learning and teaching all treat postcolonial and decolonial knowledge as 'other'. To adopt a position of not-knowing, necessarily requires an unspoken, sub/unconscious adoption of knowing something, and placing that knowledge as foremost in a hierarchy of knowledges.
Do ask: What have I assumed about what is worth knowing?

Step 3: Don't ask: "Can't the person of colour / specific gender do it? I haven't got time."
If it takes prolonged periods of intellectual and embodied labour for any in-depth knowledge, why assume that the DTU/C project should fall on the shoulders of people who will be double-burdened with the task of knowing 'mainstream' knowledge and what is required for DTU/C? The question above now looks like: "It will only take a few minutes of my time to know a substantial amount of the knowledge base outside of what is 'proper and real' University knowledge. Please provide me with a readily digestible summary." The comparison is worth thinking about and reflecting on for both speakers and hearers of this question. This has labour implications for institutions and staff. To assume that the vast and diverse range of thought, writing and activism of decoloniality can and should be summarised into easily digestible and therefore less important tasks is reflective of a wider logic of colonial thinking and knowledge.
Do say: "I will go and do some reading and thinking - can I talk with you and colleagues more about this?

Step 4: Don't ask the question: "but I haven't colonized anything...why do I need to do this?"Contrasting decolonising against 'business as normal' operations presents decolonizing as a process at the margins of society and social scientific enquiry; as something that comes from the outside, and that can and should affect only some subject positions; occupying a remedial, corrective role. Most of us accept that our lives are constituted by networks of interdependent social and cultural fabric, with individual and collective actions creating and sustaining our lives. But when it comes to DTU/C, this thinking falls by the wayside. Why? Because this position reinforces a separation in thinking, rather than through connected thinking. We all have a responsibility as members of connected historical groups, to think about who we are, how we have come to be, and how these positions operate through networks of historical and contemporary power relations. In a word, transcend 'methodological whiteness'.
Do ask: When I look around me, where do networks of power coalesce and what role does colour, race, language, gender, class, disability, etc. play in this?

Step 5: Don't ask: "If decolonizing involves bringing in all these 'other' ideas and writers, what about all the 'classics'?"
There is a plethora of work (see https://globalsocialtheory.org) that dismantles the misconception that White western 'canons' of theory are civilizational products of cultural and intellectual superiority. The 'classics' hold this position for a specific reason. A canonical text cannot be thus without its connection to the imperial and colonial economic enterprise on which it was based. To believe that knowledge production in the West happens in an epistemological vacuum outside of the West's collusion with racial, gendered and economic genocide since the 16th century is a dangerous fiction to retain. Sociology as a discipline, for example, was birthed through its comparison with anthropology, which explicitly dealt with the practices of the (colonial) 'other', hence its focus on 'modern' societies (Bhambra, ; ). 'Modernity' as the discipline's core focus is regarded as a thing in itself - unique and untangled, problematically seen without connection to its own complicity in racialized, gendered inequality and brutality.
Do ask: What do I understand to be a 'classic', or a 'canon' and why?

Step 6: Don't make the statement: "There are bigger problems in the University system to deal with..."
Indeed there may well be, but again what is being said here is not as important as what is being done, and what is being ignored. Research indicates that even with institutional and national policy frameworks, staff and students alike are still experiencing huge barriers, obstacles and discrimination. As Universities sign up to the recent Advance HE Charter mark, the obvious step-in-the-right-direction signals notwithstanding, neo-liberal, corporate and bureaucratic machineries (Holmwood and Bhambra, 2012) assimilate this into their modus operandi. DTU/C is not a single project of liberation for a minority group. As a varied, multi-disciplinary, and social justice based campaign, it seeks to enhance and sustain the intellectual, practical academic rigour that education systems purportedly perform today. Many of these battles take place in the increasingly precarious University as sites of social and community action. There may well be bigger problems within the University system, but only if we think of these problems are disconnected and separate from the neo-liberalisation of society itself.
Do think about: What conditions have brought about my framing of these problems as separate? In what ways does this connect to the other problems in the institution?
is a senior Lecturer in Sociology at Canterbury Christ Church University and teaches and writes on Race, Postcolonial and Decolonial Theory and Practice.
IMAGE CREDIT: Drawing from an 1879 edition of L'Astronomie, depicting Christopher Columbus predicting the lunar eclipse to the native Jamaicans.

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Navigating the 'Decolonising' process: Avoiding pitfalls and some Do's and Don't's

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Harshad Keval Decolonising the University and / or decolonising the curriculum (DTU/C) has come to occupy a contested space in recent debates. The need to change not only curricula but the Universi...

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Anti-racism work- Moving past the silence - Muna Abdi

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Anti-racism work- Moving past the silence - Muna Abdi

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A recognition of racism; both its intent and impact is essential for developing anti- racist spaces. The biggest obstacles we often face in doing this work is encountering a culture of silence and/or denial.

Silence and denial from those that enact and those that experience racism, allows racism in all forms to be sustained in a space. When racist behaviours, structures and systems go unchallenged for so long that they become pervasive and normalised, it becomes our responsibility as anti-racist educators, to first and foremost, name it. Not just the ideological structures that underpin it, but the everyday, seemingly mundane enactments of racism that are ever present in our educational spaces.

Breaking the cycle of silence is the first step to making change.

But where do these conversations need to start and how can they meaningfully translate into action?

In my work supporting organizations, I find it helpful to start with developing a shared language and basic racial literacy. It is important to meet people where they are, and some are more racially literate than others. You cannot name something you do not have the language for and so it is important that the concepts of racism and Whiteness are understood before any action- focused conversations can begin.

It is easier to advocate for change with evidence, rather than concepts that can seem abstract (particularly to those who are already resistant), and so alongside developing a language around racism, we need to start with naming concrete effects of racism and then work our way back to understanding the root causes. The impact, before the intent.

It is important to break the silence and challenge the denial of the damaging effects of racism on individuals, families, and communities as well as the impact on the learning and working environment. Racism impacts visibly and measurably on outcomes, on relationships, and on learning and teaching. Once some racial literacy has been established, you then have a lens by which an organization can start to look at its data and culture more critically.

I honestly believe equity work is always contextual and no two organizations are the same. It is important to empower leaders to have the courage to look inwardly with a critical eye, so that they can identify and name the damaging effects of racism as it appears specifically in their organization. For some, the indicators of racism may be as explicit as racist graffiti, hostility between groups, racist language etc. But for many, the indicators of racism that require a level of racial literacy to name and understand are often discriminatory practices that may include low expectations for some groups, disproportionate sanctions for some groups, and non- inclusive curricula that deny certain groups access to knowledges that reflect their lived experiences, to name a few. It is particularly difficult to identify and name these seemingly hidden, systemic effects of racism in majority White spaces that have very few people of colour. Developing an understanding of Whiteness and White supremacy is an essential part of the racial literacy work that needs to happen.

Although meaningful change requires courageous and committed leadership, every member of the organization's community needs to develop racial literacy in order to be able to recognize it, 'name it' and challenge it. Organizations may differ in how they choose to engage their communities in these discussions, but it is important that these discussions take place. Consulting with community members (particularly people of colour) can lead to increased engagement and investment in anti-racist process. Having a shared language and developing a common purpose and drive, fosters a stronger community within and outside the organization, ensuring change is sustainable and meaningful.

The silence and denial of racism permeates at all levels within and outside of the organization and so our work must be to name it, to understand it, and to challenge it. These conversations need be driven by leadership but need to happen across the organization's community.
So some questions for us to reflect on:

1. What are the silences and denials within our organizations?

2. How do we develop racial literacy for all, but specifically amongst leaders that are for most of our organizations racialized as White?

3. How can we develop holistic and sustainable approaches to racial equity work?

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Anti-racism work- Moving past the silence - MA Consultancy

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By Dr Muna Abdi A recognition of racism; both its intent and impact is essential for developing anti- racist spaces. The biggest obstacles we often face in doing this work is encountering a culture of silence and/or denial. Silence and denial from those that enact and those that experience rac

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Non-Western Philosophies of Childhood - Kay Sidebottom

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Non-Western Philosophies of Childhood - Kay Sidebottom

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Language is important: Why we are moving away from the terms ‘allyship’ and ‘privilege’ in our work - Muna Abdi

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Language is important: Why we are moving away from the terms ‘allyship’ and ‘privilege’ in our work - Muna Abdi

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Language is important: Why we are moving away from the terms ‘allyship’ and ‘privilege’ in our work — MA Consultancy

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By Dr Muna Abdi The impact of systemic oppression is that it is all around us. It is part of our social world and we are all affected by it. The casual, insidious attitudes and behaviours that we often do not notice, play a pivotal role in upholding these systems. Even in our attempts to disman

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Decolonising the UK Curriculum – Terra Glowach

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Decolonising the UK Curriculum – Terra Glowach

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Theory as liberatory practice - bell hooks

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Theory as liberatory practice - bell hooks

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Accomplices in the Academy in the Age of Black Lives Matter - Jessica Powell and Amber Kelly

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Accomplices in the Academy in the Age of Black Lives Matter - Jessica Powell and Amber Kelly

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Whose ideas count? Participatory Methodologies and the Professionalisation of Development Knowledge - Lata Narayanaswamy

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Whose ideas count? Participatory Methodologies and the Professionalisation of Development Knowledge - Lata Narayanaswamy

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Whose ideas count? Participatory Methodologies and the Professionalisation of Development Knowledge – Convivial Thinking

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A booklet I've created to signpost resources that might support racial literacy development

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There is no ‘safe space’ – a critical insight to frame conversations around social justice education – Riadh Ghemmour

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There is no ‘safe space’ – a critical insight to frame conversations around social justice education – Riadh Ghemmour

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Counternarrative as strategy: embedding critical race theory to develop an antiracist school identity - Benjamin Blaisdell

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Counternarrative as strategy: embedding critical race theory to develop an antiracist school identity - Benjamin Blaisdell

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a short history of 'race' in British schools: a 75-year timeline - on_education

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a short history of ‘race’ in British schools: a 75-year timeline - Heidi Safia Mirza

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a short history of ‘race’ in British schools: a 75-year timeline - Heidi Safia Mirza

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., leader of the Civil Rights Movement once said, "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice" (King, 1968). His words of hope reassure us that even though racial justice may seem slow in coming, one day it will surely come. For Dr. King and the African American women that led the drive for literacy and voter registration in the USA, education was a key site of struggle in the battle for Black Civil Rights. However, for social and racial justice to prevail in our schools, educational professionals working on the coal face of the classroom need clarity and an informed understanding of what they are fighting for and why it is important to do so (Mirza & Meetoo, 2012). Thus, the aim of this short history of Race in British schools is to present an overview of the shifting State responses to its Black and Brown children, illuminating the trajectory of the arc of social and racial justice as it appears and disappears in the educational narrative of 21 st Century multicultural Britain.

1950-1960: Migration

The presence of Black and Brown children in schools was a new and strange sight in post-war Britain. For 500 years Imperial Britain had ruled 'her subjects' over there in faraway colonies, but after the devastation of 2 nd World War post-colonial New Commonwealth Citizens were needed over here to rebuild the 'Motherland'. The unfolding history of people from the West Indies (Caribbean), India, Africa, Pakistan, and Bangladesh tell a tale of racism, resistance, and an uneasy overcoming (Mirza, 2006).

1960-1970: Assimilation

The first wave of Black and Indo-Caribbean Windrush migrants met overt hostile racism with signs to "go home" and political prophecies of the Conservative Enoch Powell who warned of "rivers of blood flowing in the streets" (Tomlinson, 2019, p. 67). The educational response to the 'dark stranger' was to assimilate Black and Brown children into British culture by 'flattening' out their difference. They were bussed out of areas to cool out and placate White fears. However, the colonial legacy of White superiority and the idea of inferior Races meant that Black and Brown children were seen as having lower IQs and many were contained in Educationally Subnormal Schools (SEN) or 'Sin Bins'- a pattern still in play today with high rates of school exclusions, regulatory regimes in Academies and PRU's (Pupil Referral Units).

1970-1980: Multiculturalism

Labour's Roy Jenkins famously advocated multicultural integration through "equal opportunity and cultural diversity in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance" (Tomlinson, 2019, p. 74). Now Black and Brown communities were able to openly express their difference by wearing a turban or saying their prayers. Schools responded in superficial but well-meaning ways with 'happy clappy' celebrations of 'saris, somas and steelpans.' However, Black and Asian parents set up Supplementary and faith-based schools outside the State system which was excluding and failing their children.

1980-1990: Underachievement

In the Thatcher years, underachievement which was rife among racialised ethnic groups was explained through problematic theories of cultural deficit, negative self-esteem, and the self-fulling prophecy of low teacher expectations. In the aftermath of the Brixton Riots, the Swann Report identified racial discrimination as the cause of 'underachievement'. Antiracism was mooted as the solution by small pockets of White, Black, and Asian teacher activists such as the ILEA (Inner London Education Authority), who campaigned for Black Studies and positive images in textbooks, expressing an early incarnation of the current call for 'Decolonisation'.

1990-2000: Diversity and Difference

The euphoric New Labour years celebrated difference and embraced 'can do' attitudes where all can rise to the top regardless of Race, gender, and class origins. While many ethnic groups identified with the ideal of meritocracy and benefited from policies of 'Raising Standards for all', it also cemented existing inequalities though 'markets and choice' as more privileged middle classes were able to access better schools in an increasingly fragmented and privatized educational system. Diversity policies made little impact, becoming entangled in institutional bureaucracy with 'tick-box' antiracist proclamations and window-dressing rather than action.

2000-2005: Institutional Racism

The racist murder of Black teenager Stephen Lawrence and the Met Police coverup heralded a new era of antiracist rigour with the McPherson Report introducing the concept of institutional racism in public (not private) organisations. The focus was now on structural racism and exposing its everyday reproduction through learnt behaviour or unwitting racism, now reframed as unconscious bias. Legal remedies included Positive Duties to promote good Race-relations through ethnic monitoring and reporting of racist incidents. However, we have witnessed little meaningful institutional cultural change as mechanisms hinged on 'individual redress' and personal complaint rather than diverse leadership, accountability and scrutiny.

2005-2010: Community Cohesion

In the wake of the 9/11 and British 7/7 terrorist attacks Islamophobia became widespread, and politicians pronounced multiculturalism as 'dead'. Community Cohesion evolved in response to faith-based concerns with Muslim communities living "parallel lives" in poverty, in religiously segregated Northern towns. Securitization and safeguarding through controversial policies such as PREVENT shone a spotlight on Muslim communities, and schools were tasked with reporting pupils in danger of radicalisation and delivering British Values.

2010-2015: Post-Race

The election of Obama in USA and rising educational achievement of 2 nd and 3 rd generation British Black, Asian and Chinese young people signaled the 'colourblind' post-Race era. As the Sewell Report exemplifies, the belief is that Race is no longer a barrier to success and social mobility lies in individual endeavour and talent (Bourne, 2021). The 2010 Equalities Act reflected this move away from Race and towards intersectional, inclusive EDI (Education Diversity and Inclusion) with its emphasis on 9 Protected Characteristics including LGBTQI+ and gender equality. However, the shadow of Race and racism still haunts the educational landscape as the ethnic inequalities exposed during the Covid19 Pandemic so vividly showed.

2015-2020: Decolonisation

The 2015 and 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) uprisings revisited the 1950s postcolonial call for a global 'thought revolution'. Spearheaded by students, this movement seeks to challenge the whitewashing of colonial history and scientific thought in the Eurocentric curriculum, economy, and architecture. However, the promise of this potentially world changing project has been side-lined by online 'culture wars' with all parties polarised and confused about 'woke' words, dismantling statues, and White allies. Schools and universities are left to find resources to meet new curricula demands while coping with the daily consequences of poverty, exclusion, safeguarding and mental health that the wider impact of racism, sexism, and discrimination still brings to their door.

2020-present: Post-Covid Inequalities

The double whammy of the Covid19 Pandemic coupled with the upheaval of Brexit sent shockwaves through British society. Like health, education has become the touchstone for measuring the uneven consequences of the unaddressed legacy of British racial inequality and social class divisions. The Government's 'levelling up' agenda acknowledges the long-standing regional economic disparities in the neglected inner cities, abandoned rural areas, and the de-industrialised North. However, generations of 'left behind' Black, Asian and White working-class children locked into the geography of poverty and economic decline already carry deep scars on their learning identities and mental wellbeing (Alexander et al., 2015). This 21 st century story of unequal access to good schools, teaching and resources is yet to unfold in the context of European and global unrest, mass migration and climate change, but the power of new technology and online learning may hold the key to racial justice and class mobility... but only if all can equally open that door.

References

Alexander, C., Weekes-Bernard, D., & Arday, J. (Eds.). (2015). The Runnymede school report: Race, education and inequality in contemporary Britain. Runnymede Trust.
https://www.runnymedetrust.org/publications/the-school-report

Bhavnani, R., Mirza, H. S. & Meetoo, V. (2005). Tackling the roots of racism: Lessons for success. Policy Press.

Bourne, J. (2021, April 20). Sewell: A report for neoliberal times. Institute of Race Relations.
https://irr.org.uk/article/sewell-a-report-for-neoliberal-times/

Martin Luther King Jr., "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution." Speech given at the National Cathedral, March 31, 1968.
https://www.si.edu/spotlight/mlk?page=4&iframe=true

Mirza, H. S. (2006). 'Race', gender and educational desire. Race Ethnicity and Education, 9(2), 137-158.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13613320600696623

Mirza, H. S., & Meetoo, V. (2012). Respecting difference: Race, faith and culture for teacher educators. IOE Press.

Tomlinson, S. (2019). Education and race from empire to Brexit. Policy Press.
Recommended Citation
Mirza, H. S. (2022). A short history of 'Race' in British schools: A 75-year timeline. On Education. Journal for Research and Debate, 5(13).
https://doi.org/10.17899/on_ed.2022.13.9

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Heidi Safia Mirza

Heidi Safia Mirza is Emeritus Professor of Equalities Studies in Education, UCL Institute of Education, University of London.

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a short history of 'race' in British schools: a 75-year timeline - on_education

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This graphic timeline reveals the story of Race in British schools as it unfolds from the 1950 post war period of post-colonial migration and settlement to the present-day aftermath of the 2020s Post-Covid Pandemic.

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Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race - Reni Eddo-Lodge

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Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race - Reni Eddo-Lodge

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Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race

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The long read: For years, racism has been defined by the violence of far-right extremists, but a more insidious kind of prejudice can be found where many least expect it – at the heart of respectable society

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Anti-Racism Education | Training for Schools

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Anti-Racism Education | Training for Schools

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Whiteness is at the heart of racism in Britain - so why is it portrayed as a Black problem?

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Whiteness is at the heart of racism in Britain – so why is it portrayed as a Black problem? - Meghan Tinsley

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Whiteness is at the heart of racism in Britain – so why is it portrayed as a Black problem? - Meghan Tinsley

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In 2020, two police officers in Hackney strip-searched a 15-year-old Black girl at her school. Police conducted the search of this child, known as Child Q, without the consent of her parents, without an appropriate adult present (despite this being required by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984), and with the knowledge that she was menstruating.

The subsequent safeguarding review, held in March 2022, concluded that "racism (whether deliberate or not) was likely to have been an influencing factor in the decision to undertake a strip search."

The fallout from the case of Child Q has followed a script that is all too familiar. Anti-racist campaigners have pointed to the incident as further evidence that racism remains a problem in contemporary Britain. Teachers at the school in question have expressed shock, reportedly claiming not to have known about the search. The Metropolitan Police has put the two officers directly involved on desk duty.

Each narrative, and each response, focuses squarely on Child Q and on the violence she suffered. There is a reason why this all seems so predictable. Discussions of racism in Britain centre around the experiences and traumas of Black people, but rarely on the perpetrators.

How we talk about racism

When we talk about incidents of racism, the focus - from both individuals and institutions - is often placed on the victim's behaviour or background.

British police have routinely justified using stop and search more often against ethnic minority groups by incorrectly claiming that crime and gang membership among these groups is higher. Research, however, shows that racial bias is at the root of this disproportionate use of stop and search: black people in Britain are nine times more likely to be affected than white people.

Similarly, discussions around the higher COVID death rates among minority groups puts disproportionate focus on the health problems (vitamin D deficiency, diabetes) in the affected population groups.

Research shows, however, that racism has been a fundamental cause. It explains why minority ethnic people were more likely to be in dangerous, frontline professions; unable to work from home; more likely to face unemployment and deprivation; and more likely to avoid contact with health professionals. Racism is multifaceted.

As writer and academic Gary Younge put it, "The virus does not discriminate on grounds of race. It didn't need to. Society had done that already."

How we respond to racism

When incidents of racism make the news, even activists and protesters emphasise, in response to each case, the victim's innocence and vulnerability. In other words, the victim becomes the whole story: Black people themselves are depicted as the source of racism. American sociologist WEB Du Bois identified this impossible situation in 1897 - over a century ago - when he asked, "How does it feel to be a problem?"

Left out of the discussion, every time, is whiteness. Black victims of racism are made hypervisible, while white perpetrators are kept invisible. There is power in this invisibility. Because white people are not racialised - they are seen as the default, and any other racial group is seen as "other" - their experiences are presented as those of individuals: race is not considered a factor in what they do.

When teachers referred Child Q to the police, they denied her the right to be taught and protected from harm. Instead, they treated her as a threat to other students, thereby effectively placing her outside of the educational institution. Research has highlighted how these institutions are characterised by whiteness, in terms of cohort racial makeup and the student experience and outcomes for people of colour.

When the police officers searched Child Q, they denied her the protections that the law guarantees to children. Instead, they treated her as a criminal adult. In the process, they drew, knowingly or not, from a long history of criminalising and dehumanising Black people for the (imagined) protection of white people.

They also engaged, as the safeguarding review noted, in adultification bias, wherein adults consider Black children to be older and less innocent than white children. Police leaders in Tower Hamlets and Hackney have since acknowledged as much.

Whiteness underpins racism. Ignoring whiteness perpetuates its violence. US writer Ijeoma Oluo made this point emphatically after the 2016 US presidential election. "White people," she wrote, "I don't want you to understand me better; I want you to understand yourselves. Your survival has never depended on your knowledge of white culture. In fact, it has required your ignorance." It is only by making whiteness visible that we can understand what leads to violence against Black people.

At the heart of racism is not the existence of Black people, but the active work of white institutions to maintain white supremacy. White supremacy is bigger than the sum of individual white people's actions.

At its most basic level, whiteness is a way of categorising people, humanising some by dehumanising others. This shapes the way that people exist in society and interact with institutions. It also helps to explain what happened to Child Q. Her statement is a harrowing reminder of how the maintenance of whiteness makes it impossible for Black people to simply exist. "I can't go a single day," she said, "without wanting to scream, shout, cry or just give up."

Understanding contemporary racism as the legacy of centuries-old colonialism and slavery may make it seem even more overwhelming. But recognising that whiteness is at the heart of racism can and should change our response. Opposing racism means working to overcome whiteness and reclaim humanity.

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Whiteness is at the heart of racism in Britain - so why is it portrayed as a Black problem?

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In 2020, two police officers in Hackney strip-searched a 15-year-old Black girl at her school. Police conducted the search of this child, known as Child Q, without the consent of her parents, without an appropriate adult present (despite this being required by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984), and with the knowledge that she was menstruating.

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Pedagogy of the Oppressed - Paulo Freire

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Pedagogy of the Oppressed - Paulo Freire

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Cultural capital: an exploration – Penny Rabiger

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Cultural capital: an exploration – Penny Rabiger

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De-colonizing the Curriculum in conversation with Pran Patel - Becoming an Antiracist The Podcast

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De-colonizing the Curriculum in conversation with Pran Patel - Becoming an Antiracist The Podcast

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Season 1, Episode 7: De-colonizing the Curriculum.... In conversation with Pran Patel

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In this episode i’m joined by Pran Patel, to discuss and de-mystify the ‘de-colonizing the curriculum’ movement. Pran makes reference to lots of incredible scholars. For details on the references he makes as well as additional resources for further insight into the topic, please visit Pran’s websi…

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Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth - Tara J. Yosso

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Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth - Tara J. Yosso

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Unpacking “I’m Afraid”: Confronting Colleagues Who Avoid Teaching & Talking About Race - Reanna Ursin

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Unpacking “I’m Afraid”: Confronting Colleagues Who Avoid Teaching & Talking About Race - Reanna Ursin

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How many times has a white colleague confessed that they're "afraid" to teach texts like Toni Morrison's Beloved or Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis? I don't mean just admitting their fear, but rather, invoking it as the legitimate reason for inaction. In the past few years, I've come to recognize such admissions as an excuse - one that, for too long, has allowed our colleagues to remain in place, teaching the texts with which they're comfortable.

In DEI workshops, we're taught that questions are powerful. Asking the open-ended and nonjudgmental "what do you mean by that?" or "why is that funny?" can successfully interrupt biased comments by helping the speaker identify the racist or other assumptions underlying their words. Similarly, I suggest that we start responding to the fear defense with the question, "afraid of what?" By doing so, we're calling the other person to examine the beliefs at the root of their justification and the privilege inherent in their defense.

In what follows, I offer some of the answers you might receive, along with my thoughts and responses.
"I'm afraid that the material is just too heavy for my students."
In any given year we discuss texts and show films that include sexual assault, drug abuse, racism, and murder. No one worried about whether our freshmen were traumatized by Sunny the prostitute when we read The Catcher in the Rye. We currently teach Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, and no one has objected on the basis that Jimmy Cross's pseudo-rape fantasy is too controversial. I like to point out that if we avoid "heavy" subjects, our much-beloved Shakespeare won't make the cut!
"I'm afraid I won't do the material justice because it's not my experience."
Well, I'm not part of the landed gentry in Regency England, but I successfully taught Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. At the core of this answer is often a colleague's fear that they'll unintentionally offend a student through their own ignorance. It's a valid concern and a reality that even conscientious DEI practitioners can't always avoid. For that reason, I offer students opportunities for anonymous feedback so that I can improve. Other teachers may implement the strategy in which any student may say "ouch!" to signal that a comment offended them. In any case, the solution to potential mistakes isn't avoidance; it's setting up classroom practices for voicing, acknowledging, and processing the impact of our words.

"I'm afraid that it'll make my white students uncomfortable."

Without a doubt, our students' emotional welfare is an important part of our job, but I'm only halfway joking when I ask, what happened to the growth mindset?! Weren't "grit" and "resilience" all the rage just a few years ago? As Lucas Jacob notes in an earlier Teaching While White post, "feeling uncomfortable is not the same as feeling unsafe."

Furthermore, this particular excuse reveals an underlying misconception: that the purpose of a book like Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me is to condemn white America. On the contrary, like many works of art, it's Coates' attempt to make sense of the world in which he lives. And in so doing, he exposes conflicts, inequities, and personal truths that resonate in different ways for readers. More importantly though, it's worth asking whether we express as much concern for the comfort of our students of color. How often have we worried about their feelings when reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, reciting Rudyard Kipling's "The White Man's Burden," or watching 12 Years a Slave?
"I'm afraid it'll get political."
When I ask for clarification on "political," what often emerges is "potential for disagreement." Digging deeper, it's the issue of disagreement rooted in students' lived experiences. In other words, it's going to get personal.

Let's back up for a moment: it's not our job to tell students what to think. We examine complicated topics to help students develop their critical thinking and communication skills - asking questions, testing assumptions, engaging multiple viewpoints. But it is our responsibility to keep discussion from becoming a referendum on the value of any individual or group of students. In my classroom that means several small discussion circles of three to five students rather than the whole class. I also embed debriefing exercises and constantly remind students that our goal is not to declare a "winner." The bottom line: student passion isn't a problem to solve, it's an opportunity to engage.

Moving Beyond "I'm Afraid"

Ultimately, if the statement "I'm afraid" isn't followed by "but I'm going to do it anyway," it isn't honesty: it's an excuse to do nothing. And that's unacceptable because inaction reinforces whiteness as the norm, sending the message that people of color - our stories, our perspectives - don't have value. To be clear, simply including a book with a nonwhite protagonist isn't enough. We should implement norms for respectful discussion and productive disagreement. We must include practices that enable students to process their discomfort. And we have to consider how our racialized experiences impact our teaching - from feedback and grading to discussion prompts and assignment design. None of this is "extra"; it's part of culturally competent instruction.

In the discipline of English, we talk about "windows and mirrors." Windows are texts that allow a student to view the world through someone else's cultural perspective while mirrors are texts that reflect a student's own perspective. Imperfect as it may be, when I open those windows - which are mirrors for some students who've never seen themselves in the literature curriculum - what I see are curious students eager for honest discussion. It's time to call out our colleagues on the windows they've been too afraid to open.

Don't accept the excuse, and stop wasting energy on trying to convince. Instead, expose the willful misconceptions and the culturally conditioned thinking. Asking "afraid of what?" is how we start dismantling fear as a shield of privilege. In "Mississippi Goddam," Nina Simone famously lists the broken promises made to Black Americans, punctuated by the familiar admonition that, when it comes to racial equality, we have to "GO SLOW." She brilliantly arranges the song so that the lie exposes itself.

I used to think that if I just explained it well enough, if I found the right combination of fact, persuasion, and encouragement, my colleagues would rise to the challenge. I'm done with that. Let's be like Nina. Ask your colleagues "afraid of what?" and let their own words undermine their defense. Or, it might just set them free.
Reanna Ursin is a diversity practitioner and high school English instructor at the Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Georgia. A version of this essay was first delivered as a PechaKucha presentation at the 2021 NAIS Annual Conference.

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Unpacking "I'm Afraid": Confronting Colleagues Who Avoid Teaching & Talking About Race - Teaching While White

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Ultimately, if the statement "I'm afraid" isn't followed by "but I'm going to do it anyway," it isn't honesty; it's an excuse to do nothing. And that's unacceptable because inaction reinforces whiteness as the norm, sending the message that people of color-our stories, our perspectives-don't have va

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Academic Gatekeeping Is Killing Me - Mich Ciurria

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Academic Gatekeeping Is Killing Me - Mich Ciurria

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Page not found – BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

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provides up-to-date information and cutting-edge critical analysis of biopolitical asymmetries and other mechanisms and effects of power in philosophy and beyond

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Barriers to antiracism work in schools - Michaela Lawson

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Barriers to antiracism work in schools - Michaela Lawson

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Reflecting on the work we have done in the past year, I noticed several barriers that tend to hinder anti-racism work in schools. These hurdles are insidious and can seriously impede our ability to cater to the needs of people racialised as Black and Asian and therefore render your work ineffective, tokenistic and performative. It is important to consider what these barriers are, in order to enable us to better identify patterns and tackle issues head on.
We will be discussing barriers in your context at our webinar on Wednesday 29th September at 6pm. Sign up .
Overcoming barrier 1:

Barrier 1: Antiracism not a core focus

This is the most common barrier. It occurs when a school tries to take on antiracism work at the same time as other work to address social inequality e.g. LGBTQ+. It could even be that the school 'wants' to begin antiracism work but is also tackling major school development concerns elsewhere in the school. Trying to group together all underrepresented people is counterproductive and leads to a watered down approach whereby there is not a focus on antiracism at its core. This means that despite the willingness to engage with the school's community in terms of intersectionality, the tick box element arises and the result is a generalised approach that does not tackle any particular group's needs.

Consider the timing. Are you best positioned to take on antiracism work right now? Does everyone who needs to be involved have the capacity to commit to this long term? Have you investigated what is happening in your local community and do you know exactly what they need?

If the answer is no, it does not mean that you have to stop the whole approach. You can begin the groundwork in the meantime: set up an antiracism working party, begin to source reading materials and resources or begin conversations with an organisation like TPP to arrange CPD for the future.

"Ever heard someone say, 'this is going to make people uncomfortable' or 'I don't know how the staff will take this'?"

Barrier 2: Pace

This is where, for whatever reason, the pace of the work is slow. The pace is centred around the 'comfortability' of white staff members at the school. The school decides to work on their time as opposed to centering the lives and needs of the people who are victims of racism. There must be some disruption to the norm in order to challenge social equality - particularly when it comes to antiracism work. There has to be an active engagement and commitment to learning, particularly from white staff who must recognise their privilege in this area.
Overcoming barrier 2:
This barrier is significant because it requires reframing. Those who are slowing down the pace need their priorities refocused. You will have to emphasise and state the needs of the community you serve and why you need to increase the pace of the work. Set tight deadlines and hold people accountable.

Barrier 3: Diluting the content

Ever heard someone say, 'this is going to make people uncomfortable' or 'I don't know how the staff will take this'? In this case, someone is encouraging you to change the tone or the message that you are sending. In your anti-racism work, you should not water down your message to make it more palatable for the white audience. Yet again, this centres their experiences over the experiences of the victims of racism.

Overcoming barrier 3:
Respond to the questions by refocusing the conversation on the perspectives and lived experiences of people racialised as Black and Asian. No one benefits from watering down the content. People will leave with more misconceptions than they started! The fact is that racism is traumatic and sensitive and we often will not be happy to hear how this has affected people. But frank discussion is the only way we can move forward.

This barrier is one that you may not have yet experienced, but tends to creep in while you're on your journey. You can avoid it by having a very explicit mission statement about who you are centring, and coming back to this every time someone tries to steer you off track. For antiracism work to be effective, less effort must be spent trying not to step on eggshells in fear of being 'too political', less time spent on merely thinking about how to help white professionals learn about their biases and racism, and more effort into listening, understanding and appreciating the experiences of the victims of racism.

"The fact is that racism is traumatic and sensitive and we often will not be happy to hear how it has affected people. But frank discussion is the only way we can move forward."

Barrier 4: Lack of support

This occurs when a few individuals in the school want to dedicate themselves to antiracism and take action but there is no clear leader. This could also occur when the senior leadership of the school is not fully on board so the team cannot get their desired actions approved in a timely manner. This means that no action is taken, or the action taken is not co-ordinated or fully integrated into the school community.
Overcoming barrier 4:
In your opening conversations about strategy, you need to assign a designated leader. This person doesn't need to be a senior leader themselves, but they should be prepared to meet regularly with one and work closely alongside them. This person should have a good level of racial literacy already if possible. Where this is not possible, you will need to contact external experts.

Even if individuals on the team have all the passion and commitment, without explicit support and commitment from executive leaderships (those who can unlock funding, give resources, or enable significant change to structure and policy) those people will be frustrated and either give up doing the work or find somewhere else to do it, further disenfranchising the pupils who would have benefitted in that school. It is important to challenge senior leaders, especially if they are reluctant to change or are unconsciously making biased decisions. This can be difficult however, and experts at TPP can help with this process.

This piece was inspired by the work from Dr Terrance Green.

Thanks to The Prosperity Project team for their edits.

By Michaela Lawson

Reflecting on the work we have done in the past year, I noticed several barriers that tend to hinder anti-racism work in schools. These hurdles are insidious and can seriously impede our ability to cater to the needs of people racialised as Black and Asian and therefore render your work ineffective, tokenistic and performative. It is important to consider what these barriers are, in order to enable us to better identify patterns and tackle issues head on.
We will be discussing barriers in your context at our webinar on Wednesday 29th September at 6pm. Sign up .
Overcoming barrier 1:

Barrier 1: Antiracism not a core focus

This is the most common barrier. It occurs when a school tries to take on antiracism work at the same time as other work to address social inequality e.g. LGBTQ+. It could even be that the school 'wants' to begin antiracism work but is also tackling major school development concerns elsewhere in the school. Trying to group together all underrepresented people is counterproductive and leads to a watered down approach whereby there is not a focus on antiracism at its core. This means that despite the willingness to engage with the school's community in terms of intersectionality, the tick box element arises and the result is a generalised approach that does not tackle any particular group's needs.

Consider the timing. Are you best positioned to take on antiracism work right now? Does everyone who needs to be involved have the capacity to commit to this long term? Have you investigated what is happening in your local community and do you know exactly what they need?

If the answer is no, it does not mean that you have to stop the whole approach. You can begin the groundwork in the meantime: set up an antiracism working party, begin to source reading materials and resources or begin conversations with an organisation like TPP to arrange CPD for the future.

"Ever heard someone say, 'this is going to make people uncomfortable' or 'I don't know how the staff will take this'?"

Barrier 2: Pace

This is where, for whatever reason, the pace of the work is slow. The pace is centred around the 'comfortability' of white staff members at the school. The school decides to work on their time as opposed to centering the lives and needs of the people who are victims of racism. There must be some disruption to the norm in order to challenge social equality - particularly when it comes to antiracism work. There has to be an active engagement and commitment to learning, particularly from white staff who must recognise their privilege in this area.
Overcoming barrier 2:
This barrier is significant because it requires reframing. Those who are slowing down the pace need their priorities refocused. You will have to emphasise and state the needs of the community you serve and why you need to increase the pace of the work. Set tight deadlines and hold people accountable.

Barrier 3: Diluting the content

Ever heard someone say, 'this is going to make people uncomfortable' or 'I don't know how the staff will take this'? In this case, someone is encouraging you to change the tone or the message that you are sending. In your anti-racism work, you should not water down your message to make it more palatable for the white audience. Yet again, this centres their experiences over the experiences of the victims of racism.

Overcoming barrier 3:
Respond to the questions by refocusing the conversation on the perspectives and lived experiences of people racialised as Black and Asian. No one benefits from watering down the content. People will leave with more misconceptions than they started! The fact is that racism is traumatic and sensitive and we often will not be happy to hear how this has affected people. But frank discussion is the only way we can move forward.

This barrier is one that you may not have yet experienced, but tends to creep in while you're on your journey. You can avoid it by having a very explicit mission statement about who you are centring, and coming back to this every time someone tries to steer you off track. For antiracism work to be effective, less effort must be spent trying not to step on eggshells in fear of being 'too political', less time spent on merely thinking about how to help white professionals learn about their biases and racism, and more effort into listening, understanding and appreciating the experiences of the victims of racism.

"The fact is that racism is traumatic and sensitive and we often will not be happy to hear how it has affected people. But frank discussion is the only way we can move forward."

Barrier 4: Lack of support

This occurs when a few individuals in the school want to dedicate themselves to antiracism and take action but there is no clear leader. This could also occur when the senior leadership of the school is not fully on board so the team cannot get their desired actions approved in a timely manner. This means that no action is taken, or the action taken is not co-ordinated or fully integrated into the school community.
Overcoming barrier 4:
In your opening conversations about strategy, you need to assign a designated leader. This person doesn't need to be a senior leader themselves, but they should be prepared to meet regularly with one and work closely alongside them. This person should have a good level of racial literacy already if possible. Where this is not possible, you will need to contact external experts.

Even if individuals on the team have all the passion and commitment, without explicit support and commitment from executive leaderships (those who can unlock funding, give resources, or enable significant change to structure and policy) those people will be frustrated and either give up doing the work or find somewhere else to do it, further disenfranchising the pupils who would have benefitted in that school. It is important to challenge senior leaders, especially if they are reluctant to change or are unconsciously making biased decisions. This can be difficult however, and experts at TPP can help with this process.

This piece was inspired by the work from Dr Terrance Green.

Thanks to The Prosperity Project team for their edits.

By Michaela Lawson

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Barriers to antiracism work in schools - The Prosperity Project

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Reflecting on the work we have done in the past year, I noticed several barriers that tend to hinder anti-racism work in schools. These hurdles are insidious and can seriously impede our ability to cater to the needs of people racialised as Black and Asian and therefore render your work ineffective, tokenistic and performative.

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How Should I Talk about Race in My Mostly White Classroom?

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How Should I Talk about Race in My Mostly White Classroom?

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Race and racism are important topics to bring into your classroom. Because race is part of our public conversation and integrated into so many aspects of our world, young people want to and should be part of that conversation, no matter their race. White students in predominantly white classrooms should be discussing race for those reasons and because they are members of a multicultural society and world. Sometimes teachers feel reluctant to raise the topic of race especially if they are teaching in an all or predominantly white community. Teachers may be concerned that students bring their own assumptions and stereotypes, will hold back for fear of saying the "wrong" thing or bias will emerge and will be hard to facilitate and contain. Also, teachers may fear pushback from administrators and parents who feel they shouldn't talk about it at all.

Below are tips and strategies to consider when teaching predominantly white students about race and racism.

1. Set up group guidelines.

Students, and in particular white students, sometimes don't participate in discussions about race because they feel inadequate, worry they'll be mocked, are embarrassed by their lack of knowledge or concerned that strong feelings will arise. Many may think the topic isn't relevant to them. When engaging in any conversations about tough topics, it is critical to set up group guidelines or agreements to promote a classroom environment that is safe and respectful. Do this collaboratively with students and make sure that the following areas are discussed: listening and interrupting, how to deal with strong emotions, establishing trust, confidentiality, sharing "air time" and dealing with differences or disagreements. Further, from the beginning establish an environment that allows for mistakes. Because we are products of a biased society, students may not be cognizant that everyone has biases and holds stereotypes. This should be explained to them explicitly. Assume good will and convey to students that they should do the same. Find ways to inspire students to challenge themselves and their assumptions by asking open-ended questions.

2. Help students accept discomfort and uncertainty.

A safe learning environment doesn't mean you and your students will or should be comfortable with every discussion. Be prepared for these conversations to potentially be messy and complicated. They may not end as you expect they will. You can remind yourself of this and share that understanding with your students so you manage everyone's expectations. It is helpful to remember and share with students that often deep learning, the kind that is lasting and long-term, comes when things are uncomfortable or "sticky" and you are able to work through those things. That's the "aha" or epiphany moment. It may also be helpful to explain to students that often when things are complicated or when there is a conflict, if things are handled well, there can be a higher understanding or improved relationships on the other side.

3. Clarify that the goal is not to be "colorblind."

The goal of teaching about race and racism is to help students understand the historical context and current manifestations of racism in the U.S. There are many white people who believe the best way to eliminate racism is to not talk about it and not notice racial differences at all (i.e. be "colorblind"). They may want to tell young people not to notice differences because they conflate noticing differences with having bias. It may also be a way to avoid dealing with discussions of race because they are uncomfortable. It is completely natural to notice race and other physical characteristics; telling children not to see it is incorrect and confusing. Let students know that noticing differences does not promote bias-judging and discriminating based on race does. Further, it's important to acknowledge that white is a racial identity and even explore with students what being white means to them. You may also want to share with parents that you are talking about these issues because some white parents may believe that talking about race makes them or their children racist.

4. Acknowledge that learning about race and racism is a process.

It is often the case that white people who have always been in the majority do not think about their own racial identity the way that people of color often do. Recognize that learning about race and racism is a process because many white students may not have had the opportunity to reflect on and discuss it. They will come with bias and misinformation, as we all do, and it will take time for them to develop their own understanding and insights. Make it clear that this can be a lifelong process and that one is always learning, including yourself, and that you will be learning together. Introduce less complex topics at first and from the beginning, present and use accurate terminology. At the same time, don't sugarcoat or simplify language or concepts. Defining words and the language of race and bias can be one of the first things you do which can include differentiating prejudice, bias, discrimination, racism and implicit bias. In the beginning, establish the fact that we all have a race, and they are included in that. Sometimes white students think that race doesn't apply to them and includes only people of color.

5. Provide opportunities to learn about others and foster empathy.

Regardless of whether or not the racial diversity of our larger society is represented in your school, it is important to bring diverse voices and perspectives into the classroom in other ways besides personal sharing. This is particularly true if you have a predominantly white school and you are talking about race. Use children's books, short videos, movies, literature, stories by teens, or arrange for a video chat to expose students to other voices on race as this fifth grade teacher did. As the goal is to dispel stereotypes-not perpetuate them-be sure to review these resources in advance. Exposing white students to people who represent different racial groups can also build empathy as they learn and better understand others' lives, experiences, perspectives and feelings.

6. Address white privilege in non-defensive ways.

The term "white privilege" is one that often produces anxiety and defensiveness among white people, including students. At the same time, if students are going to engage in conversations about race, privilege has to be on the table. The goal of a discussion about white privilege is not to make anyone feel guilty for who they are or defensive about their lot in life. The goal should be to help students understand and analyze issues of power and privilege as they relate to racism. One way to start the conversation is to talk with students about the ways bias manifests in institutions (i.e. discrimination). Explain that bias can impact people in two ways: by discriminating against some or advantaging others, depending on race or other aspects of identity.

Define white privilege as: "unearned and often unseen or unrecognized advantages, benefits or rights conferred upon people based on their membership in a dominant group (e.g. white people, heterosexual people, men, able-bodied, etc.) beyond what is commonly experienced by members of the non-dominant group."

Another angle to discuss privilege is to talk with your students about the ways they feel disempowered or discriminated against as young people, often through ageism directed towards them. These can include things like not being allowed to do certain things they think they should be allowed to do; assumptions adults make about them; or discriminatory acts that target them. Students can reflect on the ways that they, as young people, lack privilege in these situations. This discussion will help them understand the concept of privilege without getting defensive and will help to foster empathy. You can then make the connection to white privilege and since you've set the groundwork, hopefully the leap to white privilege isn't too far a reach for them. It will be important to identify dominant identities (i.e. being white) because students may not accept that they have white privilege by saying they belong to another marginalized group ("but I'm gay, poor, female"). While that may be true, it doesn't erase their white identity.

7. Connect to ally behavior and engage in social justice.

As your students discuss race, some of them may be interested in addressing the racism they have learned about, both in their interpersonal relationships and in society. Helping your students understand what it means to act as an ally and learning the different ways to engage in ally behavior is an important next step. White people can act as allies by identifying racism when they see it, calling it out and challenging it in a myriad of ways. You can help to facilitate this process by giving students an opportunity to explore how to act as an ally and practice different strategies-both interpersonal or on a larger stage by getting involved in activism. There a wide variety of ways to do this including educating others, online activism, advocating for legislation, protesting, creating public awareness, etc. Convey a message of critical hope that when people work together-in the past and in modern times-they can make a difference and improve our society and world.

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How Should I Talk about Race in My Mostly White Classroom?

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Race and racism are important topics to bring into your classroom. Because race is part of our public conversation and integrated into so many aspects of our world, young people want to and should be part of that conversation, no matter their race.

# data[].attributes.headline
The sensorium and fleshy schools - Damien Page and Kay Sidebottom

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The sensorium and fleshy schools - Damien Page and Kay Sidebottom

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Towards the human, after the child of Man: Seeing the child differently in teacher education - Maria Kromidas 

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Towards the human, after the child of Man: Seeing the child differently in teacher education - Maria Kromidas 

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Towards the human, after the child of Man- Seeing the child differently in teacher education 

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Decolonising Education: A Pedagogic Intervention - Carol Azumah Dennis

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Decolonising Education: A Pedagogic Intervention - Carol Azumah Dennis

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Chapter 11 Decolonising Edu A Pedagogical Intervention

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Challenging the ideology of normal in schools - Subbing A. Annamma, Amy L. Boéle, Brooke A. Moore and Janette Klingner

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Challenging the ideology of normal in schools - Subbing A. Annamma, Amy L. Boéle, Brooke A. Moore and Janette Klingner

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Challenging the ideology of normal in schools

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The invention of whiteness: the long history of a dangerous idea - Robert P Baird

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The invention of whiteness: the long history of a dangerous idea - Robert P Baird

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In 2008, a satirical blog called Stuff White People Like became a brief but boisterous sensation. The conceit was straightforward, coupling a list, eventually 136 items long, of stuff that white people liked to do or own, with faux-ethnographic descriptions that explained each item's purported racial appeal. While some of the items were a little too obvious - indie music appeared at #41, Wes Anderson movies at #10 - others, including "awareness" (#18) and "children's games as adults" (#102), were inspired. It was an instant hit. In its first two months alone, Stuff White People Like drew 4 million visitors, and it wasn't long before a book based on the blog became a New York Times bestseller.

The founder of the blog was an aspiring comedian and PhD dropout named Christian Lander, who'd been working as an advertising copywriter in Los Angeles when he launched the site on a whim. In interviews, Lander always acknowledged that his satire had at least as much to do with class as it did with race. His targets, he said, were affluent overeducated urbanites like himself. Yet there's little doubt that the popularity of the blog, which depended for its humour on the assumption that whiteness was a contentless default identity, had much to do with its frank invocation of race. "As a white person, you're just desperate to find something else to grab on to," Lander said in 2009. "Pretty much every white person I grew up with wished they'd grown up in, you know, an ethnic home that gave them a second language."

Looking back at Stuff White People Like today, what marks the site's age is neither the particularities of its irony nor the broad generalities of its targets. There are still plenty of white people with too much time and too much disposable income on their hands, and plenty of them still like yoga (#15), Vespa scooters (#126), and "black music that black people don't listen to any more" (#116).

What has changed, however - changed in ways that date Stuff White People Like unmistakably - is the cultural backdrop. Ten years ago, whiteness suffused mainstream culture like a fog: though pervasive to the point of omnipresence, it was almost nowhere distinct. When the sorts of white people for and about whom Lander was writing talked about being white, their conversations tended to span the narrow range between defensiveness and awkwardness. If they weren't exactly clamouring to dispense with their racial identity, and the privileges that came with it, they were also not eager to embrace, or even discuss it, in public.

In the years since, especially among the sort of people who might have once counted themselves fans of Lander's blog, the public significance of whiteness has undergone an almost wholesale re-evaluation. Far from being a punchline for an anxious, cathartic joke, whiteness is now earnestly invoked, like neoliberalism or populism, as a central driver of cultural and political affairs. Whereas Lander could score a bestseller in 2008 with a book mocking whiteness as a bland cultural melange whose greatest sin was to be uninteresting, just nine years later Ta-Nehisi Coates would have his own bestseller that described whiteness as "an existential danger to the country and the world".

Much of the change, of course, had to do with Donald Trump, for whom, as Coates put it, "whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic, but is the very core of his power". But it was not only Trump. Whiteness has been implicated in events on both sides of the Atlantic, including Brexit; mass shootings in Norway, New Zealand and the US; the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor killings; and the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol. Alongside these real-world incidents, a bumper crop of scholarship, journalism, art and literature - by Coates, Nell Irvin Painter, Jordan Peele, Eric Foner, Ava DuVernay, Adam Serwer, Barbara and Karen Fields, Kevin Young, David Olusoga, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Colson Whitehead and Claudia Rankine, among many others - has spurred the most significant reconsideration of racial whiteness in 50 years.

This reckoning, as it is sometimes called, has had measurable effects. In a Pew poll last October, nearly a third of white Americans said that the recent attention to racial issues signified a "major change" in American attitudes about race - another 45% said it was a "minor change" - and nearly half believed that those changes would lead to policies that would ameliorate racial inequality. In the UK, a YouGov poll from December suggested that more than a third of Britons reported that they were having more discussions about racism than they had previously.

At the same time, this new focus on whiteness has prompted much confusion and consternation, especially among white people not used to thinking of themselves in racial terms. The Pew poll found that half of white Americans thought there was "too much" discussion of racial issues, and a similar proportion suggested that seeing racism where it didn't exist was a bigger problem than not seeing racism where it did.

What these recent debates have demonstrated more than anything, perhaps, is how little agreement still exists about what whiteness is and what it ought to be. Nearly everywhere in contemporary society "white" is presumed to be a meaningful index of identity that, like age and gender, is important enough to get mentioned in news accounts, tallied in political polls, and recorded in government databases. Yet what that identity is supposed to tell us is still substantially in dispute. In many ways, whiteness resembles time as seen by Saint Augustine: we presume we understand it as long as we're not asked to explain it, but it becomes inexplicable as soon as we're put to the test.

A little more than a century ago, in his essay The Souls of White Folk, the sociologist and social critic WEB Du Bois proposed what still ranks as one of the most penetrating and durable insights about the racial identity we call white: "The discovery of personal whiteness among the world's peoples is a very modern thing - a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed."

Though radical in its time, Du Bois's characterisation of what he called the "new religion of whiteness" - a religion founded on the dogma that "of all the hues of God, whiteness alone is inherently and obviously better than brownness and tan" - would have a profound effect on the way historians and other scholars would come to understand racial identity. In part this had to do with his insistence that a racial category like whiteness was more akin to a religious belief than a biological fact. Du Bois rejected the idea, still common in his day, that the races reflected natural divisions within the human species - as well as the nearly inevitable corollary that the physical, mental and behavioural traits associated with the white race just happened to be the ones most prized by modern societies.

That had been the view, for instance, of Thomas Jefferson, who had attemptedto delineate "the real distinctions which nature has made" between the races, in his Notes on the State of Virginia, first published in 1781. It was also the view that would appear, at least in attenuated form, two centuries later in Charles Murray and Richard J Herrnstein's Bell Curve, which was published in 1994. Murray and Herrnstein argued that "the most plausible" explanation for the differences between Black and white populations recorded on IQ tests was "some form of mixed gene and environmental source" - in other words, that at least some of the discrepancy owes to natural differences.

By the time The Bell Curveappeared, Du Bois's assertion that racial categories were not biologically grounded was widely accepted. In the years since, the scientific evidence for that understanding has only become more overwhelming. A 2017 study examined the DNA of nearly 6,000 people from around the world and found that while some genetic differences among humans can be traced to various ancestral lineages - for example, eastern African, southern European or circumpolar - none of those lineages correspond to traditional ideas about race.

If it's easy enough for many people today to accept that whiteness is a purely sociological phenomenon - in some quarters, the idea that "race is a social construct" has become a cliche - the same cannot be said for Du Bois's suggestion that whiteness is a relatively new thing in human history. And yet just as in the case of genetic science, during the second half of the 20th century a number of historians demonstrated that while Du Bois was off by a few hundred years, he was correct that it was only in the modern period that people started to think of themselves as belonging to something called the white race.

Of course, it's important not to overstate the case: the evolution of the idea of whiteness was messy and often indistinct. As the historian Nell Irvin Painter has cautioned, "white identity didn't just spring to life full-blown and unchanging". It had important antecedents that included a growing sense of a pan-European identity; longstanding cultural associations that saw white as a symbol of purity and virtue; and bog-standard ethnocentrism.

Still, with only slightly exaggerated precision, we can say that one of the most crucial developments in "the discovery of personal whiteness" took place during the second half of the 17th century, on the peripheries of the still-young British empire. What's more, historians such as Oscar and Mary Handlin, Edmund Morgan and Edward Rugemer have largely confirmed Du Bois's suspicion that while xenophobia appears to be fairly universal among human groupings, the invention of a white racial identity was motivated from the start by a need to justify the enslavement of Africans. In the words of Eric Williams, a historian who later became the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, "slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery".

If you asked an Englishman in the early part of the 17th century what colour skin he had, he might very well have called it white. But the whiteness of his skin would have suggested no more suitable basis for a collective identity than the roundness of his nose or the baldness of his head. If you asked him to situate himself within the rapidly expanding borders of the known world, he would probably identify himself, first and most naturally, as an Englishman. If that category proved too narrow - if, say, he needed to describe what it was he had in common with the French and the Dutch that he did not share with Ottomans or Africans - he would almost certainly call himself a Christian instead.

That religious identity was crucial for the development of the English slave trade - and eventually for the development of racial whiteness. In the early 17th century, plantation owners in the West Indies and in the American colonies largely depended on the labour of European indentured servants. These servants were considered chattel and were often treated brutally - the conditions on Barbados, England's wealthiest colony, were notorious - but they were fortunate in at least one respect: because they were Christian, by law they could not be held in lifetime captivity unless they were criminals or prisoners of war.

Africans enjoyed no such privilege. They were understood to be infidels, and thus the "perpetual enemies" of Christian nations, which made it legal to hold them as slaves. By 1640 or so, the rough treatment of indentured servants had started to diminish the supply of Europeans willing to work on the sugar and tobacco plantations, and so the colonists looked increasingly to slavery, and the Atlantic-sized loophole that enabled it, to keep their fantastically profitable operations supplied with labour.

The plantation owners understood very well that their cruel treatment of indentured Europeans, and their even crueller treatment of enslaved Africans, might lead to thoughts - or worse - of vengeance. Significantly outnumbered, they lived in constant fear of uprisings. They were particularly afraid of incidents such as Bacon's Rebellion, in 1676, which saw indentured Europeans fighting side-by-side with free and enslaved Africans against Virginia's colonial government.

To ward off such events, the plantation owners initially sought to protect themselves by giving their "Christian" servants legal privileges not available to their enslaved "Negroes". The idea was to buy off the allegiance of indentured Europeans with a set of entitlements that, however meagre, set them above enslaved Africans. Toward the end of the 17th century, this scheme witnessed a significant shift: many of the laws that regulated slave and servant behaviour - the 1681 Servant Act in Jamaica, for example, which was later copied for use in South Carolina - began to describe the privileged class as "whites" and not as "Christians".

One of the more plausible explanations for this change, made by Rugemer and the historian Katharine Gerbner, among others, is that the establishment of whiteness as a legal category solved a religious dilemma. By the 1670s, Christian missionaries, including the Quaker George Fox, were insisting that enslaved Africans should be inducted into the Christian faith. The problem this posed for the planters was obvious: if their African labourers became Christians, and no longer "perpetual enemies" of Christendom, then on what legal grounds could they be enslaved? And what about the colonial laws that gave special privileges to Christians, laws whose authors apparently never contemplated the possibility that Africans might someday join the faith?

The planters tried to resolve the former dilemma by blocking the conversion of enslaved Africans, on the grounds, as the Barbados Assembly put it in 1680, that such conversion would "endanger the island, inasmuch as converted negroes grow more perverse and intractable than others". When that didn't work (the Bishop of London objected) they instead passed laws guaranteeing that baptism could not be invoked as grounds for seeking freedom.

But the latter question, about privileges for Christians, required the colonialists to think in a new way. No longer could their religious identity separate them and their servants from enslaved Africans. Henceforth they would need what Morgan called "a screen of racial contempt". Henceforth, they would need to start thinking of themselves as white.

As late as 1694, a slave-ship captain could still question the racial logic newly employed to justify his trade. ("I can't think there is any intrinsick value in one colour more than another, nor that white is better than black, only we think it so because we are so," Thomas Phillips wrote in his diary.) But whiteness quickly proved itself a powerful weapon that allowed transatlantic capitalism to secure the labour - "white" and African - it needed. As the historian Theodore Allen put it, "The plantation bourgeoisie deliberately extended a privileged status to the white poor of all categories as a means of turning to African slavery as the basis of its system of production."

The economic utility of the idea of whiteness helped spread it rapidly around the world. Du Bois was not wrong to call it a religion, for like a religion, it operated at every psychological, sociological and political scale, from the most intimate to the most public. Like a religion, too, it adapted to local conditions. What it meant to be white in British Virginia was not identical to what it would mean in New York before the American civil war, in India during the Raj, in Georgia during Jim Crow, in Australia after Federation, or in Germany during the Third Reich. But what united all these expressions was a singular idea: that some group of people called white was naturally superior to all others. As Benjamin Disraeli, the Victorian prime minister and one of the most committed race ideologists of his time, put it, "race implies difference, difference implies superiority, and superiority leads to predominance".

The idea of whiteness, in other words, was identical to the idea of white supremacy. For the three centuries that preceded the civil rights movement, this presumption was accepted at the most refined levels of culture, by people who, in other contexts, were among the most vocal advocates of human liberty and equality. It is well known that Immanuel Kant argued we should treat every other person "always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means". Less well known is his proposal, in his Lectures on Physical Geography,published in 1802, that "humanity is at its greatest perfection in the race of the whites", or his claim, in his notes for his Lectures on Anthropology, that native "Americans and Negroes cannot govern themselves. Thus, serve only as slaves". Even Gandhi, during the early part of his life, accepted the basic lie of whiteness, arguing that "the English and the Indians spring from a common stock, called the Indo-Aryan" and that "the white race in South Africa should be the predominating race".

As though aware of their own guilty conscience, the evangelists of the religion of whiteness were always desperate to prove that it was something other than mere prejudice. Where the Bible still held sway, they bent the story of Noah's son Ham into a divine apologia for white supremacy. When anatomy and anthropology gained prestige in the 18th and 19th centuries, they cited pseudo-scientific markers of racial difference like the cephalic index and the norma verticalis. When psychology took over in the 20th, they told themselves flattering stories about divergences in IQ.

For all their evident success, the devotees of the religion of whiteness were never able to achieve the total vision they longed for. In part, this was because there were always dissenters, including among those who stood to gain from it, who rejected the creed of racial superiority. Alongside those remembered by history - Elizabeth Freeman, Toussaint Louverture, Harriet Tubman, Sitting Bull, Franz Boas, Haviva Reik, Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela - there were millions of now-forgotten people who used whatever means they possessed to resist it. In part, too, the nonsense logic that regulated the boundaries of whiteness - the one-drop rule in the US, which said that anyone with Black ancestry could not be white; the endless arguments over what "caucasian" was supposed to mean; the "honorary Aryan" status that Hitler extended to the Japanese - was no match for the robust complexities of human society.

Yet if the religion of whiteness was never able to gain acceptance as an unchallengeable scientific fact, it was still hugely successful at shaping social reality. Some of this success had to do with its flexibility. Thanks to its role in facilitating slavery, whiteness in the US was often defined in opposition to blackness, but between those two extremes was room for tactical accommodations. In 1751, Benjamin Franklin could claim that only the English and Saxons "make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth", and nearly 80 years later, Ralph Waldo Emerson would insist that the Irish, like the Chinese and the Native American, were not caucasian. Over time, however, the definition of who counted as culturally white expanded to include Catholics from southern Europe, the Irish and even Jews, who for centuries had been seen as quintessential outsiders.

The religion of whiteness also found success by persuading its adherents that they, and not the people they oppressed, were the real victims. In 1692, colonial legislators in British Barbados complained that "sundry of the Negroes and Slaves of this island, have been long preparing, contriving, conspiring and designing a most horrid, bloody, damnable and detestable rebellion, massacre, assassination and destruction". From there, it was a more or less straight line to Woodrow Wilson's claim, in 1903, that the southerners who started the Ku Klux Klan were "aroused by the mere instinct of self-preservation", and to Donald Trump's warning, when he launched his presidential campaign in 2015, that Mexican immigrants to the US were "bringing drugs. And they're bringing crime. And they're rapists."

Where the religion of whiteness was not able to win converts with persuasion or fear, it deployed cruder measures to secure its power, conscripting laws, institutions, customs and churches to enforce its prerogatives. Above all, it depended on force. By the middle of the 20th century, the presumption that a race of people called white were superior to all others had supplied the central justification not just for the transatlantic slave trade but also for the near-total extinction of Indians in North America; for Belgian atrocities in Congo; for the bloody colonisation of India, east Africa and Australia by Britain; for the equally bloody colonisation of north and west Africa and south-east Asia by France; for the deployment of the Final Solution in Nazi Germany; and for the apartheid state in South Africa. And those are merely the most extreme examples. Alongside those murdered, raped and enslaved in the name of whiteness, the total number of whom runs at least to nine figures, are an almost unthinkable number of people whose lives were shortened, constrained, antagonised and insulted on a daily basis.

It was not until the aftermath of the second world war that frank endorsements of white supremacy were broadly rejected in Anglo-American public discourse. That this happened at all was thanks largely to the efforts of civil rights and anti-colonial activists, but the war itself also played a role. Though the horrors of the Nazi regime had been more acute in their intensity than anything happening at the time in the US or the UK, they supplied an unflattering mirror that made it impossible to ignore the racism that was still prevalent in both countries. (A New York Times editorial in 1946 made the connection explicit, arguing that "this is a particularly good year to campaign against the evils of bigotry, prejudice and race hatred because we have recently witnessed the defeat of enemies who tried to found a mastery of the world upon such a cruel and fallacious policy".)

Political appeals to white solidarity diminished slowly but certainly. In 1955, for example, Winston Churchill could still imagine that "Keep England White" was a winning general-election theme, and even as late as 1964, Peter Griffiths, a Conservative candidate for parliament, would score a surprise victory after endorsing a nakedly racist slogan. By 1968, however, when Enoch Powell delivered his "Rivers of Blood" speech - in which he approvingly quoted a constituent who lamented that "in 15 or 20 years' time, the black man will have the whip hand over the white man" - he would be greeted by outrage in the Times, which called it an "evil speech", and expelled from the Conservative shadow cabinet. In the US, too, where a century of racial apartheid had followed a century of slavery, open expressions of racism met with increasing public censure. Throughout the 60s and into the 70s, Congress passed a series of statutes that rendered explicit racial discrimination illegal in many areas of public life.

This gradual rejection of explicit, government-enforced white supremacy was hugely consequential in terms of public policy. Yet it did not mean that whiteness, as a political force, had lost its appeal: in the weeks after Powell's speech, to take just one example, a Gallup poll found that 74% of Britons supported his suggestion that brown-skinned immigrants ought to be repatriated. It also left unresolved the more difficult question of whether whiteness was truly separable from its long history of domination.

Instead of looking too hard at the sordid history of whiteness, many white people found it easier to decide that the civil rights movement had accomplished all the anti-racism work that needed doing. The result was a strange détente. On the one hand, whiteness retreated as a subject of public attention, giving way to a new rhetoric of racial colour-blindness. On the other hand, vast embedded economic and cultural discrepancies allowed white people to continue to exercise the institutional and structural power that had accumulated on their behalf across the previous three centuries.

Similarly, while blatant assertions of white power - such as the 1991 gubernatorial campaign of David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, in Louisiana - met with significant elite resistance, what counted as racist (and therefore subject to the taboo) was limited to only the most flagrant instances of racial animus. Among liberals and conservatives, racism was widely understood as a species of hatred, which meant that any white person who could look into his heart and find an absence of open hostility could absolve himself of racism.

Even the phrase "white supremacy", which predates the word "racism" in English by 80 years and once described a system of interlocking racial privileges that touched every aspect of life, was redefined to mean something rare and extreme. In 1923, for example, under the headline White Supremacy Menaced, the New York Times would print an article which took at face value a Harvard professor's warning that "one of the gravest and most acute problems before the world today" was "the problem of saving the white race from submergence in the darker races". In 1967, the US supreme court invalidated a law that prevented whites from marrying people who were not white, on the grounds that it was "obviously an endorsement of the doctrine of White Supremacy", and two years later, the critic Albert Murray would use the phrase to describe everything from anti-Black prejudice in police departments to bigoted media representations of Black life to influential academic studies such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan's The Negro Family.

By the 80s and 90s, however, at least in white-dominated media, "white supremacy" was reserved only for the most shocking and retrograde examples of racism. For many people who grew up at that time, as I did, the phrase evoked cross burnings and racist hooligans, rather than an intricate web of laws and norms that maintained disparities of wealth, education, housing, incarceration and access to political power.

Perhaps most perverse of all was the charge of "reverse racism", which emboldened critics of affirmative action and other "race-conscious" policies to claim that they, and not the policies' proponents, were the true heralds of racial equality. In 1986, Ronald Reagan went so far as to defend his opposition to minority-hiring quotas by invoking Martin Luther King Jr: "We want a colour-blind society," Reagan declared. "A society, that in the words of Dr King, judges people not by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Of course not everyone accepted this new dispensation, which scholars have variously described as "structural racism", "symbolic racism" or "racism without racists". In the decades following the civil rights movement, intellectuals and activists of colour continued to develop the Du Boisian intellectual tradition that understood whiteness as an implement of social domination. In the 80s and 90s, a group of legal scholars that included Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Cheryl Harris and Richard Delgado produced a body of research that became known as critical race theory, which was, in Bell's words, "ideologically committed to the struggle against racism, particularly as institutionalised in and by law".

Alongside critical race theory, and in many ways derived from it, a new academic trend, known as whiteness studies, took shape. Historians working in this subfield demonstrated the myriad ways in which the pursuit of white supremacy - like the pursuit of wealth and the subjection of women - had been one of the central forces that gave shape to Anglo-American history. For many of them, the bill of indictment against whiteness was total: as the historian David Roediger put it, "it is not merely that whiteness is oppressive and false; it is that whiteness is nothing but oppressive and false."

In the fall of 1992, a new journal co-founded by Noel Ignatiev, one of the major figures in whiteness studies, appeared in bookstores around Cambridge, Massachusetts. Called Race Traitor, the magazine wore its motto and guiding ethos on its cover: Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity. The issue opened with an editorial whose headline was equally provocative: "Abolish the white race - by any means necessary." This demand, with its echoes of Sartre by way of Malcolm X, was not, as it turned out, a call for violence, much less for genocide. As Ignatiev and his co-editor, John Garvey, explained, they took as their foundational premise that "the white race is a historically constructed social formation", a sort of club whose membership "consists of those who partake of the privileges of the white skin in this society".

For Ignatiev and Garvey, whiteness had been identified with white supremacy for so long that it was folly to think it was salvageable. "So long as the white race exists," they wrote, "all movements against racism are doomed to fail." What was necessary, in their view, was for the people called "white" - people like them - to forcefully reject that identification and the racial privileges that came with it. Whiteness, they suggested, was a fragile, unstable thing, such that even a small number of determined attacks - objecting to racist educational programmes at a school board meeting, say, or capturing racist police behaviour on video - ought to be able to unsettle the whole edifice.

But while whiteness studies produced much work that still makes for bracing, illuminating reading, it was soon mocked as one more instance of the very privilege it meant to oppose. "The whole enterprise gives whites a kind of standing in the multicultural paradigm they have never before enjoyed," Margaret Talbot wrote in the New York Times in 1997. "And it involves them, inevitably, in a journey of self-discovery in which white people's thoughts about their own whiteness acquire a portentous new legitimacy." Even Ignatiev would later say he "wanted nothing to do with" it.

By the mid-2000s, the "colour-blind" ideological system had become so successful that it managed to shield even the more obvious operations of whiteness - the overwhelming numbers of white people in corporate boardrooms, for instance, or in the media and tech industries - from much censure. In the US, when racial disparities could not be ignored, it was often suggested that time was the only reliable remedy: as the numerical proportion of whites dwindled, so too would their political and economic power diminish. (Never mind that whiteness had managed to escape predictions of demographic doom before, by integrating groups it had previously kept on its margins.)

Meanwhile, younger white liberals, the sort of people who might have read Bell or Crenshaw or Ignatiev at university, tended to duck the subject of their own racial identity with a shuffling awkwardness. Growing up white in the decades after the civil rights movement was a little like having a rich but disreputable cousin: you never knew quite what to make of him, or the extravagant gifts he bought for your birthday, and so you found it easier, in general, just not to say anything.

The absence of talk about whiteness was so pervasive that it became possible to convince yourself that it constituted one of the central obstacles to racial progress. When I was in graduate school during the early 00s, toward the end of the whiteness-studies boomlet, I often heard - including from my own mouth - the argument that the real problem was that white people weren't talking enough about their racial identity. If you could get people to acknowledge their whiteness, we told ourselves, then it might be possible to get them to acknowledge the unfair ways in which whiteness had helped them.

The trouble with this notion would become clear soon enough, when the presidency of Barack Obama offered the surest test to date of the proposition that whiteness had separated itself from its supremacist past. Though Obama's election was initially hailed by some as proof that the US was entering a new post-racial phase, it took just a few months for the Tea party, a conservative movement ostensibly in favour of small government, to suggest that the opposite was closer to the truth.

In September 2009, Jimmy Carter caused a stir by suggesting that the Tea party's opposition was something other than a principled reaction to government spending. "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man," Carter said. (Carter's speculation was later backed up by research: the political scientist Ashley Jardina, for instance, found that "more racially resentful whites are far more likely to say they support the Tea party and rate it more positively.")

The white backlash to Obama's presidency continued throughout his two terms, helped along by Rupert Murdoch's media empire and the Republican party, which won majorities in both houses of Congress by promising to obstruct anything Obama tried to accomplish. Neither project kept Obama from a second term, but this does not mean that they were without effect: though Obama lost white voters by 12% in 2008, four years later he would lose them by 20%, the worst showing among white voters for a successful candidate in US history.

At the same time, Obama's victory suggested to some observers the vindication of the demographic argument: the changing racial composition of the US appeared to have successfully neutralised the preferences of the white electorate, at least as far as the presidency was concerned. ("There just are not enough middle-aged white guys that we can scrape together to win," said one Republican after Obama's victory.)

What's more, the first wave of Black Lives Matter protests, which attracted international attention in the summer of 2014, prompted a torrent of demonstrative introspection among white people, especially online. As the critic Hua Hsu would write, half-teasingly, in 2015, "it feels as though we are living in the moment when white people, on a generational scale, have become self-aware".

Not for the first time, however, what was visible on Twitter was a poor indicator of deeper social trends. As we now know, the ways in which whiteness was becoming most salient at mid-decade were largely not the ways that prompted recent university graduates to announce their support for Rhodes Must Fall on Instagram. Far more momentous was the version of white identity politics that appreciated the advantages of whiteness and worried about them slipping away; that saw in immigration an existential threat; and that wanted, more than anything, to "Take Back Control" and to "Make America Great Again".

It was this version of whiteness that helped to power the twin shocks of 2016: first Brexit and then Trump. The latter, especially - not just the fact of Trump's presidency but the tone of it, the unrestrained vengeance and vituperation that animated it - put paid to any lingering questions about whether whiteness had renounced its superiority complex. Ta-Nehisi Coates, who more than any other single person had been responsible for making the bumbling stereotype of whiteness offered up by Stuff White People Like seem hopelessly myopic, understood what was happening immediately. "Trump truly is something new - the first president whose entire political existence hinges on the fact of a black president," Coates wrote in the autumn of 2017. "His ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power."

In 1860, a man who called himself "Ethiop" published an essay in The Anglo-African Magazine, which has been called the first Black literary journal in the US. The author behind the pseudonym was William J Wilson, a former bootmaker who later served as the principal of Brooklyn's first public school for Black children. Wilson's essay bore the headline, What Shall We Do with the White People?

The article was meant in part meant to mock the white authors and statesmen who had endlessly asked themselves a similar question about Black people in the US. But it was not only a spoof. In a tone that mimicked the smug paternalism of his targets, he laid out a comprehensive indictment of white rule in the country: the plunder and murder of the "Aborigines"; the theft and enslavement of Africans; the hypocrisy embodied by the American constitution, government and white churches. At the root of all this, he wrote, was "a long continued, extensive and almost complete system of wrongdoing" that made the men and women who enabled it into "restless, grasping" marauders. "In view of the existing state of things around us," Wilson proposed at the end, "let our constant thought be, what for the best good of all shall we do with the White people?"

Much has changed since Wilson's time, but a century and a half on, his question remains no less pertinent. For some people, such as the political scientist Eric Kaufmann, whiteness is what it has always pretended to be. Though he acknowledges that races are not genetically defined, Kaufmann nevertheless sees them as defensible divisions of humanity that have some natural basis: they emerge, he suggests, "through a blend of unconscious colour-processing and slowly evolved cultural conventions". In his 2019 book Whiteshift, Kaufmann argues that the history of oppression by white people is "real, but moot", and he advocates for something he calls "symmetrical multiculturalism", in which "identifying as white, or with a white tradition of nationhood, is no more racist than identifying as black". What shall we do with the white people? Kaufmann thinks we should encourage them to take pride in being white, lest they turn to more violent means: "Freezing out legitimate expressions of white identity allows the far right to own it, and acts as a recruiting sergeant for their wilder ideas."

From another perspective - my own, most days - whiteness means something different from other racial and ethnic identities because it has had a different history than other racial and ethnic identities. Across three-and-a-half centuries, whiteness has been wielded as a weapon on a global scale; Blackness, by contrast, has often been used as a shield. (As Du Bois put it, what made whiteness new and different was "the imperial width of the thing - the heaven-defying audacity.") Nor is there much reason to believe that whiteness will ever be content to seek "legitimate expressions", whatever those might look like. The religion of whiteness had 50 years to reform itself along non-supremacist lines, to prove that it was fit for innocuous coexistence. Instead, it gave us Donald Trump.

Yet even this does not fully answer Wilson's question. For if it's easy enough to agree in theory that the only reasonable moral response to the long and very much non-moot history of white supremacy is the abolitionist stance advocated in the pages of Race Traitor - ie, to make whiteness meaningless as a group identity, to shove it into obsolescence alongside "Prussian" and "Etruscan" - it seems equally apparent that whiteness is not nearly so fragile as Ignatiev and Garvey had imagined. Late in his life, James Baldwin described whiteness as "a moral choice", as a way of emphasising that it was not a natural fact. But whiteness is more than a moral choice: it is a dense network of moral choices, the vast majority of which have been made for us, often in times and places very distant from our own. In this way whiteness is a problem like climate change or economic inequality: it is so thoroughly imbricated in the structure of our everyday lives that it makes the idea of moral choices look quaint.

As with climate change, however, the only thing more difficult than such an effort would be trying to live with the alternative. Whiteness may seem inevitable and implacable, and Toni Morrison surely had it right when she said that the world "will not become unracialised by assertion". (To wake up tomorrow and decide I am no longer white would help no one.) Even so, after 350 years, it remains the case, as Nell Irvin Painter argues, that whiteness "is an idea, not a fact". Not alone, and not without much work to repair the damage done in its name, it still must be possible to change our minds.

This article was amended on 20 April 2021 to correct a reference to Eric Williams being the first president of Trinidad and Tobago. He was in fact the first prime minister.

Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, llisten to our podcasts here and sign up to the long read weekly email here.

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The invention of whiteness: the long history of a dangerous idea

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The long read: Before the 17th century, people did not think of themselves as belonging to something called the white race. But once the idea was invented, it quickly began to reshape the modern world

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Problematising the role of the white researcher in social justice research - Charlotte Chadderton

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Problematising the role of the white researcher in social justice research - Charlotte Chadderton

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Problematising the role of the white researcher in social justice research

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Why Claiming to be “Colour Blind” Doesn’t Make You Anti-racist - April Whitworth

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Why Claiming to be “Colour Blind” Doesn’t Make You Anti-racist - April Whitworth

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Pretending to be colour-blind isn't woke.

✏️ April Whitworth

The global prevalence of the Black Lives Matter movement currently is incredible and extremely overdue. This has triggered people across the world, including myself, to educate themselves on racism and its history.

The idea of 'color blindness' as a racial outlook, whilst this may seem like an attractive idea in theory, it has real-life impact. This is an important, yet often overlooked, topic because it is at the forefront of how many white people perceive and talk about race. As well as this, color blindness links to key concepts, such as white privilege, white normativity, and systemic racism.

So what do people mean by colour blindness? When someone describes themselves as colourblind, it often doesn't always come from a bad place. They try to see and treat everyone as the same, regardless of racial background. You hear this most commonly in childhood: white children are taught on an explicit level that people of colour are no different to them (although implicitly of course children pick up that whiteness is preferable and associate it with goodness, virtue and beauty).

Some do use it in a way to behave in a racist manner to avoid being held accountable: 'I don't see race therefore I cannot be racist'. No matter the intent, color blindness is an inappropriate and unhelpful outlook for racial equality.

By someone saying they 'don't see colour', it means a lot of things, whether intended or not. Indirectly, it refuses to acknowledge that race shapes one's life experience, and ignores the discrimination or injustice they have faced due to their race. As well as this, the fact that white people can simply ignore the presence of race demonstrates white privilege in action: people of colour are consistently reminded of their race through discrimination and therefore don't have the luxury to 'ignore' it.

image from Unsplash

This concept of 'white privilege' means that the structure and systems in place inherently favour white people, and they are able to retrieve the benefits from this. This links with the idea that white is seen as 'normal' and the 'default' (this is referred to as white normativity) and therefore white people often don't see their race as part of their identity.

As well as the ability to ignore race, it also comes across as an excuse for white people to not listen to those who have experienced racism first-hand, or to learn about complex concepts, in order to avoid uncomfortable conversations. Talking about racism requires self-reflection: this is needed, even though it is sometimes uneasy. Fundamentally, if you can't see race, you don't see racial inequality. This allows racism to continue in our society's structures and institutions (known as systemic or institutional racism) whilst allowing white people to avoid responsibility for it.

This sentiment is amplified in crises - for example, with the recent murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain (to name just a few). If you refuse to see race, you are refusing to acknowledge the extent to which structural change is required - for instance, within the US policing and justice system. By being colourblind, you are refusing to see both explicit and implicit racism which continues today. If you can't see race, you can't act against systemic racism: you must either be actively anti-racist, or complicit in racism.

Colour blindness also causes issues in everyday life. If an employer claims they 'don't see colour', this often leads to a lack of sufficient diversity across employees, with the vast majority being white. Additionally, it is often used as an excuse as to why they picked the white candidate over the black and minority Ethic candidate ('I don't see colour so race didn't even factor into my decision' type of outlook). Workplace discrimination occurs in the application process but continues into employment. Such behaviours must be questioned in these institutions at a grassroot level, because it influences who is in power at the top. In the FTSE 100 companies, there are more people named David and Steve, than women or ethnic minorities!

image from Unsplash

For many white people reading this, colour-blindness has been an idea you have grown up with. I challenge you to create a personal environment where you can acknowledge and listen to people's experiences of race and more generally, be proactive about being anti-racist in each scope of your life.

This means educating both yourself and those around you, speaking out, listening to others, and deep reflection: you may have inbuilt biases you were not aware of. Reni Eddo-Lodge's 'Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race' made me consider race in different lenses I had failed to consider before. This movement has inspired me not only to be against racism, but to commit to anti-racism in my daily life through every means possible, and I encourage you to do the same.

This individual growth can translate into tangible change with collective action. Although signing petitions, donating funds, and attending protests, are critical, group action extends beyond this. I encourage you to transfer your knowledge into your relevant institution (be it your workplace, school, university, club etc) and work with other like-minded individuals to challenge racist conventions or principles which are entrenched in the institution. By educating ourselves and working together we can begin to dismantle the systems on which white supremacy is built.
Thanks for reading our article! We know young people's opinions matter and really appreciate everyone who reads us.

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Why Claiming to be "Colour Blind" Doesn't Make You Anti-racist

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Pretending to be colour-blind isn't woke. ✏️ April Whitworth The global prevalence of the Black Lives Matter movement currently is incredible and extremely overdue. This has triggered people across the world, including myself, to educate themselves on racism and its history.

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Poma: White Saviorism in Education Hides in Plain Sight - Sasha Poma

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Poma: White Saviorism in Education Hides in Plain Sight - Sasha Poma

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Conversations about racial discrimination against Black, Indigenous and people of color ask us to reflect on our own social privileges and experiences with racism. True reflection means examining every facet of our lives - especially our academic environments. White saviorism among educators in BIPOC communities, to start with, urgently needs to be checked. As the Salt Lake Valley grows more diverse, white teachers and school leaders must become comfortable addressing their own racial biases and work to deconstruct white saviorist mindsets and assumptions. They need to learn to bridge disconnects between themselves and their racially marginalized students to be truly effective educators.

While there's no neat dictionary definition of the term, the white savior complex generally refers to white people going into BIPOC spaces for self-serving purposes. According to Contemporary Racism, these purposes include "to somehow prove that the White person isn't racist, to boost their own ego, and most alarming, to attempt to 'save' people of color and get them out of unfortunate circumstances."

White educators who teach in minority communities can easily fall into a mindset that resembles this definition. White teachers working with students of color are often praised as "heros" or philanthropists for doing so, when they should just be praised for entering a field as demanding as teaching. Whiteness does not automatically make someone more qualified to teach students of color, just as being of a certain race does not dictate a person's intellect or lack thereof.

This attitude does more harm than good. As a Latina, I got "checked in on" by my white teachers more often than others to see if I understood the material. They would then be surprised and praised me when I performed well, even though that same accomplishment was expected of my white peers. One teacher reaffirmed to me (or to herself) that I did not, in fact, need her help, which was an odd statement that I didn't understand until later on. These doubts about my intellect have made me feel I have to prove I know what I'm doing, whether through raising my hand too often in class or not asking for help when I need it.

These unchecked toxic attitudes among white teachers have long-term effects. Study after study shows white teachers have lower expectations for students of color, which greatly affects their motivation and achievement. The biases white teachers have about people of color also impact expulsion and discipline rates and many other facets of students' academic experience.

To be clear, there's nothing inherently wrong with white teachers wanting to work with and support students of color, so long as it's done in a good mindset. However, data shows that teachers of color benefit not just students of color, but students of all backgrounds simply because they have higher regard for all of their students. But teachers of color are few and far between, which presents a problem when we look at how white teachers navigate BIPOC spaces.

There is a disconnect between white teachers and students of color, and white teachers are largely unprepared for the teaching environments they encounter. An academic article titled "I Can't Be Racist - I Teach in an Urban School, and I'm a Nice White Lady!" opens with an anecdote from one of the white authors, who was a recently licensed teacher. When her first job was in a majority Latinx classroom, she says that she "had no idea how to acknowledge my whiteness and their brownness and what that meant to them or me." This lack of awareness makes it extremely difficult for students of color to relate to their teachers and vice versa.

This issue is not going to go away - there is real work and progress to be made that seldom gets acknowledged. And Utah should be engaged in this reckoning between teachers and students - we are not exempt from this problem. According to a 2014-15 survey, 76% of Utah teachers are female and 88% are white. Those numbers do not correlate to Utah's increasingly diverse student populations. Last year, after the murder of George Floyd, Yan'Tu Barber, a Black fifth-grade teacher in Jordan School District, noted that none of his colleagues seemed to address the tragedy or racism in general, so he felt responsible to do so alone. During this year's Black History Month, a Utah school initially allowed parents to opt out of being taught about BHM. Utah schools have a hard time having these basic conversations about racism with students. How can we expect to then address white saviorism among faculty?

It starts by not treating racism as a taboo topic in Utah schools, as well as advocating for students of color. This includes anything from being open to difficult conversations to broadening what students read, from different historical narratives to new primary sources. Teachers should be openly anti-racist and think critically about how their privileges and biases affect their students. Tony Zani, a teacher at Rose Park Elementary said in a Deseret News article, "...we aren't trying to be colorblind. We are working to reject racism and to honor every student's race and culture. Students at Rose Park are more invested in school because the teachers honor the students for exactly who they are." Institutions should also be open to reforming outdated curriculum and make time to address racial biases and issues among faculty. Facilitating workshops and hard discussions about teacher positionality and race should not be simply encouraged but enthusiastically implemented into teacher education.

White saviorism starts with the mindset of any white individual who enters BIPOC spaces - it isn't solely a systemic issue. By examining ways to connect with students of color and address racism within the academic sphere, white teachers can enter their diverse classroom with a better, clearer mission. In the words of activist Lilla Watson, "If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."

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Poma: White Saviorism in Education Hides in Plain Sight

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Conversations about racial discrimination against Black, Indigenous and people of color ask us to reflect on our own social privileges and experiences with racism. True reflection means examining every facet of our lives - especially our academic environments. White saviorism among educators in BIPOC communities, to start with, urgently needs to be checked.

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Dr. Robin DiAngelo discusses 'White Fragility' - Robin DiAngelo

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Dr. Robin DiAngelo discusses 'White Fragility' - Robin DiAngelo

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Dr. Robin DiAngelo discusses 'White Fragility'

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White Privilege: The Myth of a Post-Racial Society - Kalwant Bhopal

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White Privilege: The Myth of a Post-Racial Society - Kalwant Bhopal

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The unexamined Whiteness of teaching: how White teachers maintain and enact dominant racial ideologies - Bree Picower

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The unexamined Whiteness of teaching: how White teachers maintain and enact dominant racial ideologies - Bree Picower

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Whiteness and coalition with Emma Dabiri – We Need To Talk About Whiteness – The Podcast

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Whiteness and coalition with Emma Dabiri – We Need To Talk About Whiteness – The Podcast

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We Need To Talk About Whiteness - with Emma Dabiri by myriam francois

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Ep 25: Whiteness and coalition - Emma Dabiri is an Irish-Nigerian activist, broadcaster and academic - Her latest book “What white people can do next: from allyship to coalition” has been described as “as though it’s written by the love child of James Connolly and Audre Lorde”- she joins me to discuss anti-racism vs liberation, the invention of whiteness and why the revolution won’t be instagram-lived.

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'Declarations of Whiteness' (After Sara Ahmed) - Tré Ventour

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'Declarations of Whiteness' (After Sara Ahmed) - Tré Ventour

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'Declarations of Whiteness' (After Sara Ahmed)

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'Declarations of Whiteness' (After Sara Ahmed). I wrote this poem inspired by the work I have come across by academic Sara Ahmed on Whiteness (and other things). This poem is named for....

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White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack - Peggy McIntosh

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White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack - Peggy McIntosh

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Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place - Nirmal Power

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Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place - Nirmal Power

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Everyday experiences of racism in English secondary schools - Remi Joseph-Salisbury

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Everyday experiences of racism in English secondary schools - Remi Joseph-Salisbury

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Racism is endemic in schooling. Deep-rooted and institutionalised, it impacts upon the everyday experiences of students: it saturates all, from curricula, to teachers and teaching, to school policies. Rarely is it given the attention it deserves.

In 2020 I interviewed secondary school teachers in Greater Manchester, and published the subsequent report, Race and Racism in English Secondary Schools, with the Runnymede Trust. Following a long body of critical scholarship that precedes it, the report draws attention to some of the key issues in education.

'The teaching workforce is still overwhelmingly white', it notes. As Bernard Coard noted over 50 years ago, this has very real implications. Last year, Hillman found that in England's state schools, 'Black and Asian pupils are three times less likely to have teachers who look like them'. Whilst there is one white teacher for every thirteen white students, there is one Asian teacher for every forty-three Asian students, and one Black teacher for every forty-two Black students. In some regions the figures are much starker. They are starker too, in the more senior roles (such as headteachers). Whilst diversifying the teaching force is important for all students, not least because of the message that representation transmits every day, it is much more important that schools ensure all teachers are racially literate, and committed to antiracism. Nadena Doharty's work demonstrates the harms caused by teaching that lacks racial literacy. To radically transform schools, racial literacy has to be a prerequisite for entering the profession, and a repeated and ever-present commitment throughout a teacher's career.

If teachers are to teach in ways that promote and embody antiracism, then this needs to be enabled by curricula. This was another key issue highlighted in the report, and illustrates the importance of the work that groups like The Decolonising Geography Educators Group are engaged in. Curricula too often fail to reflect the diversity of contemporary society, and rarely engage with the colonial legacies - or racist underpinnings - of contemporary Britain. As one teacher explained,

"... the curriculum itself is very narrow, history - it's all about white history, it's about kings and queens. What is all that about? You are not talking about colonialism, you are not talking about the East India Company, you are not talking about slavery, you are not acknowledging any of that stuff - it's all about kings and queens, about Henry 8th was promiscuous and he married all these women."

The erasures and distortions produced and perpetuated by curricula are important because they play a role in shaping student views on the social world (though many students find more critical education elsewhere, in supplementary schools, for example). These distortions deny the ways that structural forces (white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy) shape our deeply unequal social worlds. Like teaching, curricula do not stand in isolation. Rather, meaningful transformation would need to be supported by changes to textbooks and resources, and on exam boards whose requirements play a key role in dictating what is taught.

In the report, I also call for an overhaul of school policies to embed a culture of antiracism in schools. One important point here, that I did not initially articulate in the report, is the need to find ways to combat racism without relying on harmful 'zero-tolerance' policies that rely on school exclusions. Since the publication of the report, concern over school policies has only increased in prominence, particularly with regard to school uniform policies that discriminate against Afro-textured hair, and Black students. Despite the growing protest and resistance of students, parents, academics, and activists - which has included two legal cases - students continue to be subject to disciplinary procedures because of their natural hair. This social control of Black student's bodies is a stark illustration of the way that institutional racism operates at the level of the everyday. However, in the Pimlico Academy protests, the Halo Code collective's work in producing a charter for schools, and the ongoing campaigning of many others, there is no shortage of hope.

The impressive work of campaigners against the Islamophobic PREVENT duty is also worthy of support from those of us committed to improving the everyday educational experiences of minoritised students. So too, is the vital work of No More Exclusions who, highlighting the devastating (and racially uneven) impact of school exclusions, have called for a moratorium on school exclusions. Their recent report, 'What About the Other 29?', should offer food for thought for all of us.

Another issue highlighted in the report, that has increased in prominence since the publication, is the presence of police in schools. In the report, I showed that 'teachers have legitimate and urgent concerns that should be heeded', noting that the negative impact is felt most acutely by racially minoritised, and other minoritised students. More substantive work on this issue has since been produced elsewhere, such as the Decriminalise the Classroom report, co-authored by Laura Connelly, Roxy Legane, and myself. The recent horrifying case of Child Q, described by Professor Gus John as 'state-sanctioned rape of a minor', illustrates the profound harm that a police presence in schools can have on students, in this case a Black girl. As evidence of harm mounts, and school boards in the US act to remove police from schools, it would be a mistake to see the Child Q case as an aberration: it is, instead, the tip of the iceberg. As Jas Nijjar has argued, police-school partnerships are part of the 'war on Black youth'.A petition launched following the Child Q report has already gained over 35,000 signatures, and resistance is growing. If we are cognisant of the deep-seated institutional racism in British policing (we certainly should be), those of us concerned about racism and injustice in schools have to recognise the presence of police in schools as intolerable. As respondents to our Decriminalise the Classroom report made clear, those funds would be far better invested elsewhere - in counselling and mental health provision, for example. Those concerned about this issue should check out the No Police in Schools campaign website.

The harms perpetuated by our education system are profound, wide-ranging, and extend way beyond those pointed out here, or in my original report. As the Black Lives Matter movement has brought forth greater attention to the prospect of abolition, it is time to think about what such ideas might mean for education. Remembering that abolition is not just about what we tear down, but about what new systems we build, it is time for a radical revisioning of education - for the sake of all students, but particularly those at the sharp end of structural harms.

Dr Remi Joseph-Salisbury is Presidential Fellow in Ethnicity and Inequalities at the University of Manchester. He authored the report Race and Racism in English Secondary Schools, and has recently co-authored, with Laura Connelly, the book Anti-Racist Scholar-Activism, published by Manchester University Press.

This article is the fourth in our series of reflections on 'everyday geographies', building up to the 2022 annual conference of the Geographical Association on this theme. You can read the first, by Gavin Brown on the Non-Stop Picket of the South African Embassy, here. The second, by Luke de Noronha on everyday racism and the violence of borders, is here. The third, by Lola Olufemi on 'everyday atrocity' can be read here.

The image at the head of this article is from an illustration by India Joseph, and is used here with thanks.

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Everyday experiences of racism in English secondary schools - Decolonising Geography

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Racism is endemic in schooling. Deep-rooted and institutionalised, it impacts upon the everyday experiences of students: it saturates all, from curricula, to teachers and teaching, to school policies. Rarely is it given the attention it deserves. In 2020 I interviewed secondary school teachers in Greater Manchester, and published the subsequent report, Race and Racism in English Secondary Schools , with the Runnymede Trust.

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Superior: The Return of Race Science - Angela Saini 

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Superior: The Return of Race Science - Angela Saini 

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‘I am not de problem’: Benjamin Zephaniah on modern racism – Benjamin Zephaniah

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‘I am not de problem’: Benjamin Zephaniah on modern racism – Benjamin Zephaniah

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'I am not de problem': Benjamin Zephaniah on modern racism - Newsnight

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The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World - Kehinde Andrews 

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The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World - Kehinde Andrews 

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Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire - Akala

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Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire - Akala

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The School That Tried to End Racism: The School That Tried to End Racism - On Demand

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A British school helps its students uncover and eradicate hidden racial biases

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Elite Capture | Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Emma Dabiri

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Elite Capture | Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Emma Dabiri

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0:00 / 1:10:24•Watch full video

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Elite Capture | Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Emma Dabiri

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No more white saviours, thanks: how to be a true anti-racist ally

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No more white saviours, thanks: how to be a true anti-racist ally - Nova Reid

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No more white saviours, thanks: how to be a true anti-racist ally - Nova Reid

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Show caption
'A good ally is a person who advocates and works alongside the Black community, who uplifts communities for a shared common goal': Nova Reid. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer

I felt overwhelmed: 40,000 hits to my website - 50 times more than the average month - plus 2,000 emails, people tagging me in social media posts to let their followers know they had signed up to my online anti-racism course - but not always actually signing up. The murder of George Floyd had thrown up a very apparent collective sense of white guilt around the world.

I had been doing anti-racism work long before the summer of 2020, so I didn't understand why - increased volume aside - some of these interactions felt so different to the usual business inquiries I receive. I felt there was such a sense of ownership over me, my time, my words, what I should talk about and when. The more boundaries I put up, the more they would trample over them.

Not only huge volumes of emails and requests to "quickly pick my brain", but also WhatsApp and text messages from friends and colleagues (some I hadn't heard from in years). They weren't checking in to see how I was. They were using me as a priest at confession, to whom they could start offloading their own sins and shame about racism.

When one white woman didn't get an immediate response from me, her tone mutated from the previous "with love and light" signoff to telling me my activism was "bullshit". Another flooded my Instagram DMs to "find out" if I had received her email. When she didn't get an immediate reply, she went through my followers list and contacted a mutual colleague, asking if she could hurry things along.

There was a distinct and clear difference between the intention behind these kinds of interactions and the usual inquiries: these were self-serving. This was a stage performance, a way to manage their perception, so their ego could feel better about all that's wrong in the world.
Race
Many came swooping in with a freshly ironed superhero cape, it having only just occurred to them that they, too, could do something about racism.

In the weeks that followed I saw a great deal of what I call "performative allyship": white people cancelling and shaming "those other white people over there'' on the internet; making a corporate statement to stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, without checking in on any Black staff; sharing links to articles that their friends should read that they hadn't read themselves; donating to charity without any further anti-racist action; liking Black friends' posts about racism, but not picking up the phone to check in on them at the height of Black Lives Matter; perfectly curating a mini, styled photographic shoot of anti-racism books and using them as props on social media feeds without having ever actually read any of them.

I don't know how else to say this so I'll just say it: Black people don't need white people to rescue us. We don't.

We have been rescuing ourselves and revolting against the oppressor throughout history. Contrary to the popular belief that only great white men rescued us from slavery, it was the Haitian Revolution from 1791 to 1804, the only successful slave revolt in history, that instigated the global abolishment of slavery.

A number of other slave rebellions in the British West Indies made the British government rethink whether continuing to enslave Black Africans was going to continue to be sustainable. Why? Because there was a huge fear (still present to this day) that Black folk would want to seek revenge and go on a murderous killing spree of white Europeans.

We've been revolting, rescuing ourselves and rising up, in spite of systemic oppression, for centuries. We've had no choice but to, for our own self-preservation and survival. What we really need white people to do is consciously, consistently and intentionally unlearn racism. It's no secret that shame and guilt go hand in hand with unlearning racism - but you can't do this work in any meaningful, or truthful way without experiencing these feelings at some point and you will consistently feel uncomfortable. Trying to do anti-racism work while remaining comfortable, to actively avoid confronting feelings, is just not possible.

Performative allyship has very little to do with reducing harm to Black folk and ending systems of oppression. It happens when you want to skip to the end bit. Performative allyship is leaping from half-listening, straight into action.

Students often find their way to my online anti- racism academy via Instagram, word of mouth or seeing a colleague or someone they admire engaging in the work and feeling compelled to do better at work and in the world around them. A lot come because they want to raise socially conscious children. Others, if I am honest, also come under the guise of guilt. One such student shared something with me: "My performative allyship and saviourism is somewhere between perfectionism, people-pleasing and wanting to make everything OK in the world, so that I don't have to feel the pain, discomfort, hurt and anger of others. I want utopia so I don't have to deal with big emotions. I wanted the answers quickly in anti-racism work, so I could do my bit and move on. I realised I can't make a difference if I can't face the thought of not being liked or upsetting people."

In order for true diversity to flourish, we need to first become unswervingly anti-racist. That means doing more than watching a few documentaries or reading some books, says Nova Reid. Consciously 'unlearning' racism is the crucial first step

This student also realised that what was holding them back from being anti-racist was a common theme throughout all aspects of their life. They had a real fear of not belonging and upsetting people - and a bigger fear of dealing with these feelings. So much so that they would usually avoid them. But much like most students who engage in my work, it has also taken them down a path of healing and addressing parts of their behaviour that need attention. Because you cannot be truly anti-racist without confronting parts of yourself that you hide or ignore.

There's an impulsive desire to fix, to be the hero of the story, to swoop in and rescue and, for some, it also comes from a place of superiority and/or a desire to be forgiven. It feeds into something called the "White Saviour Industrial Complex" - a term first coined by Harvard professor and novelist Teju Cole in 2012. "White Saviour Industrial Complex is not about justice, it's about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege... There is much more to doing good work than 'making a difference'. There is the principle of first do no harm. There is the idea that those who are being helped ought to be consulted over the matters that concern them," explains Cole.

This can be difficult to understand, and to get right. People really do think they are doing the right thing, but without understanding the consequences. The British charitable organisation Comic Relief came under fire in February 2019 when Stacey Dooley went to Uganda on behalf of the charity and shared a photograph of herself on social media with a young Black toddler, holding him in her arms and cooing at how cute he looked. Some white people were outraged when the (Black) Labour MP David Lammy responded to the photo with a tweet by saying, "The world does not need any more white saviours."

Of course charities and aid organisations are important, but how aid is presented is key. Any charity that does not have a core mission to empower the communities they are serving is problematic. Instead of showcasing "poverty and trauma porn", charities could intentionally choose to centre Black voices and share news about the inspiring work being done by people in the community.

'To be truly anti-racist, confront the parts of yourself that you hide.' Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer
Performative allyship has very little to do with reducing harm to Black folk and ending systems of oppression There is a fine line between helping and being performative, but nevertheless there is a line
Don't underestimate the power of one-dimensional storytelling and representation and how it can inform your worldview. I still recall noticing, as a seven-year-old, that the only people who looked like me on television were in charity idents, with flies buzzing round their faces, with the white English man with the sombre sad voice as a backdrop. That's improved, but there's still a long way to go. There is a fine line between helping and being performative, but nevertheless there is a line.

Being an ally means being able to recognise this. To me, an ally is a person who advocates and works alongside the Black community, who uplifts communities for a shared common goal driven solely by the cause - not so that they can look good.

It is a person who wants to learn how to recognise what everyday racism looks like - from pay inequity to social persecution - and address it. A person who learns to hold the tension between being asked to speak up while, at the same time, also being asked not to speak up on behalf of Black folk and people of colour and just listen. To hold the fear of saying the wrong thing, while having a strong desire to say and do something.

It is a person who learns to actively listen - to respond rather than react - and take considered and thoughtful actions and welcome feedback on inherent racism without spiralling out of control.

It is a person who accepts that there is no certificate or completion date. To accept they will get it wrong and do it anyway. But it is mostly a person who accepts that there is no magic formula, or a one-size-fits-all approach to this work. The only way to be truly anti-racist is go on a journey to unlearn your own inherent racism, because it is on that journey that you will find your unique path to becoming actively anti-racist.

To go back to Teju Cole: first do no harm. That means acknowledging and getting curious about where this innate desire to rescue Black people and be one of the "good white people" is coming from. That means being conscious of your motivations to help - it means being honest.

Anti-racism isn't about claiming to be the fountain of all knowledge on Black people because you've read some books and watched some documentaries.

This is about working alongside, supporting, accepting you are going to get it wrong and showing up anyway. It means accepting that anything worthy of seismic change will not happen without discomfort, consistency and a whole heap of courage.

If someone is in any doubt, they should ask themselves: am I acting because it's the right thing to do, to centre the needs of others, or am I doing this for myself, to feel better and make myself look good?
The Good Ally: A Guided Anti-Racism Journey from Bystander to Changemaker by Nova Reid is published by HQ, HarperCollins at £16.99. Buy a copy for £14.78 at guardianbookshop.com

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No more white saviours, thanks: how to be a true anti-racist ally

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I felt overwhelmed: 40,000 hits to my website - 50 times more than the average month - plus 2,000 emails, people tagging me in social media posts to let their followers know they had signed up to my online anti-racism course - but not always actually signing up.

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Why I Say 'Decolonisation is Impossible'

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Why I Say ‘Decolonisation is impossible’ - Foluke Adebisi

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Why I Say ‘Decolonisation is impossible’ - Foluke Adebisi

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Why I Say 'Decolonisation is Impossible'

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This post is a reflection on my 'decolonial' work in 2019. I think of myself and my work as always having been decolonial, though I was initially focused mainly on what decolonial theory meant for African law and politics.

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The Lit in Colour book list: 100 texts by writers of colour: Primary edition for Key Stage 2

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The Lit in Colour book list: 100 texts by writers of colour: Primary edition for Key Stage 2

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Facilitating Difficult Race Discussions - Derald Wing Sue

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Facilitating Difficult Race Discussions - Derald Wing Sue

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Education policy as an act of white supremacy: whiteness, critical race theory and education reform - David Gillborn

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Education policy as an act of white supremacy: whiteness, critical race theory and education reform - David Gillborn

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Education policy as an act of white supremacy

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Anti-Racism Education | Training for Schools (KS1-4)

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Anti-Racism Education | Training for Schools (KS1-4)

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Anti-Racism Education | Training for Schools (KS1-4)

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Katie explained foundational concepts in anti-racist education for our student teachers, through her accessible and motivating session. As a model for knowledgeable, committed and engaging teaching and learning, her work is inspiring; our students left with greater confidence to address issues of 'race' and racism through their own practice.
Kathryn Bennett, English PGDE Tutor, University of Sheffield

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Anti-Racism Education | Training for Schools (KS1-4)

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Katie explained foundational concepts in anti-racist education for our student teachers, through her accessible and motivating session. As a model for knowledgeable, committed and engaging teaching and learning, her work is inspiring; our students left with greater confidence to address issues of 'race' and racism through their own practice.

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Glossary of useful terminology for anti-racist education from a Scottish perspective. A powerful learning tool for those seeking to raise their racial consciousness and make a difference in education.

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Questions academics can ask to decolonise their classrooms

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Questions academics can ask to decolonise their classrooms

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Asking questions can create new ways of teaching and learning. StepanPopov/Shutterstock

The curriculum is not just the "stuff" that students must learn to be knowledgeable and skilled in a particular discipline. It's about more than just content.

Sociologists of education argue that "curriculum" is a highly ideological hybrid discourse. This means that it includes implicit ways of knowing, ways of doing and ways of being - as well as content.

In South African universities, curriculum issues came to the fore during a series of nationwide student protests between 2015 and 2017. Students have argued that what's being taught in university courses is imported from the global North and doesn't draw enough on African-based research and the work of academics from the global South. Students have also argued that course materials don't take the backgrounds of most South African learners into account in terms of culture, language or method.

Research conducted among academics and students at a historically white South African university suggests that many are thinking about "decolonising the curriculum" from only one angle: changing the content of what they teach.

So, for example, they might add Africa-based authors to a reading list. But they don't shift the tasks required to engage with that literature, which still leaves many students feeling alienated and marginalised.

Our own work with academics in the humanities and social sciences in South Africa shows there's not much engagement around how different ways of teaching might bring decolonial practices into the classroom. Universities in other parts of Africa are far ahead when it comes to decolonisation. Both Makerere University in Uganda, and the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, for example, have oriented their curricula towards inclusion and social justice since the 1960s.

It's vital for academics in South Africa to start asking deep questions that examine what decolonisation might look like in their teaching, and how this can be achieved. We were part of a working group at the University of Cape Town (UCT) that generated a number of questions which could serve as points of departure for beginning to think about decolonising ways of teaching.

Bridging gaps

In our work from UCT's Humanities Education Development Unit, we work mostly on tutor training and on first year courses, in partnership with departments. Our research and development work suggests that there is uncertainty among many academics about how exactly to take up the decolonial challenge in their own classroom practices.

To help bridge this gap, we've come up with a series of questions to encourage academics across faculties to unearth some of the norms, assumptions and everyday practices that are taken for granted and which may be entangled in the "hidden curriculum". This might help us to think through the "how" as well as the "what", as a first practical step towards "decolonising" our teaching.

These questions are based on discussions held during 2017 in a working group called "Decolonising Pedagogy in the Humanities". The group was made up of course conveners, teaching assistants, tutors and student representatives.

The questions were split into two themes: curriculum and pedagogy (or ways of teaching). Many questions emerged. We've distilled them into just 10 sets, with some supplementary thoughts, that lecturers could start asking as they work towards decolonising pedagogy.

Crucial questions

1. What principles, norms, values and worldviews inform your selection of knowledge for your curriculum? (think about absences as well as presences, centres as well as margins)

2. Do you articulate your own social and intellectual position, from which you speak when lecturing?

3. For whom do you design your curriculum? Who is your ideal, imagined student and what assumptions do you make about their backgrounds, culture, languages and schooling?

4. Does your curriculum reflect its location in Africa and the global South? To what extent does it draw on subjugated histories, voices, cultures and languages?

5. How does your teaching recognise and affirm the agency of black and first-generation students? How does your teaching legitimate and respect their experiences and cultures?

6. Can you speak indigenous or regional languages and relate to the cultures and lived experiences of all students? Do you draw on these valuable resources in your teaching?

7. How does your curriculum level the playing fields by requiring traditional/ white students to acquire the intellectual and cultural resources to function effectively in a plural society?

8. How do you build a learning community in your classroom where students learn actively from each other and draw on their own knowledge sources?

9. How do your assumptions about curriculum knowledge play out in the criteria that you use to assess students? What can you do to make your assessment practices more fair and valid for all students, without inducing high levels of anxiety? What assessment methods could show what all students are capable of, drawing on their strengths and promoting their agency and creativity?

10. How far do your teaching and assessment methods allow students to feel included without assuming assimilation?

What to do with the answers

When we ask questions such as these, we can begin to unearth some of our hidden practices. These practices can make students feel distanced or excluded from our disciplines and classroom interaction. Asking these questions also allows academics to become active learners within their own classroom, while creating more hospitable environments for learning.

Crucially, this allows students and staff to engage better with course content and with one another.

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Questions academics can ask to decolonise their classrooms

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It's vital for academics in South Africa to start asking deep questions that examine what decolonialism could look like in their teaching.

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Why Claiming to be “Colour Blind” Doesn’t Make You Anti-racist

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Why Claiming to be “Colour Blind” Doesn’t Make You Anti-racist

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Pretending to be colour-blind isn't woke.

✏️ April Whitworth

The global prevalence of the Black Lives Matter movement currently is incredible and extremely overdue. This has triggered people across the world, including myself, to educate themselves on racism and its history.

The idea of 'color blindness' as a racial outlook, whilst this may seem like an attractive idea in theory, it has real-life impact. This is an important, yet often overlooked, topic because it is at the forefront of how many white people perceive and talk about race. As well as this, color blindness links to key concepts, such as white privilege, white normativity, and systemic racism.

So what do people mean by colour blindness? When someone describes themselves as colourblind, it often doesn't always come from a bad place. They try to see and treat everyone as the same, regardless of racial background. You hear this most commonly in childhood: white children are taught on an explicit level that people of colour are no different to them (although implicitly of course children pick up that whiteness is preferable and associate it with goodness, virtue and beauty).

Some do use it in a way to behave in a racist manner to avoid being held accountable: 'I don't see race therefore I cannot be racist'. No matter the intent, color blindness is an inappropriate and unhelpful outlook for racial equality.

By someone saying they 'don't see colour', it means a lot of things, whether intended or not. Indirectly, it refuses to acknowledge that race shapes one's life experience, and ignores the discrimination or injustice they have faced due to their race. As well as this, the fact that white people can simply ignore the presence of race demonstrates white privilege in action: people of colour are consistently reminded of their race through discrimination and therefore don't have the luxury to 'ignore' it.

image from Unsplash

This concept of 'white privilege' means that the structure and systems in place inherently favour white people, and they are able to retrieve the benefits from this. This links with the idea that white is seen as 'normal' and the 'default' (this is referred to as white normativity) and therefore white people often don't see their race as part of their identity.

As well as the ability to ignore race, it also comes across as an excuse for white people to not listen to those who have experienced racism first-hand, or to learn about complex concepts, in order to avoid uncomfortable conversations. Talking about racism requires self-reflection: this is needed, even though it is sometimes uneasy. Fundamentally, if you can't see race, you don't see racial inequality. This allows racism to continue in our society's structures and institutions (known as systemic or institutional racism) whilst allowing white people to avoid responsibility for it.

This sentiment is amplified in crises - for example, with the recent murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain (to name just a few). If you refuse to see race, you are refusing to acknowledge the extent to which structural change is required - for instance, within the US policing and justice system. By being colourblind, you are refusing to see both explicit and implicit racism which continues today. If you can't see race, you can't act against systemic racism: you must either be actively anti-racist, or complicit in racism.

Colour blindness also causes issues in everyday life. If an employer claims they 'don't see colour', this often leads to a lack of sufficient diversity across employees, with the vast majority being white. Additionally, it is often used as an excuse as to why they picked the white candidate over the black and minority Ethic candidate ('I don't see colour so race didn't even factor into my decision' type of outlook). Workplace discrimination occurs in the application process but continues into employment. Such behaviours must be questioned in these institutions at a grassroot level, because it influences who is in power at the top. In the FTSE 100 companies, there are more people named David and Steve, than women or ethnic minorities!

image from Unsplash

For many white people reading this, colour-blindness has been an idea you have grown up with. I challenge you to create a personal environment where you can acknowledge and listen to people's experiences of race and more generally, be proactive about being anti-racist in each scope of your life.

This means educating both yourself and those around you, speaking out, listening to others, and deep reflection: you may have inbuilt biases you were not aware of. Reni Eddo-Lodge's 'Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race' made me consider race in different lenses I had failed to consider before. This movement has inspired me not only to be against racism, but to commit to anti-racism in my daily life through every means possible, and I encourage you to do the same.

This individual growth can translate into tangible change with collective action. Although signing petitions, donating funds, and attending protests, are critical, group action extends beyond this. I encourage you to transfer your knowledge into your relevant institution (be it your workplace, school, university, club etc) and work with other like-minded individuals to challenge racist conventions or principles which are entrenched in the institution. By educating ourselves and working together we can begin to dismantle the systems on which white supremacy is built.
Thanks for reading our article! We know young people's opinions matter and really appreciate everyone who reads us.

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Why Claiming to be "Colour Blind" Doesn't Make You Anti-racist

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Pretending to be colour-blind isn't woke. ✏️ April Whitworth The global prevalence of the Black Lives Matter movement currently is incredible and extremely overdue. This has triggered people across the world, including myself, to educate themselves on racism and its history.

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An Introduction to Anti-Racism for Governors and Trustees

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An Introduction to Anti-Racism for Governors and Trustees

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Safeguarding children from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities | NSPCC Learning

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Safeguarding children from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities

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Safeguarding children from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities

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Introduction

Establishing anti-racist and anti-discriminatory practices in social work
This information is aimed at practitioners, but is also helpful for anyone working or volunteering with children and young people from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities.
Many children and young people who come from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities experience racism, bias, stereotyping or cultural misunderstanding as they grow up. It might happen at an individual, institutional or societal level and might be displayed consciously or unconsciously.

This can result in some children being more likely to come to the attention of child protection services, while other children are less likely to receive effective support (Nuffield Foundation, 2020).

When we talk about people from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities we're referring to a wide range of people from a variety of backgrounds with different individual experiences, including different experiences of racism. This includes groups such as Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities.

To make sure children from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities get the help and support they need, the adults working or volunteering with them and their families need to:

understand the challenges they face

build trusting relationships

take appropriate action to help keep children safe

use a strength-based approach to empower parents and carers from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities to take steps to keep their children safe.

We've pulled together learning from research evidence, case reviews and best practice guidance to help you mitigate racism and bias in your work with children and families from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities.

This includes information on:

bias and stereotypes

anti-discriminatory practice

communication and language barriers

engaging with communities

diversity, inclusion and empowerment in strategic decision making.

Racism, bias and stereotypes

Understanding racism, bias and stereotypes

Everyone has beliefs and prejudices about other people that are formed with or without our conscious awareness.

Unconscious bias might take the form of:

This might result in people making harmful generalisations about specific communities, or generalising all ethnic minorities as having similar traits, practices and beliefs. This in turn is likely to result in children and families not receiving the appropriate level of support and protection.

Unconscious bias

If adults working or volunteering with children are unaware that they have unconscious bias or do not act to mitigate it, this may have a negative impact on their ability to identify and respond appropriately to child abuse (IICSA, 2020).

For example, practitioners may sometimes have preconceived concerns about whether a child's parents or carers are legal immigrants (IICSA, 2020). By focusing on the parents' residency rather than their child's welfare, practitioners might not consider the lived experience of that child and miss indicators of abuse.

Unconscious bias might also lead practitioners to interpret behaviour differently depending on the ethnicity of the person displaying it. For instance, if a child from a Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities shows fear around a family member, this may be interpreted as a cultural expression of respect rather than an indicator of abuse (SCRA, 2017).

Practitioners might also have unconscious bias about who experiences different types of abuse, for example by connecting specific abuse types with specific groups of people. Without acknowledging and challenging these perceptions, practitioners might overlook the risk to children who do not fit the stereotype.

Adultification

Adultification is a form of bias where children from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities are perceived as being more 'streetwise', more 'grown up', less innocent and less vulnerable than other children. This particularly affects Black children, who might be viewed primarily as a threat rather than as a child who needs support (Davis 2022; Davis and Marsh, 2020; Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality, 2019).

Children who have been adultified might also be perceived as having more understanding of their actions and the consequences of their actions. For example, an analysis of case reviews found that practitioners assumed Black boys who were involved in gangs would be able to protect themselves from harm, even after they had been reported missing from home or care. This resulted in the practitioners not acting to protect the boys from sexual exploitation, youth violence and drug and alcohol misuse (Bernard and Harris, 2019).

Overlooking child protection concerns

Having conscious or unconscious bias can lead to professionals not taking child protection concerns about children from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities as seriously as they might do for children from other communities. Professionals might dismiss certain behaviours or practices as being part of that community's culture and as a result not take the necessary protective action (IICSA, 2020).

Some practitioners might worry about being perceived as culturally insensitive or racist if they raise concerns about children in Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities. This can also lead to them ignoring child protection concerns (IICSA, 2020; SCRA, 2017). Because they are worried about stereotyping, some people might try not to acknowledge another person's race or ethnicity. They might believe this helps them treat everyone equally. But this can result in practitioners applying a 'universal' approach to all families, without considering or finding out about parenting practices and beliefs in the child's family and culture (SCRA, 2017). This can prevent practitioners from asking open questions about a child's lived experiences, building up a picture of the child's life and identify any concerns.

Criminal justice system

Data shows that Black and mixed-race children are disproportionately represented within the youth justice system (Ministry of Justice and Youth Justice Board for England and Wales, 2021).

There are many complex reasons for this disparity between groups of children (Lammy Review, 2017). One reason might be that Black and mixed-race children are sometimes adultified and held to a more mature standard of behaviour than their peers. This might lead to children receiving a criminal justice response from the adults around them, rather than a child protection response (Davis and Marsh, 2020).

There are higher than average rates of school exclusion amongst children from some communities - particularly those from Black Caribbean, Gypsy, Traveller and Roma backgrounds; whilst there are lower than average rates amongst other communities. These include Chinese, Indian and Bangladeshi communities (Department for Education (DfE), 2020). Being excluded from school can lead to long-term negative outcomes for a child, including:

criminal exploitation

exposure to anti-social behaviour

mental health issues

behavioural issues

(SecEd, 2018).

School staff, including teachers, see and interact with children daily. This means staff are often well placed to monitor and understand a child's wellbeing and respond to any child protection concerns. Exclusion from school makes it harder for teachers to understand what may be going on in a child's life and how to support them.

Learning for practitioners: anti-discriminatory practice

There are steps you can take to mitigate conscious and unconscious bias in your direct work with children and families.

Make sure the needs of each individual child remain paramount. All children are vulnerable and need protection and support.

If a child is displaying behaviour perceived to be challenging, consider the reasons behind it and explore what is happening in their life that might be having an impact on them.

When you're carrying out risk assessments with children and families from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities, make sure:

Acknowledge that child-rearing practices may be different between and within communities. Find out about the practices and beliefs being followed by each child's parents or carers, and consider how this may impact on the child's safety (Bernard and Harris, 2019). Talk and listen to parents and carers to understand what's happening in their family and empower them to make decisions that will help keep their child safe.

You might find it helpful to find a 'critical friend' who can help you reflect on how you work with people who are different from you and in situations that make you feel less comfortable. Discuss the reasons behind the actions you've taken and what impact those actions have had. This can help you recognise and stay aware of your biases, think about how these could be managed and make sure your decisions are always in the best interest of the child (Community Care, 2019).

Communication

Improving communication

All children and young people can find it hard to tell someone if something isn't right. But for children and adults from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities there may be additional barriers to asking for help.

Fear of speaking out

Speaking out about experiencing abuse doesn't always lead to getting the necessary support. Some adults who experienced sexual abuse in childhood have reported being shunned by their communities after disclosing the abuse. The risk of being cut off from family and support networks can deter children from asking for help (IICSA, 2020).

Children might also worry that they won't be believed or will be blamed for the abuse.

Honour and reputation

Some communities place high importance on female honour, linked to virginity and marriage. Girls who have been sexually abused might worry that family and community members would consider them to be "damaged", or that they will be blamed for behaving in a way that is perceived to be immodest or provocative.

Boys might feel ashamed if their culture places value on male strength, or has a strong belief that only girls experience sexual abuse. Some adults who experienced sexual abuse in childhood have reported that they felt unable to speak out about their experiences because they felt they needed to uphold their family's honour (IICSA, 2020).

Children may also be worried that speaking out about abuse will result in their community's reputation being damaged. This may be because they have experienced racist stereotyping in the past (IICSA, 2020), or because there is a strong sense of honour in their community (Community Care, 2020a).

In any community, people might believe that problems should be dealt with in the community or their families. This can make people less likely to report concerns about abuse to child protection services and feel wary about bringing in 'outsiders' such as the police.

Taboos around sex and relationships

Within some communities and cultures, there are taboos around discussing sex, relationships and abuse, either within families or the wider community. This might include topics such as:

Not all communities have the language to describe sexual abuse or the language they use might not distinguish between consensual sexual activity and abuse.

If these issues are not discussed openly, children might have less understanding of what is abuse and what is not. They might also feel less able to speak out if something happens to them they're not comfortable with.

Adults who have been raised in communities where sex, relationships and abuse aren't spoken about might also be unaware of how to identify or raise concerns about abuse. As a result, practitioners might find it challenging to start conversations about keeping children safe.

Different perceptions about abuse

Some communities may have different perceptions of what constitutes child abuse. Children may not realise they are being abused, for example if they are growing up in a culture that routinely uses physical punishment. Or they may feel that there is no point in speaking out because the adults around them are unlikely to stop the abuse.

"I misbehaved at school today and when my mum found out she shouted at me and hit me. My mum's done this before when I didn't get a good mark at school. I've told other members of my family but they told me that this is African culture so they won't do anything to stop it."
Childline counselling session with a boy aged 10
Adults might not realise some practices are illegal in the UK, particularly if their culture considers that practice to be protective. An example of this is the harmful practice of breast ironing or breast flattening, a practice which aims to delay the development of girls' breasts to ostensibly protect them from harassment, rape, abduction and early forced marriage and keep them in education (National FGM Centre 2021).

Building relationships

Sometimes a difference in cultural values can make it challenging for practitioners to build trusting relationships with children and families. This can make it difficult to speak out about sensitive issues. For example, it may not be considered appropriate for a male practitioner to work directly with mothers and children, and women may not feel comfortable discussing parenting practices with a man.

If practitioners have a bias based on stereotypes, they might view certain groups as 'other' or intrinsically different. This might lead them to treat some communities differently. In turn, this might create mistrust between the agency and the community and make people in that community less likely to speak out about abuse (IICSA, 2020).

Interpretation and translation

When practitioners, children and families do not share the same language, interpretation is vital to gain an understanding of need and risk. But interpretation does not automatically lead to understanding. Practitioners need to be aware of issues surrounding interpretation.

Children and families may have concerns about confidentiality if the interpreter is a community member, particularly if the community is small and there are notions of shame and honour. This might lead to them not speaking openly about what they have experienced.

Sometimes interpreters might inadvertently leave out important information because they do not realise its significance. And if the interpreter has perpetrated abuse or is trying to protect a perpetrator, they might withhold information from either the family or the practitioner (SCRA, 2017).

Some languages have several different dialects. If parents, carers, practitioners or interpreters do not speak the same dialect, they might not fully understand what is being said. This can make it challenging for practitioners to fully understand a family's situation (Community Care, 2020c).

Interpreters are not always present when a practitioner is having informal contact with communities. This can make it more challenging for practitioners to form trusting relationships with families from certain communities, understand child protection risks and be available to hear parent concerns (SCRA, 2017).

Sometimes, practitioners might feel overwhelmed and perceive language barriers to be an insurmountable obstacle. This may lead to the misconception that some communities are 'insular' and practitioners might perceive it to be too challenging to engage with a particular group.

Learning for practitioners: improving communication

Talk and listen to the families and children you work with, directly or through an appropriate third party. Aim to understand the lived experience of each family and child.

All families and children have different barriers to speaking out. Through building an understanding of their lives, you can find out if there are any specific barriers that might affect the children and families you are working with. You will then be better placed to consider how you can overcome these barriers.

Think about how to build trust with individuals in a culturally sensitive way. For example, if you're a male practitioner who needs to speak to a mother and it's not appropriate for you to do so alone, you could arrange a suitable chaperone. If you're working with a child, it might help to meet them with a trusted non-abusive adult, such as a school counsellor, youth worker or a family member.

You could also ask people to suggest a meeting place or activity, on their terms. This may help them feel more comfortable and help to develop a trusting relationship (Community Care, 2020b).

Acknowledge the challenges that children and young people might face and ask them about their lived experience.
> Find out more about talking to children about racism on the NSPCC website
When you're working with any community, make sure children and families know who to contact if they have any child protection concerns. This might include:

The helpline can be contacted on 0808 800 5000 or by email help@nspcc.org.uk.

Make sure children also know about Childline and how they can contact them for confidential advice and support. Calls to 0800 1111 are free and children can also get support and advice via the Childline website. You can also download or order our Childline posters and wallet cards and display these across schools, encouraging children to contact Childline if they need to talk.

When working with families and children who do not share the same language as you, it's important to use an appropriate interpreter. It's best practice to choose an interpreter who:

has safeguarding and child protection training

the child or family feel comfortable with and can speak freely with

you can trust not to withhold information or breach confidentiality

has experience of interpreting on the same or a similar subject matter

can sensitively ask probing questions.

You should brief the interpreter in advance to clarify the level of detail you're looking for and the type of questions you will be asking. Agree whether there are any cultural insights the interpreter could offer and how best they can share this with you.

If interpreters are unavailable or verbal communication is difficult, consider how to use body language to establish some communication and gain some understanding of the community you're working with.

Engagement

Engaging with communities

It can be challenging for practitioners to engage with children and families and there can be extra challenges when working with people from a different community to your own.

Cultural awareness

Being aware of different cultures can help practitioners identify and understand risks to children's safety. But focusing too much on community-specific risks might mean overlooking other forms of abuse and neglect.

If practitioners don't understand the culture of the community they are working with, they might cause offence without meaning to. This might make it more difficult for them to engage with the community and understand any child protection risks.

Sometimes, worries about culture and beliefs can lead practitioners to be afraid of working with different communities (Duncan and Norfolk Safeguarding Children Partnership, 2020). This might make them less confident to assess risk and ask pertinent and challenging questions.

Practitioners might believe that some communities are 'hard to reach'. This perception might arise if:

Labelling communities 'hard to reach' can lead to the idea that it's not possible to improve engagement with them. This can prevent practitioners from taking steps to build relationships with that community.

Perceptions of organisations

If an agency or organisation isn't culturally diverse, this may be off-putting to people from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities (IICSA, 2020). They may not feel that practitioners, agencies and services from a different background can fully understand the dynamics of their community.

Children and adults from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities may not have had positive experiences with 'official' agencies in the past. This can change their perceptions of whether practitioners can help and support them, and cause them to be suspicious or fearful of future interactions.

For example, if a child or their family have had negative experiences with the police, they may be reluctant to contact the emergency services if they need urgent help. If practitioners keep suggesting this as a course of protective action, the child may feel misunderstood and start to believe there is no way for them to get support.

Some families might be worried that being engaged with any statutory or 'official' agency will lead to deportation, children being removed, or eviction from a Traveller site (SCRA, 2017).

Learning for practitioners: cultural competence

Cultural competence means being able to work effectively with people from different backgrounds, valuing diversity, being aware of personal assumptions and biases and thinking about how to overcome barriers (Larson and Bradshaw, 2017). Rather than focusing on someone's knowledge of a specific culture, cultural competency highlights interpersonal skills such as openness, respect and willingness to learn.

Cultural competence helps professionals build on their existing cultural awareness by working with other people in a sensitive, positive way to develop a deeper understanding of their beliefs, attitudes and cultures.

When working with people from a Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic community, keep an open and inquisitive mind. Don't compare their culture to other cultures or your own. Aim to build up a non-judgemental knowledge of the community's dynamics, which will help you work with children and adults sensitively and appropriately (Duncan, A and Norfolk Safeguarding Partnership Board, 2020). Ways to do this can include:

acknowledging and challenging any preconceptions you have about the community you are working with

asking about the community's cultural traditions and values

attending events in the community and build a good working relationship with those in positions of influence and power

finding out about the community's specific needs and what services are most relevant

exploring the lived experience of each family you work with by asking questions about what their culture means to them.

For example, faith plays an important role in the lives of many children and communities, so it's important to make sure you understand the dynamics of a child's and family's religious background. Ask open questions about what their faith means to them and how it affects their daily life.
> Find out about how to engage sensitively with faith communities
Find out how people in a community define their identity and culture. This will help you to build trust and minimise the risk of causing offence. Use specific terms to refer to the communities and backgrounds of the children and families you're working with instead of generalised terms of acronyms such as BME or BAME. Generalised terms do not reflect specific groups and people, and are unlikely to be used by individuals to describe themselves (Community Care, 2019).

Make sure you understand the language and rites of passage in a community. For example, in some Gypsy, traveller and Roma communities 'running away' is a traditional marriage practice where children leave their community and return married. Understanding this will help practitioners carry out fully informed risk assessments and respond proportionately to any concerns.

Find respectful solutions to differences in cultural practices. If you're discussing a harmful practice which the community considers to be protective, bear this in mind and speak with respect. But remember you must also be honest about the impact of child abuse and act immediately if you have any child protection concerns.

We've produced a training resource to help you talk to adults in Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities about childcare practices that might be positive and harmful, and ways to keep children safe.

> Get started

Intersectionality

Taking an intersectional approach

Children and young people from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities, like all children, have diverse identities. As well as experiencing prejudice or bias related to their ethnic background, they might experience challenges relating to other parts of their identity, such as:

gender

sexuality

disability

mental health

having been in care

where they live, how much money they have and how much access they have to education.

The way these challenges interact is known as intersectionality.

For example, Black girls might experience adultification, racism and sexism at the same time. Practitioners' biases and perceptions of the way different characteristics interact can affect the way they assess the risk to a child. This in turn will have an impact on the support that is put in place to help keep the child safe.
> Listen to our podcast episode on intersectionality in social work practice
A child's culture may also interact with an aspect of their identity, for example if the culture does not accept the child's sexuality or gender identity. It can be difficult for children to cope with this and it can have a negative impact on their welfare.

"I'm upset because I came out to my family as transgender and they're refusing to support me. My family are from Pakistan and don't want me to dress in girl's clothes because they say it will bring shame to the family. I've been self-harming and recently the pressure from my family has been so much that I'm feeling suicidal again, I don't know what to do".
Childline counselling session with a transgender girl aged 16
Learning for practitioners: understanding the child

When you're working with a child, consider all the factors that might influence their safety and wellbeing. Take the time to get to know them, understand their lived experience and how they might face risks due to how other might perceive their identity.

You could consider creating safe spaces for children who have similar identities and come from the same community. This might help them talk about their experiences and get peer support.

Find out more about:

Strategic decision making

Best practice for strategic decision makers

There are changes you can make at an organisational level to ensure you are supporting and protecting children from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities more effectively.

We've pulled together some key learning for best practice for strategic decision makers.

Anti-discriminatory framework

Commit to establishing anti-racist and anti-discriminatory practices throughout your organisation. A framework can help integrate anti-racist and culturally sensitive practice at all levels of your organisation. This should include all levels of staff and volunteers, from leaders to frontline workers.

Your framework should set out specific commitments and actions, including:

recruiting diverse staff

promoting diversity and inclusion in your position statements

having a zero-tolerance approach to racism

having on-going training on anti-racism and cultural competence.

By embedding anti-racist and anti-discriminatory values into practice, this can help your organisation better understand and engage with communities, identify and reduce racism and bias, and improve support and protecting to Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities.

(Community Care, 2020d).

Safeguarding policies and procedures

Your organisation's policies and procedures should set out how you will create a safe, supportive and inclusive environment for all children and young people.

The needs of children from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities should be incorporated into safeguarding policies and procedures.

Safeguarding policy statements should:
> Find out more about writing a safeguarding policy
Recruitment

Recruiting staff and volunteers from the communities you are working with can help your organisation better reflect and understand them. This can help build trusting relationships, narrow communication gaps and change negative perceptions.

Not having to explain cultural concepts such as perceptions of abuse, shame and honour can make people from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities feel more comfortable about speaking out if they have any child protection concerns (Community Care, 2020a).

Consider how to improve your recruitment practices, so you have a diverse workforce of staff and volunteers. This might include anonymising applications, considering how and where you advertise vacancies and thinking about the language used in adverts.

Service development

At a strategic level, you might use community data to help decide which services you provide and which communities to prioritise. However, there is evidence that some children from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic community groups are overrepresented in the child protection system while others are underrepresented (Owen and Statham, 2009; Nuffield Foundation, 2020).

Instead of taking data at face value, consider why over-and under-representations might occur. This might include:

(Owen and Statham, 2009).

You should also consider whether unconscious bias towards some communities might result in lower thresholds for child protection referrals.

Make sure your organisation has robust procedures for recording, reporting and monitoring the ethnicity of children and young people you work with. Use this to help you think about which communities you need to better engage with, and where you need to develop targeted services.

Effective engagement

When you've identified any communities or groups your organisation isn't effectively engaging with, you should consider what the current barriers are. This might include practitioners and families not sharing the same language or practitioners misunderstanding cultural dynamics. Think about how you can overcome these factors.

For example, you could:

provide protected time for practitioners to engage with and get to know different communities

produce materials in the first language(s) of the community to highlight your services and raise awareness of child protection issues

build relationships with local figures who reflect the diversity and community you are working in

promote your services in the way that's most appropriate for each community, for example via local radio, social media and leaflets or posters (remember that written forms of some languages might be less widely understood or might not have a written form)

(SCRA, 2017).

You should make sure you have the capacity to respond to any increase in engagement following promotional or awareness raising activities. This might include freeing up practitioners' time or employing interpreters.

Risk assessments

Review your risk assessment tools to ensure they are evidence informed. This will help minimise unconscious bias by ensuring the same process applies for all children.

Make sure all risk assessment forms include space to consider any issues relating to a child's ethnic or cultural background. This will encourage practitioners to build up an accurate picture of the child and the community and consider all the factors in a child's life (The Community Care Podcast, 2020).

Training

Arrange training about diversity and inclusion so that everyone in your organisation is more aware of their own biases and understands how to adapt their practice accordingly (Community Care, 2020d).

You should also arrange training about the communities you need to engage with. Ideally this should be led by people from those communities, who are able to explain cultural dynamics but also have an understanding of the child protection system.

This training will be helpful for people from all levels of your organisation. It will help frontline practitioners adapt to work more effectively with children and families, and strategic decision makers to design and deliver effective services that meet people's cultural, social and linguistic needs (Duncan, A and Norfolk Safeguarding Children Partnership, 2020).

Support and mentoring

Practitioners working in a specific community for the first time will naturally have questions about how best to navigate the culture and context (Duncan and Norfolk Safeguarding Children Partnership, 2020). Make sure you provide them with ongoing support. For example, you could pair them with someone who has experience of working successfully with that community.

You could also set up peer groups or a 'critical friend' system, to enable practitioners to reflect on and improve their work with people from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities in a supportive environment (Community Care, 2019).

It might also be helpful to set up a system where practitioners from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities can share their lived experience with senior leaders from different ethnic backgrounds. This can help senior leaders understand how racism affects people's lives and think about how best to develop anti-discriminatory practices (Community Care, 2020d).

References

References

Bernard, C. A. and Harris, P. (2019) Serious case reviews: The lived experience of black children. Child and Family Social Work. 24(2): 256-263.

Community Care (2019) 'Where are the Black girls in our CSA services, studies and statistics?'. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Community Care (2020a) Sexual abuse of South Asian children: what social workers need to know. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Community Care (2020b) Intersectionality : race, gender and other aspects of identity in social work with young people. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Community Care (2020c) How structural racism faced by Roma families in the child protection system can be tackled. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Community Care (2020d) How to promote an anti-racist culture in social work. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Davis, J. (2022) Adultification bias within child protection and safeguarding (PDF) . Manchester: Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP).

Davis, J. and Marsh, N. (2020) Boys to men: the cost of 'adultification' in safeguarding responses to Black boys, Critical and Radical Social Work,8(2): 255-259.

Department for Education (DfE) (2020) 'Permanent and fixed period exclusions - by pupil characteristics (0607 to 1819)' from 'Permanent and fixed-period exclusions in England'. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Duncan, Ann and Norfolk Safeguarding Children Partnership (2020) Report of the Serious Case Review regarding Child AG (PDF). [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Education Policy Institute (2017) Why are so many vulnerable children excluded from school?. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality (2019) Listening to Black Women and Girls: Lived Experiences of Adultification Bias (PDF). [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) (2020) "People don't talk about it": Child sexual abuse in ethnic minority communities. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Lammy Review (2017) Lammy Review: Final Report. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Larson, K.E. and Bradshaw, C.P. (2017) Cultural competence and social desirability among practitioners: a systematic review of the literature. Children and Youth Services Review, 76: 100-111.

Learn on the Go: The Community Care Podcast (2020) Anti-racist social work practice.[Accessed 26/03/2021].

Ministry of Justice and Youth Justice Board for England and Wales (2021) Youth Justice Statistics: 2019 to 2020. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

National FGM Centre (2021) Breast Flattening. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Nuffield Foundation (2020) Identifying and understanding the link between system conditions and welfare inequalities in children's social care services (PDF). [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Owen, C and Statham, J (2009) Disproportionality in child welfare: prevalence of black and ethnic minority children within 'looked after' and 'children in need' populations and on child protection registers in England. London: Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF).

Scottish Children's Report Administration (SCRA) (2017) An exploration of ethnic minority communities' understanding and awareness of child protection and the Children's Hearings System in Scotland. [Accessed 25/09/2020].

SecEd (2018) Behaviour and education. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Introduction

Establishing anti-racist and anti-discriminatory practices in social work
This information is aimed at practitioners, but is also helpful for anyone working or volunteering with children and young people from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities.
Many children and young people who come from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities experience racism, bias, stereotyping or cultural misunderstanding as they grow up. It might happen at an individual, institutional or societal level and might be displayed consciously or unconsciously.

This can result in some children being more likely to come to the attention of child protection services, while other children are less likely to receive effective support (Nuffield Foundation, 2020).

When we talk about people from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities we're referring to a wide range of people from a variety of backgrounds with different individual experiences, including different experiences of racism. This includes groups such as Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities.

To make sure children from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities get the help and support they need, the adults working or volunteering with them and their families need to:

understand the challenges they face

build trusting relationships

take appropriate action to help keep children safe

use a strength-based approach to empower parents and carers from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities to take steps to keep their children safe.

We've pulled together learning from research evidence, case reviews and best practice guidance to help you mitigate racism and bias in your work with children and families from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities.

This includes information on:

bias and stereotypes

anti-discriminatory practice

communication and language barriers

engaging with communities

diversity, inclusion and empowerment in strategic decision making.

Racism, bias and stereotypes

Understanding racism, bias and stereotypes

Everyone has beliefs and prejudices about other people that are formed with or without our conscious awareness.

Unconscious bias might take the form of:

This might result in people making harmful generalisations about specific communities, or generalising all ethnic minorities as having similar traits, practices and beliefs. This in turn is likely to result in children and families not receiving the appropriate level of support and protection.

Unconscious bias

If adults working or volunteering with children are unaware that they have unconscious bias or do not act to mitigate it, this may have a negative impact on their ability to identify and respond appropriately to child abuse (IICSA, 2020).

For example, practitioners may sometimes have preconceived concerns about whether a child's parents or carers are legal immigrants (IICSA, 2020). By focusing on the parents' residency rather than their child's welfare, practitioners might not consider the lived experience of that child and miss indicators of abuse.

Unconscious bias might also lead practitioners to interpret behaviour differently depending on the ethnicity of the person displaying it. For instance, if a child from a Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities shows fear around a family member, this may be interpreted as a cultural expression of respect rather than an indicator of abuse (SCRA, 2017).

Practitioners might also have unconscious bias about who experiences different types of abuse, for example by connecting specific abuse types with specific groups of people. Without acknowledging and challenging these perceptions, practitioners might overlook the risk to children who do not fit the stereotype.

Adultification

Adultification is a form of bias where children from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities are perceived as being more 'streetwise', more 'grown up', less innocent and less vulnerable than other children. This particularly affects Black children, who might be viewed primarily as a threat rather than as a child who needs support (Davis 2022; Davis and Marsh, 2020; Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality, 2019).

Children who have been adultified might also be perceived as having more understanding of their actions and the consequences of their actions. For example, an analysis of case reviews found that practitioners assumed Black boys who were involved in gangs would be able to protect themselves from harm, even after they had been reported missing from home or care. This resulted in the practitioners not acting to protect the boys from sexual exploitation, youth violence and drug and alcohol misuse (Bernard and Harris, 2019).

Overlooking child protection concerns

Having conscious or unconscious bias can lead to professionals not taking child protection concerns about children from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities as seriously as they might do for children from other communities. Professionals might dismiss certain behaviours or practices as being part of that community's culture and as a result not take the necessary protective action (IICSA, 2020).

Some practitioners might worry about being perceived as culturally insensitive or racist if they raise concerns about children in Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities. This can also lead to them ignoring child protection concerns (IICSA, 2020; SCRA, 2017). Because they are worried about stereotyping, some people might try not to acknowledge another person's race or ethnicity. They might believe this helps them treat everyone equally. But this can result in practitioners applying a 'universal' approach to all families, without considering or finding out about parenting practices and beliefs in the child's family and culture (SCRA, 2017). This can prevent practitioners from asking open questions about a child's lived experiences, building up a picture of the child's life and identify any concerns.

Criminal justice system

Data shows that Black and mixed-race children are disproportionately represented within the youth justice system (Ministry of Justice and Youth Justice Board for England and Wales, 2021).

There are many complex reasons for this disparity between groups of children (Lammy Review, 2017). One reason might be that Black and mixed-race children are sometimes adultified and held to a more mature standard of behaviour than their peers. This might lead to children receiving a criminal justice response from the adults around them, rather than a child protection response (Davis and Marsh, 2020).

There are higher than average rates of school exclusion amongst children from some communities - particularly those from Black Caribbean, Gypsy, Traveller and Roma backgrounds; whilst there are lower than average rates amongst other communities. These include Chinese, Indian and Bangladeshi communities (Department for Education (DfE), 2020). Being excluded from school can lead to long-term negative outcomes for a child, including:

criminal exploitation

exposure to anti-social behaviour

mental health issues

behavioural issues

(SecEd, 2018).

School staff, including teachers, see and interact with children daily. This means staff are often well placed to monitor and understand a child's wellbeing and respond to any child protection concerns. Exclusion from school makes it harder for teachers to understand what may be going on in a child's life and how to support them.

Learning for practitioners: anti-discriminatory practice

There are steps you can take to mitigate conscious and unconscious bias in your direct work with children and families.

Make sure the needs of each individual child remain paramount. All children are vulnerable and need protection and support.

If a child is displaying behaviour perceived to be challenging, consider the reasons behind it and explore what is happening in their life that might be having an impact on them.

When you're carrying out risk assessments with children and families from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities, make sure:

Acknowledge that child-rearing practices may be different between and within communities. Find out about the practices and beliefs being followed by each child's parents or carers, and consider how this may impact on the child's safety (Bernard and Harris, 2019). Talk and listen to parents and carers to understand what's happening in their family and empower them to make decisions that will help keep their child safe.

You might find it helpful to find a 'critical friend' who can help you reflect on how you work with people who are different from you and in situations that make you feel less comfortable. Discuss the reasons behind the actions you've taken and what impact those actions have had. This can help you recognise and stay aware of your biases, think about how these could be managed and make sure your decisions are always in the best interest of the child (Community Care, 2019).

Communication

Improving communication

All children and young people can find it hard to tell someone if something isn't right. But for children and adults from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities there may be additional barriers to asking for help.

Fear of speaking out

Speaking out about experiencing abuse doesn't always lead to getting the necessary support. Some adults who experienced sexual abuse in childhood have reported being shunned by their communities after disclosing the abuse. The risk of being cut off from family and support networks can deter children from asking for help (IICSA, 2020).

Children might also worry that they won't be believed or will be blamed for the abuse.

Honour and reputation

Some communities place high importance on female honour, linked to virginity and marriage. Girls who have been sexually abused might worry that family and community members would consider them to be "damaged", or that they will be blamed for behaving in a way that is perceived to be immodest or provocative.

Boys might feel ashamed if their culture places value on male strength, or has a strong belief that only girls experience sexual abuse. Some adults who experienced sexual abuse in childhood have reported that they felt unable to speak out about their experiences because they felt they needed to uphold their family's honour (IICSA, 2020).

Children may also be worried that speaking out about abuse will result in their community's reputation being damaged. This may be because they have experienced racist stereotyping in the past (IICSA, 2020), or because there is a strong sense of honour in their community (Community Care, 2020a).

In any community, people might believe that problems should be dealt with in the community or their families. This can make people less likely to report concerns about abuse to child protection services and feel wary about bringing in 'outsiders' such as the police.

Taboos around sex and relationships

Within some communities and cultures, there are taboos around discussing sex, relationships and abuse, either within families or the wider community. This might include topics such as:

Not all communities have the language to describe sexual abuse or the language they use might not distinguish between consensual sexual activity and abuse.

If these issues are not discussed openly, children might have less understanding of what is abuse and what is not. They might also feel less able to speak out if something happens to them they're not comfortable with.

Adults who have been raised in communities where sex, relationships and abuse aren't spoken about might also be unaware of how to identify or raise concerns about abuse. As a result, practitioners might find it challenging to start conversations about keeping children safe.

Different perceptions about abuse

Some communities may have different perceptions of what constitutes child abuse. Children may not realise they are being abused, for example if they are growing up in a culture that routinely uses physical punishment. Or they may feel that there is no point in speaking out because the adults around them are unlikely to stop the abuse.

"I misbehaved at school today and when my mum found out she shouted at me and hit me. My mum's done this before when I didn't get a good mark at school. I've told other members of my family but they told me that this is African culture so they won't do anything to stop it."
Childline counselling session with a boy aged 10
Adults might not realise some practices are illegal in the UK, particularly if their culture considers that practice to be protective. An example of this is the harmful practice of breast ironing or breast flattening, a practice which aims to delay the development of girls' breasts to ostensibly protect them from harassment, rape, abduction and early forced marriage and keep them in education (National FGM Centre 2021).

Building relationships

Sometimes a difference in cultural values can make it challenging for practitioners to build trusting relationships with children and families. This can make it difficult to speak out about sensitive issues. For example, it may not be considered appropriate for a male practitioner to work directly with mothers and children, and women may not feel comfortable discussing parenting practices with a man.

If practitioners have a bias based on stereotypes, they might view certain groups as 'other' or intrinsically different. This might lead them to treat some communities differently. In turn, this might create mistrust between the agency and the community and make people in that community less likely to speak out about abuse (IICSA, 2020).

Interpretation and translation

When practitioners, children and families do not share the same language, interpretation is vital to gain an understanding of need and risk. But interpretation does not automatically lead to understanding. Practitioners need to be aware of issues surrounding interpretation.

Children and families may have concerns about confidentiality if the interpreter is a community member, particularly if the community is small and there are notions of shame and honour. This might lead to them not speaking openly about what they have experienced.

Sometimes interpreters might inadvertently leave out important information because they do not realise its significance. And if the interpreter has perpetrated abuse or is trying to protect a perpetrator, they might withhold information from either the family or the practitioner (SCRA, 2017).

Some languages have several different dialects. If parents, carers, practitioners or interpreters do not speak the same dialect, they might not fully understand what is being said. This can make it challenging for practitioners to fully understand a family's situation (Community Care, 2020c).

Interpreters are not always present when a practitioner is having informal contact with communities. This can make it more challenging for practitioners to form trusting relationships with families from certain communities, understand child protection risks and be available to hear parent concerns (SCRA, 2017).

Sometimes, practitioners might feel overwhelmed and perceive language barriers to be an insurmountable obstacle. This may lead to the misconception that some communities are 'insular' and practitioners might perceive it to be too challenging to engage with a particular group.

Learning for practitioners: improving communication

Talk and listen to the families and children you work with, directly or through an appropriate third party. Aim to understand the lived experience of each family and child.

All families and children have different barriers to speaking out. Through building an understanding of their lives, you can find out if there are any specific barriers that might affect the children and families you are working with. You will then be better placed to consider how you can overcome these barriers.

Think about how to build trust with individuals in a culturally sensitive way. For example, if you're a male practitioner who needs to speak to a mother and it's not appropriate for you to do so alone, you could arrange a suitable chaperone. If you're working with a child, it might help to meet them with a trusted non-abusive adult, such as a school counsellor, youth worker or a family member.

You could also ask people to suggest a meeting place or activity, on their terms. This may help them feel more comfortable and help to develop a trusting relationship (Community Care, 2020b).

Acknowledge the challenges that children and young people might face and ask them about their lived experience.
> Find out more about talking to children about racism on the NSPCC website
When you're working with any community, make sure children and families know who to contact if they have any child protection concerns. This might include:

The helpline can be contacted on 0808 800 5000 or by email help@nspcc.org.uk.

Make sure children also know about Childline and how they can contact them for confidential advice and support. Calls to 0800 1111 are free and children can also get support and advice via the Childline website. You can also download or order our Childline posters and wallet cards and display these across schools, encouraging children to contact Childline if they need to talk.

When working with families and children who do not share the same language as you, it's important to use an appropriate interpreter. It's best practice to choose an interpreter who:

has safeguarding and child protection training

the child or family feel comfortable with and can speak freely with

you can trust not to withhold information or breach confidentiality

has experience of interpreting on the same or a similar subject matter

can sensitively ask probing questions.

You should brief the interpreter in advance to clarify the level of detail you're looking for and the type of questions you will be asking. Agree whether there are any cultural insights the interpreter could offer and how best they can share this with you.

If interpreters are unavailable or verbal communication is difficult, consider how to use body language to establish some communication and gain some understanding of the community you're working with.

Engagement

Engaging with communities

It can be challenging for practitioners to engage with children and families and there can be extra challenges when working with people from a different community to your own.

Cultural awareness

Being aware of different cultures can help practitioners identify and understand risks to children's safety. But focusing too much on community-specific risks might mean overlooking other forms of abuse and neglect.

If practitioners don't understand the culture of the community they are working with, they might cause offence without meaning to. This might make it more difficult for them to engage with the community and understand any child protection risks.

Sometimes, worries about culture and beliefs can lead practitioners to be afraid of working with different communities (Duncan and Norfolk Safeguarding Children Partnership, 2020). This might make them less confident to assess risk and ask pertinent and challenging questions.

Practitioners might believe that some communities are 'hard to reach'. This perception might arise if:

Labelling communities 'hard to reach' can lead to the idea that it's not possible to improve engagement with them. This can prevent practitioners from taking steps to build relationships with that community.

Perceptions of organisations

If an agency or organisation isn't culturally diverse, this may be off-putting to people from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities (IICSA, 2020). They may not feel that practitioners, agencies and services from a different background can fully understand the dynamics of their community.

Children and adults from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities may not have had positive experiences with 'official' agencies in the past. This can change their perceptions of whether practitioners can help and support them, and cause them to be suspicious or fearful of future interactions.

For example, if a child or their family have had negative experiences with the police, they may be reluctant to contact the emergency services if they need urgent help. If practitioners keep suggesting this as a course of protective action, the child may feel misunderstood and start to believe there is no way for them to get support.

Some families might be worried that being engaged with any statutory or 'official' agency will lead to deportation, children being removed, or eviction from a Traveller site (SCRA, 2017).

Learning for practitioners: cultural competence

Cultural competence means being able to work effectively with people from different backgrounds, valuing diversity, being aware of personal assumptions and biases and thinking about how to overcome barriers (Larson and Bradshaw, 2017). Rather than focusing on someone's knowledge of a specific culture, cultural competency highlights interpersonal skills such as openness, respect and willingness to learn.

Cultural competence helps professionals build on their existing cultural awareness by working with other people in a sensitive, positive way to develop a deeper understanding of their beliefs, attitudes and cultures.

When working with people from a Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic community, keep an open and inquisitive mind. Don't compare their culture to other cultures or your own. Aim to build up a non-judgemental knowledge of the community's dynamics, which will help you work with children and adults sensitively and appropriately (Duncan, A and Norfolk Safeguarding Partnership Board, 2020). Ways to do this can include:

acknowledging and challenging any preconceptions you have about the community you are working with

asking about the community's cultural traditions and values

attending events in the community and build a good working relationship with those in positions of influence and power

finding out about the community's specific needs and what services are most relevant

exploring the lived experience of each family you work with by asking questions about what their culture means to them.

For example, faith plays an important role in the lives of many children and communities, so it's important to make sure you understand the dynamics of a child's and family's religious background. Ask open questions about what their faith means to them and how it affects their daily life.
> Find out about how to engage sensitively with faith communities
Find out how people in a community define their identity and culture. This will help you to build trust and minimise the risk of causing offence. Use specific terms to refer to the communities and backgrounds of the children and families you're working with instead of generalised terms of acronyms such as BME or BAME. Generalised terms do not reflect specific groups and people, and are unlikely to be used by individuals to describe themselves (Community Care, 2019).

Make sure you understand the language and rites of passage in a community. For example, in some Gypsy, traveller and Roma communities 'running away' is a traditional marriage practice where children leave their community and return married. Understanding this will help practitioners carry out fully informed risk assessments and respond proportionately to any concerns.

Find respectful solutions to differences in cultural practices. If you're discussing a harmful practice which the community considers to be protective, bear this in mind and speak with respect. But remember you must also be honest about the impact of child abuse and act immediately if you have any child protection concerns.

We've produced a training resource to help you talk to adults in Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities about childcare practices that might be positive and harmful, and ways to keep children safe.

> Get started

Intersectionality

Taking an intersectional approach

Children and young people from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities, like all children, have diverse identities. As well as experiencing prejudice or bias related to their ethnic background, they might experience challenges relating to other parts of their identity, such as:

gender

sexuality

disability

mental health

having been in care

where they live, how much money they have and how much access they have to education.

The way these challenges interact is known as intersectionality.

For example, Black girls might experience adultification, racism and sexism at the same time. Practitioners' biases and perceptions of the way different characteristics interact can affect the way they assess the risk to a child. This in turn will have an impact on the support that is put in place to help keep the child safe.
> Listen to our podcast episode on intersectionality in social work practice
A child's culture may also interact with an aspect of their identity, for example if the culture does not accept the child's sexuality or gender identity. It can be difficult for children to cope with this and it can have a negative impact on their welfare.

"I'm upset because I came out to my family as transgender and they're refusing to support me. My family are from Pakistan and don't want me to dress in girl's clothes because they say it will bring shame to the family. I've been self-harming and recently the pressure from my family has been so much that I'm feeling suicidal again, I don't know what to do".
Childline counselling session with a transgender girl aged 16
Learning for practitioners: understanding the child

When you're working with a child, consider all the factors that might influence their safety and wellbeing. Take the time to get to know them, understand their lived experience and how they might face risks due to how other might perceive their identity.

You could consider creating safe spaces for children who have similar identities and come from the same community. This might help them talk about their experiences and get peer support.

Find out more about:

Strategic decision making

Best practice for strategic decision makers

There are changes you can make at an organisational level to ensure you are supporting and protecting children from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities more effectively.

We've pulled together some key learning for best practice for strategic decision makers.

Anti-discriminatory framework

Commit to establishing anti-racist and anti-discriminatory practices throughout your organisation. A framework can help integrate anti-racist and culturally sensitive practice at all levels of your organisation. This should include all levels of staff and volunteers, from leaders to frontline workers.

Your framework should set out specific commitments and actions, including:

recruiting diverse staff

promoting diversity and inclusion in your position statements

having a zero-tolerance approach to racism

having on-going training on anti-racism and cultural competence.

By embedding anti-racist and anti-discriminatory values into practice, this can help your organisation better understand and engage with communities, identify and reduce racism and bias, and improve support and protecting to Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities.

(Community Care, 2020d).

Safeguarding policies and procedures

Your organisation's policies and procedures should set out how you will create a safe, supportive and inclusive environment for all children and young people.

The needs of children from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities should be incorporated into safeguarding policies and procedures.

Safeguarding policy statements should:
> Find out more about writing a safeguarding policy
Recruitment

Recruiting staff and volunteers from the communities you are working with can help your organisation better reflect and understand them. This can help build trusting relationships, narrow communication gaps and change negative perceptions.

Not having to explain cultural concepts such as perceptions of abuse, shame and honour can make people from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities feel more comfortable about speaking out if they have any child protection concerns (Community Care, 2020a).

Consider how to improve your recruitment practices, so you have a diverse workforce of staff and volunteers. This might include anonymising applications, considering how and where you advertise vacancies and thinking about the language used in adverts.

Service development

At a strategic level, you might use community data to help decide which services you provide and which communities to prioritise. However, there is evidence that some children from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic community groups are overrepresented in the child protection system while others are underrepresented (Owen and Statham, 2009; Nuffield Foundation, 2020).

Instead of taking data at face value, consider why over-and under-representations might occur. This might include:

(Owen and Statham, 2009).

You should also consider whether unconscious bias towards some communities might result in lower thresholds for child protection referrals.

Make sure your organisation has robust procedures for recording, reporting and monitoring the ethnicity of children and young people you work with. Use this to help you think about which communities you need to better engage with, and where you need to develop targeted services.

Effective engagement

When you've identified any communities or groups your organisation isn't effectively engaging with, you should consider what the current barriers are. This might include practitioners and families not sharing the same language or practitioners misunderstanding cultural dynamics. Think about how you can overcome these factors.

For example, you could:

provide protected time for practitioners to engage with and get to know different communities

produce materials in the first language(s) of the community to highlight your services and raise awareness of child protection issues

build relationships with local figures who reflect the diversity and community you are working in

promote your services in the way that's most appropriate for each community, for example via local radio, social media and leaflets or posters (remember that written forms of some languages might be less widely understood or might not have a written form)

(SCRA, 2017).

You should make sure you have the capacity to respond to any increase in engagement following promotional or awareness raising activities. This might include freeing up practitioners' time or employing interpreters.

Risk assessments

Review your risk assessment tools to ensure they are evidence informed. This will help minimise unconscious bias by ensuring the same process applies for all children.

Make sure all risk assessment forms include space to consider any issues relating to a child's ethnic or cultural background. This will encourage practitioners to build up an accurate picture of the child and the community and consider all the factors in a child's life (The Community Care Podcast, 2020).

Training

Arrange training about diversity and inclusion so that everyone in your organisation is more aware of their own biases and understands how to adapt their practice accordingly (Community Care, 2020d).

You should also arrange training about the communities you need to engage with. Ideally this should be led by people from those communities, who are able to explain cultural dynamics but also have an understanding of the child protection system.

This training will be helpful for people from all levels of your organisation. It will help frontline practitioners adapt to work more effectively with children and families, and strategic decision makers to design and deliver effective services that meet people's cultural, social and linguistic needs (Duncan, A and Norfolk Safeguarding Children Partnership, 2020).

Support and mentoring

Practitioners working in a specific community for the first time will naturally have questions about how best to navigate the culture and context (Duncan and Norfolk Safeguarding Children Partnership, 2020). Make sure you provide them with ongoing support. For example, you could pair them with someone who has experience of working successfully with that community.

You could also set up peer groups or a 'critical friend' system, to enable practitioners to reflect on and improve their work with people from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities in a supportive environment (Community Care, 2019).

It might also be helpful to set up a system where practitioners from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities can share their lived experience with senior leaders from different ethnic backgrounds. This can help senior leaders understand how racism affects people's lives and think about how best to develop anti-discriminatory practices (Community Care, 2020d).

References

References

Bernard, C. A. and Harris, P. (2019) Serious case reviews: The lived experience of black children. Child and Family Social Work. 24(2): 256-263.

Community Care (2019) 'Where are the Black girls in our CSA services, studies and statistics?'. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Community Care (2020a) Sexual abuse of South Asian children: what social workers need to know. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Community Care (2020b) Intersectionality : race, gender and other aspects of identity in social work with young people. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Community Care (2020c) How structural racism faced by Roma families in the child protection system can be tackled. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Community Care (2020d) How to promote an anti-racist culture in social work. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Davis, J. (2022) Adultification bias within child protection and safeguarding (PDF) . Manchester: Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP).

Davis, J. and Marsh, N. (2020) Boys to men: the cost of 'adultification' in safeguarding responses to Black boys, Critical and Radical Social Work,8(2): 255-259.

Department for Education (DfE) (2020) 'Permanent and fixed period exclusions - by pupil characteristics (0607 to 1819)' from 'Permanent and fixed-period exclusions in England'. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Duncan, Ann and Norfolk Safeguarding Children Partnership (2020) Report of the Serious Case Review regarding Child AG (PDF). [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Education Policy Institute (2017) Why are so many vulnerable children excluded from school?. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality (2019) Listening to Black Women and Girls: Lived Experiences of Adultification Bias (PDF). [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) (2020) "People don't talk about it": Child sexual abuse in ethnic minority communities. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Lammy Review (2017) Lammy Review: Final Report. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Larson, K.E. and Bradshaw, C.P. (2017) Cultural competence and social desirability among practitioners: a systematic review of the literature. Children and Youth Services Review, 76: 100-111.

Learn on the Go: The Community Care Podcast (2020) Anti-racist social work practice.[Accessed 26/03/2021].

Ministry of Justice and Youth Justice Board for England and Wales (2021) Youth Justice Statistics: 2019 to 2020. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

National FGM Centre (2021) Breast Flattening. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Nuffield Foundation (2020) Identifying and understanding the link between system conditions and welfare inequalities in children's social care services (PDF). [Accessed 26/03/2021].

Owen, C and Statham, J (2009) Disproportionality in child welfare: prevalence of black and ethnic minority children within 'looked after' and 'children in need' populations and on child protection registers in England. London: Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF).

Scottish Children's Report Administration (SCRA) (2017) An exploration of ethnic minority communities' understanding and awareness of child protection and the Children's Hearings System in Scotland. [Accessed 25/09/2020].

SecEd (2018) Behaviour and education. [Accessed 26/03/2021].

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anti-racist and anti-discriminatory practices in social work

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Safeguarding children from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities | NSPCC Learning

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Summarises the evidence about the experiences of young people from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities in the child protection system and shares learning for best practice.