Content warning: young people discussing challenging experiences of racism affecting their wellbeing.

Pupil 1

The first time I really realised that people made assumptions about me based off the colour of my skin was in primary 4 when a teacher tried to force me to eat beef, even though I’m Sikh and not allowed. My year group was last for lunch that day and there wasn’t much else left. I told the teacher that I couldn’t eat it because I’m Sikh but she just kept shouting at me that it’s halal and that I could, taking no notice of me explaining that Islam and Sikhism are different.

Misrecognition is a huge issue that I’ve faced throughout all of primary and secondary school. I’m asked constantly whether I’m Muslim, by strangers but also by teachers and I’m called the P-word on the street and in school. Since primary school, I’ve been asked every year why I’m not off for Eid and I’m asked regularly whether I speak English – an example being when, during Enrichment, an instructor asked me, while speaking slowly to me, emphasising each word, whether I could speak English. All of this is a result of the underrepresentation of Sikh culture in particular and people of colour in general.

The way we’d like to highlight why anti-racism is important in the curriculum is through the timeline of the school experience. The story of a pupil moving from year to year and class to class can show us why it matters to us personally, and why we need it.

Before that, however, there is a prologue. Every student who comes to school will have a preconceived notion of race. Maybe I’d seen the way Black Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) people are portrayed in the media, seen the same old stereotypes reiterated, the same old fears capitalized upon, the same old flames fanned. From drug use, to sport, to royalty to terrorism, the ancient depiction of certain colours and creeds as barbaric and backwards, as savage, stupid, inept, and ugly carried on today.

Every student who comes to school will have a preconceived notion of race.

We would carry this view in with us in class, and crucially, our lessons would not change it. All the heroes in all the classes would be white, the pioneers of knowledge, innovation and talent and therefore talent itself would not look like me, would not be of my culture. In Art we would see pale faces and their styles. In Music, we would hear of and examine Western culture, a lot of which was borrowed from much darker skin tones. This is the principal reason students here often ask me what Indians or Africans have contributed to Science, to the sum of human knowledge; like me, they have never seen colour associated with intelligence.

All the heroes in all the classes would be white, the pioneers of knowledge, innovation and talent and therefore talent itself would not look like me, would not be of my culture.

As the world-renowned Edward Said put it in his book Orientalism:

“On the one hand there are Westerners, and on the other there are Arab-Orientals; the former are (…) rational, peaceful, liberal, logical, capable of holding real values, without natural suspicion; the latter are none of these things. The current state of the media shows us that the idea that white is right, has not fully disappeared.”

More worryingly, this image, these issues of misrepresentation and underrepresentation, have serious effects on students today.

Pupil 2

I will be initially listing a few curricular examples of what is good regarding discussions around racism and race globally in our school, and what could be improved.

Through subjects like English we can move beyond the current dearth of texts by writers of colour in the English curriculum – displayed by the insistent focus on Shakespeare and old Scottish literature - and bring diverse and new voices into our learning. What we ask isn’t the removal of European and British ‘classics’, but the inclusion of different perspectives and cultures, and emphasising the value of these.

In History we can grapple with the injustices of the past and how they continue to impact our present, to disrupt the continuum of the system of racism. For example, the Islamic Empire topic gives us an incredible and nuanced insight into an often-ignored history, which our Muslim pupils can contribute their own knowledge to, without a white, European, racist or colonialist slant, reminding pupils that people of colour and the ‘Global South’ has a full and rich history on its own.

In Geography, learning about rainfall patterns and the many different landscapes of the African continent reminds us that there are 54 diverse and different countries in Africa, all with diverse and different experiences – not simply a desert land of mud-huts, poverty, and emaciated Black children.

In Economics, learning about the deep flaws in international trade and aid helps us think critically about development, or lack thereof, tying this to colonialism and continued discriminatory practices by international organisations such as the IMF and World Bank.

In Modern Studies, learning about global politics in a nuanced and country-specific way, not just as a general ‘rule’ for entire regions.

Our education should move us past the Orientalist view of the Middle East as a desertified, religiously-frenzied, oppressed region of warzones and failed states. Past the belief that South Asia and South America are filled with slums and dust, or drug-cartels and rainforest tribes. Learning far beyond the stereotype of the entire Global South as intrinsically and unvaryingly poor, diseased, starving, uneducated or corrupt, conflict-ridden, and despotic. Importantly, dismantling the implicit accepted understanding that only a European, Western influence can help this.

Learning far beyond the stereotype of the entire Global South as intrinsically and unvaryingly poor, diseased, starving, uneducated or corrupt, conflict-ridden, and despotic. Importantly, dismantling the implicit accepted understanding that only a European, Western influence can help this.

The Arts can help us learn about music from different parts of the world and the experiences and cultures that inspire this. Paintings can bring us knowledge about the systems and prejudices of the societies of the past. The sciences can teach us about the global contributions that created the knowledge we all have today, the many people of colour who brought about the discoveries and investigations we all use.

So, in closing, why do we need anti-racism in our curriculum? And why is non-racism not enough? Non-racism is a baby step to a broader goal of removing racist biases from our learning, and it is important to move past this step: ‘not seeing colour’ means not seeing the biases we create, not seeing the experiences and obstacles our pupils of colour must go through, and not seeing the fact we are selling ourselves short of a full, representative, and discursive education. Anti-racism means questioning why we focus on the Massacre at Cawnpore, but not the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre and loss of life during Partition; why we learn about desertification in Sudan, but not the anti-government protests; why we read Mildred Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry but don't talk about the relevance it has today. And enacting anti-racism starts with meetings like this, and the solutions we come up with together.

When I first came to this school, I could probably count the number of Black and Brown people I had spoken to on my hand – and within me there were a lot of latent prejudices and general ignorances: I probably thought racism didn’t exist anymore and didn’t know what colonialism was. And I know most white Scots – including, if I may say, all of you in front of me - have these kind of unchallenged views, too. The reason I joined the Anti-Racist Club and wrote this speech is because I don’t want other people like me to take the best part of 5 years to understand the problems this ignorance creates. I also know these are busy, difficult times. However, this is the time to start this – in such a diverse school, and increasingly so at that, anti-racism shouldn’t be self-taught with the help of friends, it should be an integral and continual part of our experience and curriculum. While we leave and want to make the school proud, we hope strongly that the school will make us proud, too.

anti-racism shouldn’t be self-taught with the help of friends, it should be an integral and continual part of our experience and curriculum.

Pupil 3

As a pupil grows up, moving from the arts to the social sciences, and witnessing this same image, except on the international scale. Learning about the poor standards of living in countries like Sudan and Kenya, seeing those advertisements of emaciated Black children being fed and watered by white hands. You’d forgive me and the rest of my class for believing in what Rudyard Kipling called ‘the White Man’s Burden;’ going off and civilizing all those stupid, poor, helpless Black folk.

You’d forgive me and the rest of my class for believing in what Rudyard Kipling called ‘the White Man’s Burden;’ going off and civilizing all those stupid, poor, helpless Black folk.

Here, the hypothetical pupil can show us what we can call induced amnesia and selective remembrance, when certain aspects of the world’s story are prioritized over others. This is what the difference between diversity and inclusion is; we need to do more than merely involve diverse characters in our classes, we need to show them from their own light, from their own perspective.

The sum of all information pertaining to people of colour which we would be taught is, essentially, that former colonies are poorer today, and that they’re called the ‘Third World’. That slavery, once upon a time, ended, and that Dr King had a dream which peacefully and effectively ended racism in America. What would be left out is, firstly, is the true extent of the horrors of the British Empire, and what Kwame Nkrumah called the neo-colonial; the extension of racism in various other ways, and this is why coloniality persists today, and this is why decoloniality and anti-racism are needed today. Such concepts in their full detail go beyond the 10 minutes we have to speak, but, in a sentence; the world stopped being unapologetically racist, and started being unapologetically economically unjust, and because of the world’s history, it ended up still being racist, albeit perhaps implicitly.

the world stopped being unapologetically racist, and started being unapologetically economically unjust, and because of the world’s history, it ended up still being racist, albeit perhaps implicitly.

This induced amnesia results in a very worrying misconception; that racism is a thing of the past, and a thing for Americans and South Africans, not for British people. This ignores, however, the overwhelming evidence of British racial disparities. To say the least of British foreign policy for which, in the post-war period, race has been a hugely determinant factor. For those of you who are interested learning more about that, I would recommend the writing Adam Elliott Cooper of Oxford, on the 1948 British Nationality Act, and the White Dominion Settlers Laws of the 1960’s. That’s why people like my grandfather, who fought for the British while the Queen’s cousins bombed him, would be considered an ‘immigrant’ while Canadians and Australians are considered ‘expats.’

The problem, however, is that for the average student here from the start, if little [pupil 3’s name] had started school here, I would not know any of that. For those of you who don’t know, I came here in S4 from Sudan, in which revolution was brewing. When it came to it, my mum and I had a week’s long chat about the decision. In the end, I had to choose between being a amidst a violent revolution, or being a minority, which always baffles me, because it seems like such an easy choice to make, but I can tell you it isn’t.

It was then that I learned about Empire, and about British Jim Crow, about British Race Riots, and about micro-aggressions, and everything in between. For racism works in more than one way, and before we get to slavery and Nazism we have bias-motivated violence, like police brutality and before that we have non-violent discrimination like in housing, and before that we have individual acts of prejudice like bullying and ridicule, and before we get to that we have bias. Stereotyping, refusal to say people’s names, insensitive remarks.

Simply put, my mother - who by the way, like many bilingual people and parents of colour, was patronized at my first parents’ evening here, despite being a well-educated woman - taught me this: there is deep pain woven into the fibres of the union jack, and if I came here I’d have to face up to that. The red of that flag is, to some degree, that of blood, soaked straight from the black and brown bodies upon which Empire was built, the same bodies which today are crushed beneath its rubble, laying forgotten and decrepit at the bottom of the global totem pole to this day.

Simply put, my mother - who by the way, like many bilingual people and parents of colour, was patronized at my first parents’ evening here, despite being a well-educated woman - taught me this: there is deep pain woven into the fibres of the union jack, and if I came here I’d have to face up to that.

But if I’d been here since day one, I wouldn’t have understood that, to any degree. I’d have thought my only role in the human story was as the very lucky beneficiary of British generosity, as I once could have been a slave, or a revolutionary, but never anything more. I’d have been taught to, at best, sanitise imperial conquest, and at worst, idolise its worst murderers, and to ignore the deeper, extant remains of their actions today.

For the final chapter then, of the pupil experience story. S5 and S6, when we have, in theory, the very most independence. For argument’s sake, let’s say I chose to study this, to study coloniality. Even having read as much as I could, even having understood as much as I can, after months of research on Foucault and Derrida and Deconstructionism and the racialized self-concept, and everything else, I would not be much better off for it.

Because, and you can take my word for this, understanding the reasons for racism now, at this late stage, of my own accord, is not enough to dispel its effects. The clouds of internalized inferiority are brewing the mental skies of pupils today, and the longer the storm runs, the harder the repair will be. All the jokes, all the abuse, all the misrecognition, it will all add up, resulting in a state of mental health which will last a lifetime without medical intervention by a therapist.

My point is I have tried to understand racism in incredible detail, to the level maximum of which I am capable, and still the nagging voice of inferiority clicks at my heels. I still see people who have said vile, despicable things about me, about my family, my mother and sister, things literally unspeakable in front of all of you, and shudder, and struggle to throw off the idea that on some level there is some truth to what they say. I have studied decoloniality as much as I conceivably can, and I still don’t belong.

I have tried to understand racism in incredible detail, to the level maximum of which I am capable, and still the nagging voice of inferiority clicks at my heels.

So why do we need anti-racism in the curriculum?

I must admit the idea does move me. It speaks, in my opinion, to the nobility of being a teacher, and to the idea that history is not written by the winners so much as it is shaped by ordinary people, like the young students in the Anti-Racist Club, who felt deep down that something had to be done and got to doing it.

The argument in general, however, rests on two central axioms I think we all agree on. The first is that prevention is better than cure. If anyone ever lets me talk to the pastoral system, then I’ll be talking about how to help students overcome existing adversity. The curriculum, however, is early intervention, it is nipping this sinister bias in the bud from early on, it is giving students of colour the room to defend themselves and making it less and less likely that they will need to.

The second is that we all care about those younger years, and the thought of them being bullied for their skin or their faith is I’m sure abhorrent to us all. Curricular change is, for the reasons I’ve described, truly geared towards them more than anything else. The reasons we are speaking to you today are varied, but in essence we’ve seen the vicious isolation and hardship racism can bring to these children, and we are doing what they can to prevent it.

For me, I quite simply know I’d struggle to live with myself if I did nothing. Since leaving Sudan, I have been helpless to its slow, painful decline, to the casualties, and frequent passing of friends and family members, and to the grief which pervaded my community there, while those same friends and family here were mocked, insulted. In short, I felt guilty, for I did nothing.

Here, with this speech and the Anti-Racist Club, for the first time in years, I have had the chance to do good. So you can trust that when I say the primacy of these children cannot be overstated, I am telling the truth. It is no easy thing, to overcome time constraints, to depoliticize the rancorous, polarized area of race. But the point we’re trying to make, the point we think we have made, is that it is for the welfare of these students.

The point is that the status quo is hurting these students. And this, anti-racism, decoloniality, can help save future pupils from the same hardship.

The point is that the status quo is hurting these students. And this, anti-racism, decoloniality, can help save future pupils from the same hardship. Our greatest worry when starting this was one of longevity; that our efforts in the Anti-Racist Club would evaporate as soon as we leave. But in truth, one of my proudest moments I have been as a pupil is seeing the younger children in the Anti-Racist Club bravely telling their experiences, filled with hope that they might one day never have to endure them again. In that, and in my unequivocal belief in your care for these students, I know that we can come closer to that first, and most difficult, ambition of every school for children and young people: to belong.

Allan Crosbie, an English curriculum leader at the James Gillespie's high school in Edinburgh, shared that his department, in their efforts to decolonise the curriculum, would stop teaching To Kill a Mockingbird for its dated depiction of race and promotion of the white saviour narrative. Instead, the department would be teaching more contemporary fiction written by authors of colour.

For any educator doubting the professional judgement behind that decision, or unsure about the benefits of that decision, I am sharing my reflections here in the hope that more school leaders will be brave enough to take similar anti-racist action. I am writing as a non-Black teacher of colour in Scotland who has spent several years researching anti-racism in Scottish education and who has, in the past, taught To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men.

Sensationalist Media Response:

It didn’t take much time for the press to sensationalise what should really be deemed a sound exercise of professional judgement and the practice of anti-racist education. The professional decision to stop teaching an American classic written by a white author became distorted by the media as “scrapping,” “cancelling,” “banning” and “woke.” Instead of using inverted commas around those inflammatory words, the headlines included the words “dated” and “white saviour” in quotation marks to instantly dismiss the valid description of the American classic.

This is no surprise and no coincidence. The press tends to capitalise on the emotional topic of race, causing school leaders to second-guess themselves when doing the right thing, all in fear of the press. This in turn works to preserve the status quo (racism and white supremacy) without leaving space for addressing the complexities of education and anti-racism.

School leaders (understandably) fearing the press, ask yourselves what matters most: the learning outcomes of children and young people in your school, or the temporary noise of the press?

If you genuinely believe you are doing the right thing, then the answer should be clear. I will do my best to support those teachers deciding to stop teaching To Kill a Mockingbird and having to defend their decisions. That is because, contrary to Geoff Palmer, I believe that "dropping" To Kill a Mockingbird is one way to start beating racism.

Roll in The Race Expert:

As an anti-racist activist, I am often seen as an “expert” in many spaces. When an Advanced Higher pupil chose To Kill a Mockingbird for their English dissertation, I was asked to be their supervisor as the “race expert” in the school. In that instance, I was glad to do it because I did actually know what I was doing, but I generally don’t like seeing myself as the expert because there is always so much more to learn about anti-racism. Being rolled in as the “race expert” in spaces that are new to us can lead to brilliant learning opportunities, but we should also be wary of the people (and the press) capitalising on our ignorance as we learn.

I hold Professor Geoff Palmer in very high regard and I am grateful for the scientific and historical wisdom he imparts every time I hear him speak. Palmer has been instrumental in the movement to decolonise Scottish History, bringing light to the role of Henry Dundas in delaying abolition of the slave trade by 15 years. The press turned to Palmer as the “race expert” to comment on the school’s decision to stop teaching To Kill a Mockingbird. Unfortunately, the distorted narrative that the press presented – that of “banning” a text – may have led to Palmer’s decision to warn, if not condemn, the school. Without an understanding of Scotland’s English curriculum or even having recently read To Kill a Mockingbird, I can understand how any "race expert" might not realise the complexity of decolonising an English curriculum.

Problematising the White Literary Canon

First published in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird was written by white American author Harper Lee and it is stocked in the cupboards of many English departments in Scotland. Mockingbird has a reputation of being a seminal anti-racist text, an iconic classic about racial justice, primarily because of the court case it presents where a white man tries to defend an innocent Black man who is falsely accused of raping a white woman. In the recent headlines about the James Gillespie school, one journalist argues that “to cancel Mockingbird is to kill the past” and Palmer shared similar concerns that not teaching this text would lead to young people’s ignorance about racism in the justice system. However, the English curriculum leader under attack had precisely chosen a contemporary text which addresses racism in the justice system and police brutality: The Hate U Give by Black author Angie Thomas. This decision was also criticised for “dumbing down” literature for teenagers, even though the person behind that critique confessed not having read the book and admits judging it by the letter "U" in the title. Or does it have anything to do with the fact that The Hate U Give is written by a Black woman making the Black Lives Matter movement, and thus racial consciousness, more accessible to young people? Either way, if teachers are really concerned about challenging literature, then there are definitely other older classics written by Black authors worth considering.

Because of the whiteness of the literary canon, Mockingbird receives far more attention than the play A Raisin in the Sun by Black American writer, Lorraine Hansberry, which was published in 1959, only one year before Mockingbird. Having taught A Raisin in the Sun several times, I can confirm that Hansberry’s insights into the intersectional experiences of racism, sexism and poverty, along with the intergenerational resistance against slavery and movements of Pan-Africanism, are far more valuable and authentic that anything vaguely anti-racist in Mockingbird. While teaching it, my S3 and S4 pupils were able to:

• make connections between the historical racism in the USA and the UK, drawing parallels between the racial segregation in the housing system at the time and that of contemporary Glasgow,
• gain a deeper understanding of the intergenerational wealth gaps caused by enslavement in the USA
• identify the intersectionality of sexism, racism and poverty alongside the myth of the (white) American Dream.
• empathise with Black American characters, while enjoying diverse representations of Blackness (from the Black American student to the migrant Nigerian Professor, the Black aristocrat to the Black chauffeur, the Black son to the Black grandmother, etc.)
• reflect on the way “nice” people can be racist too.

To me, it is a true anti-racist classic.

Yet A Raisin in the Sun isn’t widely stocked in the cupboards of English departments and there are no headlines about this American classic being “cancelled” or “banned.” That is how the white literary canon operates: it does nothing to protect the seminal work of Black writers.

Essentially, Palmer and the news articles about the James Gillespie school fail to address what decolonising the English curriculum actually involves:

1. Questioning the whiteness of the literary canon
2. Finding those other anti-racist books that tend to be left at the margins, precisely because they are written by authors of colour.

Considering that an English teacher tends to have about 4 hours per week with secondary school classes, decisions have to be made all the time about which texts to teach. That doesn’t mean pupils can’t get books like Mockingbird out of the library to read for themselves. A Raisin in the Sun is one of the many texts out there which does a better job of sensitively helping young people understand the historical and contemporary manifestations of racism, both in the US and the UK (if the teacher helps make those connections). To find out more, and to build your own racial literacy, check out the Anti-Racist Educator and the Lit in Colour (incomplete) reading lists.

If, for some unfortunate reason, you have no choice but to teach Mockingbird, then please consider the many problems with the text before you proceed.

The Dehumanising White Gaze

First of all, To Kill a Mockingbird is a story about white people, not Black people. It was written by a white author and it is narrated by a white girl whose gaze regularly dehumanises the very few Black characters:

- the housemaid who speaks “funny” according to the white child, encouraging the reader to internalise the idea that white people naturally have a superior way of communication

- the housemaid’s church friend who is dismissed as “aggressive,” reproducing the trope of the angry Black woman

- the innocent Black male victim of the court case who needs to be saved by a white person, having no agency and hardly any lines in the entire novel.

This white gaze is present in many texts taught in Scottish schools (such as Ian Crichton Smith’s short story, Home) and teachers should encourage their learners to critically reflect on whose perspectives are missing, especially when they are the object of the white gaze. Unchallenged stereotypes (e.g. angry Black woman), omissions (e.g. Black resistance) and distortions (e.g. Black people speaking “funny”) all contribute to the formation of racial prejudice in young people and thus reproduce racism.

The White Saviour Narrative

Mockingbird presents a narrative of white saviourism, whereby Black people have no agency, no power to resist oppression, and rely entirely on benevolent rich white male characters who fail to reflect on their own inherited privileges (e.g. wealth accumulated as a result of slavery). This narrative is false because it omits the important legacy of Black resistance across the globe. One significant example of Black resistance was brought to the stage by the Black British intellectual, C. L. R. James, whose play preserves the incredible story of Toussaint Louverture, leader of the Haitian revolution.

Going back to Mockingbird, learners should be supported to think critically about the problems behind the white saviour narrative which has historically been used to justify colonisation, as seen in Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden,” and which continues to be enacted in the unequal power dynamics of the international charity industry.

The Classist, Good-Bad Binary of Racism

The simplistic, classist portrayal of racism in Mockingbird encourages the reader to believe that only “bad” people, especially poor, uneducated white people, are guilty and complicit in racism. Meanwhile, none of the white protagonists and heroes think about their racial identity and their role in racism as a system of advantage based on race. Learners should be encouraged to reflect on the ways that racism operates as a system, rather than simply isolated acts of cruel behaviour.

Pupil Voice and Teacher Racial Illiteracy:

Palmer called for pupils’ views before deciding to stop teaching Mockingbird. I agree that pupils should be centred in those decisions and journalists should have included the views of Black pupils in Scotland by contacting anti-racist organisations supporting young Black people such as Intercultural Youth Scotland. In the report by Intercultural Youth Scotland, In Sight, the majority of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic young people felt that, in English, the class did not read books that were about experiences that related to their culture, heritage and background. It is worth noting that Mockingbird relates to a white American person’s culture, heritage and background, as it does nothing but belittle Black American culture and, of course, it focuses on the USA. In England, the recent Lit in Colour report found that 34% of students are of Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background but only 0.7% of students study a book by an author of colour at GCSE and only 0.1% of students study a book by a woman of colour at GCSE. There is no reason to believe that in Scotland the situation is much different.

When it comes to teaching Mockingbird, there already exists research on pupils’ experiences. Teaching While White has an entire podcast episode dedicated to American students’ experiences of being taught Mockingbird in secondary school. All the pupils interviewed were disappointed by their white teachers’ discomfort and unwillingness to talk about race even though the book was presented as an anti-racist text. The teachers had not reflected on their positionality, their white racial identity, and did not have the racial literacy or tools to lead those uncomfortable conversations about racism. This mirrors the findings in Scotland where teachers tend to lack confidence in talking about race (Teaching in a Diverse Scotland, 2021). In England, confidence in talking about race was equally identified as a major barrier for teaching diverse texts (Lit in Colour, 2021).

When teaching Mockingbird, difficult conversations about race are central to challenging the formation of racial prejudice from the text, deconstructing the white saviour complex and minimising the risks of racial trauma caused by the excessive use of the n-word.

If a teacher does not have the class time or racial literacy to support learners in thinking critically about the racist stereotypes, omissions and distortions in literature, then texts like To Kill a Mockingbird will definitely do more damage than good. As a teacher with a fair amount of confidence and racial literacy, I was able to supervise a white pupil writing their dissertation on the text by regularly talking about race with them and framing their arguments around the problematic nature of Mockingbird as an anti-racist text. At Advanced Higher, there is much more time and space to sensitively do this but I would have struggled with a Third Year class.

In the research carried out by Teaching While White, every pupil agreed that Mockingbird had no value as an anti-racist text and it risked causing more damage than good considering the racial trauma it can cause for students of colour. Similarly, a colleague of mine recently taught the novel in Scotland, surveyed their class afterwards and the consensus was that To Kill a Mockingbird should no longer be taught because there are more appropriate texts out there. I have no doubt that other English department’s making such decisions would consider their pupils’ views and keep their best interests at heart.

The Excessive use of the N-word and Racial Trauma

The racial slur, the n-word, appears almost 50 times in To Kill a Mockingbird and when the text is read out loud in class this creates a major safe-guarding issue for Black pupils at risk of experiencing racial trauma. The verbalisation of that word so many in times in class trivialises the harm it causes and it can lead to non-Black pupils thinking that they have permission to say that word whenever they want. Black respondents to the student survey on the Teaching While White survey shared the stress it caused them in classroom which made them unavailable for learning for the entire novel. In comparison, A Raisin in the Sun contains the n-word only once and the Black characters immediately address the harm behind the word, without requiring any input from white characters. This probably has to do with Lorraine Hansberry's deeper understanding, as a Black playwright, of the psychological harm the word would cause for Black audiences watching the play.

Since the n-word in the classroom is such a requested topic for our blog to cover, and since it does not only apply to the English curriculum and the teaching of To Kill a Mockingbird, I will be posting more guidance on this shortly.

*Click here for my blog post with more guidance.*

To Kill a Mockingbird: Not an Anti-Racist Text

It should now be clear that To Kill a Mockingbird is not an anti-racist text. Analysing it with an anti-racist lens, such as Critical Race Theory, has the potential of creating valuable anti-racist learning outcomes for white pupils, as I did when supervising an Advanced Higher dissertation. However, without that racial literacy and the tools for engaging in difficult conversations about race in education, the book does more damage than good in the classroom. No anti-racist text should require so much time, effort and racial literacy for a classroom teacher to unpack in a way that doesn't create more risks of perpetuating racial prejudice and narratives of white saviourism. And the racial trauma caused by the excessive use of the n-word is a strong enough reason for not counting it as an anti-racist text, let alone teaching it in the classroom.

If any teacher is looking for support in their decision to stop teaching To Kill a Mockingbird or other problematic texts written by white authors, please don't hesitate to get in touch by emailing theantiracisteducator@gmail.com

Please spread the word by using the hashtag #MockingbirdNOTAntiRacist on social media and share your Mockingbird stories on Twitter by tagging us with @AntiRacistEd

References:

Mockingbird in the Classroom: The Student Experience (Teaching While White podcast)

Lit in Colour report

Teaching in a Diverse Scotland: 3 Years On

One example of the numerous articles attacking Allan Crosbie's department for their decision to stop teaching Mockingbird.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

Toussaint Louverture by C.L.R. James

In Sight: Perceptions and Experiences of Black Asian and Minority Ethnic Young People in Scotland, by Intercultural Youth Scotland

Recommendations:

The Anti-Racist Educator blog post on Critical Literacies by Navan Govender

The Anti-Racist Educator webinar on Decolonising the English Curriculum

The Lit in Colour reading list

The Anti-Racist Educator reading list

The Scottish Government Race Equality and Anti-Racism in Education Programme

The Anti-Racist Educator blog post on Difficult Conversations about Race

Framework for Mutual and Productive Communication about Race in Education

The Anti-Racist Educator podcast episode on Racial Trauma, Black History and Black Joy

You can follow Pavi and AREYC's work on the following handles on social media: Twitter - @SarmaPavithra; @AREYCScotland; Instagram - @pavisarma2021

This blog post completes a short series on the manifestations of racism in Scottish Education (see Part 1 and Part 2). It is worth noting that the recent review of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence carried out by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) failed to address racism, highlighting a wider pattern of Western countries and organisations side-tracking racism and thus perpetuating institutional and systemic racism.

In my previous blog post entitled ‘Just listen… please’, I shared some of my explorations into systemic racism using the links between education and the lack of teacher training, what this looks like for People of Colour (PoC) and my family’s lived experiences. Identity and erasure of identities is an important and oft-discussed topic in education within Black and Brown communities because policies that exist are inadequate and practices don’t extend towards acknowledging the pain of the lived experiences of Black and Brown people.

Diversity and inclusion are commonly favoured and politicised words that offer the illusion of equality but true equality doesn’t require displacement and redistribution of power – it entails an actual look at the systemic racism that causes this imbalance and profits off its historically unequal power imbalances.

The Children’s Commissioner of Scotland has noted that BAME (Black Asian Minority Ethnic) children, may have been particularly impacted by Covid-19 due to experiencing heightened illnesses, surge of racist incidents and other inequalities affecting their mental health (CYPCS, 2020). Considering current International polices lay emphasis on inclusive practices and pedagogies, the focus on childhood, children’s needs and development within the early years is still executed by framing them within theoretical Western hegemonic lenses (Viruru, 2001). For example, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) six major diversity themes via its ‘strength through diversity’ project exclude “race” as a category with the OECD stating its preference for using the concept of “ethnicity” and synonymising “race” and ethnicity (OECD, 2020).

So, whom do these policies represent?

Scotland has long held onto feelings of oppression and discrimination from England without understanding the role played by the Scots as oppressors in colonial history. In a bid to distance Scotland from BREXIT and in the run to propel and gain momentum for Scottish independence, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, has stated repeatedly that Scotland welcomes and values its immigrant population. However, are immigrants really welcome here and are non-white Scots continuing to face ‘othering’? The answer is still a resounding YES and this goes back to the lack of acknowledgement around Scotland’s role in colonialism, how the Scots benefited from the formation of a union in the first place and a push for the inclusion of these topics within the curriculum for excellence.

There seems to be a profound level of cognitive dissonance present when it comes to Scotland’s role in colonial history and wanting to be seen as the oppressed. The oppressed can be the oppressor too and this is often lost in a whirlpool of defensiveness coated with the privilege of being supported by righteous indignation. Considering education in Scotland is devolved and the Curriculum for excellence (CfE) is open to interpretation, it is very interesting to note that these topics are usually never discussed within classrooms or other learning spheres.

It is important to recognise that Scotland had tried, repeatedly, to colonise South America and the Caribbean but was unsuccessful until the union with England. Shashi Tharoor, in his book ‘Inglorious empire’ writes about the looting of India and how Scots were disproportionately employed within the British empire. He states how they benefited from their participation in the exploits of the East India Company and racked up loaves of bread and fish. Although the Scots represented 9% of the British population, 25% of Scots were employed in India and their combined earnings there collectively helped bring Scotland out of poverty. He surmises that the thriving shipyards, factories and the booming economy was a result of India being ‘the corn-chest for Scotland’ and after Indian independence in 1947 and post, these bonds have noticeably and blatantly weakened.

So imagine my surprise when many Scottish people I’ve met and continue to meet didn’t and don’t know where my native city of Chennai (or formerly known as Madras during British India), is. They are also unaware that the links between Scotland and India due to the empire, resulted in the construction of the St. Andrew’s church in Chennai, which was built in the early 18th century to support the Scottish community living there. However, we are only known for our ‘Madras chicken curry’.

This is akin to a history teacher in England who offered a free online class from a WWII bunker in Liverpool, to interested students during lockdown last year. I could only watch and listen to his whitewashed narratives for five minutes while he proclaimed that Liverpool was a gateway for Britain’s desire to help other countries and ensure countries were supported. I was the only parent in the comments section to challenge this as I shook with apoplectic rage. His version of history didn’t encompass the fact that Liverpool outshone Bristol and London as the slave-trading capital of Britain by 1740.

Black and Brown enslaved bodies were forced to travel across extreme climes, brutality and hardship in exchange for freedom from colonisation that didn’t happen, and they were tightly packaged together within the holds of the ships. When people died from starvation, beatings and extreme weather, their bodies were thrown overboard and / or piled up amidst the stench of faeces, urine, vomit and rotting flesh. In fact, to regulate the number of slaves that a ship could carry, the first British legislation was enacted in 1788 called 'The Regulated Slave Trade Act'. Although Liverpool entered slave trade later than the more prominent slave ports in Britain, it had 131 transatlantic sailing vessels to London’s 22 and Bristol’s 42 in 1792.

The two major trading ports of Glasgow and Greenock and their role in ‘the triangular trade’ and chattel slavery isn’t mentioned in our history books or discussed within the education system. In the 1600s, land owned by The Scots and English in the West Indies and the east coast of America were cleared for tobacco and sugar plantations. The 1707 Act of Union resulted in The Scots joining the English trade routes including ‘the triangular trade’ and ensured that Scotland and England were entwined in their interests in the commodification of those enslaved aka chattel slavery. This meant that goods such as cloth, copper and guns were shipped from Britain to West Africa to be sold or exchanged; captive Africans were bought and taken to the West Indies or America and sold as slaves. The plantations were then worked on by those enslaved, ensuring that raw materials such as sugar, rum, tobacco and cotton were produced and shipped to Britain.

Chattel and indentured slaves (with few rights) were tasked with taking care of the tobacco plantations that were owned by some of the Scots. The slave trade, sugar and tobacco industries burgeoned in the 1700s, thus strengthening the commodification of those enslaved. The combined worth of exports and imports between the West Indies and Scotland amounted to at least £50 million in today’s currency in 1790. Glasgow University only realised last year that it had financially benefited from Scottish slave traders in the 18th and 19th centuries to the tune of between £16.7m and £198m in today’s money. The institution has agreed to pay £20 million in reparations via an agreement signed with the University of West Indies, for its historical involvement in the slave trade. This university is the first of its kind to embark on the path to restorative justice.

We need to challenge the whitewashed British narrative and history glorifying the empire, where the empire just came to be and not because Britain profited off the backs of the unmentionable horrors that Black and Brown bodies were subjected to. Educators need to educate themselves and children need to know actual British history and about all the Black and Brown people who fought in wars for the empire and how society is still upholding colonial mindsets and ideologies via structural racism and oppression. Black and Brown history should not be an elective or something that is skimmed over for 30 days in a year, while students are tasked with learning white history the rest of the year, so an education system can claim to be ‘not racist’ while engaging in performative allyship and virtue signalling.

The decolonisation of the curriculum is pivotal to anti-racism work with academics, activists and educators pointing out how racist and exclusionary education has been for a while now. There needs to be a concentrated effort to raise the awareness around the contributions of people of colour. It is equally important that teachers receive support, consistent anti-bias and anti-racism training and resources to facilitate this.

We are often asked where we are from and if we get annoyed or snap back, we are asked ‘why are you here then?’ Ambalavaner Sivanandan’s powerful words “We are here because you were there” ring true and resonate with so many anti-racism activists within Black and Brown communities. He was the director of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), and the founding editor of its journal Race & Class, which has had contributions from many notable and pioneering philosophers and political thinkers like Noam Chomsky, Aijaz Ahmad, Chris Searle, Cedric Robinson, Angela Davis and many others. He was a prolific thinker, far ahead of his time, and grasped the importance of intersectional elements long before this gained traction in the mainstream, thanks to Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw’s crucial work.

The claim to Scottish exceptionalism around racism has been consistent with fingers pointed towards England and without wanting to take ownership around the systemic shake-up that is required in Scotland. The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow came under fire due to a Facebook post published by a student on the 28th of October 2019, detailing grave and traumatic incidents experienced by them and fellow students. Incidents encompassed severe systemic ableism, abortion, mental health, systemic racism, sexism, sexual assault, disparaging remarks about mental illness and mis-gendering trans students and anti-trans bigotry. The students led by Chan Teck Guan Egan and four others, supported by numerous anonymous folks had been fighting for close to a year but to no avail. They persisted in relentlessly fighting for their rights against numerous odds and the bourgeois tactics implemented by the management and academics, despite Chan having graduated from the Conservatoire. The course leader of their program, Prof. Deborah Richardson-Webb, was finally sacked in early July.

The question we need to ask ourselves is if racism is so rampant, what ensures its invisibility amongst whiteness. Why is this so repetitive?

Dr. Remi-Joseph Salisbury, Presidential Fellow in Ethnicity and Inequalities in the University of Manchester, stated the following which holds true across education systems in Britain from the early years to the university level:

'We must always be aware of (and beware of) the historical role that universities have played in the creation and perpetuation of white supremacy, and in the oppression of black and brown people generally.(…) in terms of the contemporary role of university, we should recognise that the education systems operates to exclude so many racially minoritised students and – through various racist mechanisms-often alienates, excludes and marginalises those who do attend.’

Since racism is interpersonal, structural and epistemological, Euro-centric and American hegemony, the digestion of its knowledge production and sharing impacts provision and access to representation. For example - Whose books do we read? Who do academics cite in their research? How are language and vocabulary used and translated when being adopted by white hegemonic cultures and what is their allusion to class? Why are young children and our societies bombarded with white resources that are not representative of its communities or represent people of colour fairly or in a position of control and power?

The intersectional lens and how this affects students of colour from minority ethnic backgrounds isn’t understood within the educational system. Intersectionality is the concurrent or simultaneous interactions between race, gender, class, sexual orientation, religion, the differently-abled and so on, and have an impact on an individual and their interactions with and within society. How we are viewed in society because of these intersects is crucial as these contribute to systemic power imbalances. Euro-centric academics have argued for the separation of race from various other intersects but Black feminists have rightfully argued for the inclusion of race and its impact on gender, sexual orientation, class, caste, being differently-abled/having disabilities in analyses.

Here’s an example of systemic racism and how it works for BAME folks. I had been engaging in these discussions sporadically with the parent council of my older child’s school, head and deputy heads for 7 years running. I sent out an email to my daughter’s school in June 2020, to find out why they hadn’t addressed the shockwaves resonating through the world due to George Floyd’s murder, the BLM movement, its significance in Scotland and its impact on Black and Brown communities in the school. The head's response is typical of ALL of the institutions and charities I have dealt with in Scotland, complained to and shared our experiences with. It is also unsurprising as the Scottish ex-deputy head of that school had asked me a couple of years ago what Black history month was, when I questioned the reason for the school not creating any awareness around it.

I have inserted cues (original email states names) and left spaces blank so that the names are left out. I have also highlighted one particular bit in the beginning of my email and the reason will become apparent as you peruse through my email. Please note the cherry-picking and complete lack of acknowledgement by the Headteacher.

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Dear ______,

Thank you for getting in touch with your concerns. I am very sorry to hear that ________ feels so upset; Miss ________ would be happy to talk to her directly about that, if you were agreeable.

The death of George Floyd and the subsequent impact is a very grave matter. I understand that a statement is being prepared by the Council and I plan to share that with the community shortly, along with some resources that the Council Equalities Team have signposted for us to use. We will continue to work with this team, and indeed our professional institutes, such as the EIS, to take forward this important work.

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I am writing to say that as a brown South Asian family and a member of the BAME community, it is deeply perturbing and yet another subliminal acknowledgement from (name of the school) that our lives and experiences don't matter. Why hasn't the school acknowledged the death of George Floyd and the impact it has had around the world? Is there any awareness about its relevance in Scotland? Black folks have died here in police custody too and BAME folk experience so much racism in their personal and professional lives. Both my kids certainly have within ________ and the teachers' ignorance and unwillingness to engage has contributed to the racism.

(My daughter) has been really upset by your lack of interest in understanding and acknowledging how George Floyd's death is a representation of BAME lives and the dangers faced by families on a regular basis based on the colour of their skin in Scotland. She has been very upset since her brother was subjected to racial bullying and everyone was so dismissive, when she has seen her brother targeted on the playground. She has experienced enough racism and microaggressions within and outside the school to understand that this isn't going to go away. She has been worried about her Black friends and been thinking about them. What the school has done successfully is perpetuate the behaviours of bullies and white fragility amongst its teachers by not recognising or educating themselves about it.

You expect us to be polite while communicating when talking about our children's mental health, lives and pain while you continue to dismiss, blame and be evasive. I cannot tell you how many times you yourself have asked me what my first language was, HT, when I have repeatedly said that it was English. This is a form of microaggression - being unable to understand that people have different accents due to us coming from a former British colony and asking us to defend our identity and presence here.

I have raised these issues for years when my daughter started at (name of the school), experienced racism and when my son __________ was isolated for his identity, you and your teachers blamed him and no one acknowledged his experiences or even spoke to him about it. His voice and ours didn't matter. There was a denial and an assertion, both via meetings and via your GIRFEC report that it was his fault and he was to blame. He had an anxiety attack the day I wrote to you, HT, to say that he wasn't coming back to school anymore. He didn't want to live anymore and had been talking about it for months and had developed migraine and wheezing. He had night terrors for 9 months. He was six years old and he still today says to me that the teachers were unwilling to understand, decided he was the problem, was lying and didn't care about what he was going through. He was traumatised and you cannot imagine what it's like to watch your children go through so much trauma and at such a young age. Taking him out of that abusive and toxic situation that was created thanks to the environment at school was the best thing that happened to him.

What people don't understand is that racism is systemic and structural and not just based on individual person-to-person incidents. It is prejudice + power. Every time an incident is raised or an issue is brought up to the authorities when we can muster up some emotional labour and strength to protect our kids, there is so much ego at play from educators and those in power. This has been our experience at school too.

It is exhausting for us to be dismissed repeatedly just because the school doesn't want to record instances of racism and bullying. The school is worried about logging sets of complaints with the Council and being perceived as THAT school with problems. However, the impact on the mental health of children of colour attending this school, as well as, the families involved, have been consistently ignored. The school hasn't looked at any of this as a learning opportunity to better themselves.

The problem is when Gaelic teachers and parents conflate Gaelic oppression and racism, they are not only whitewashing their role in colonialism but not understanding their own whiteness & the privilege and protection it accords. The staff and you simply don't have enough awareness, training and an understanding of white privilege and white fragility. I have said so repeatedly and offered to bring in trainers and educators to assist, because I am also an activist, community engagement facilitator, researcher and entrepreneur.

I have offered to come to the school to engage and talk about diversity and racism many times in the past.... as have other parents. The school's lack of recognition around all of these issues and lack of measures in place, has been appalling. I have been told constantly that 'diversity isn't a priority' and this has indeed been communicated via your actions and that of the school's.

Inclusion is the notion that everyone needs to be treated equally based on the assumption that it's a level-playing field for all. Anti-racism specifically acknowledges the white supremacist ideologies that led to colonisation, trans-Atlantic slave trade, Apartheid, the benefits of whiteness and how some people in society will be targeted for the colour of their skin - personally and systemically. It uses examples to educate and raise awareness. The school has neither been inclusive nor anti-racist.

DHT - I have written emails to you with resources around racism and how to engage with students but I haven't received any responses to any of my emails. You and I have talked about _________ being cyber-bullied and about how she doesn't see representation amongst staff and hence, feels uncomfortable talking about her concerns. This silence is complicity and is very telling of how BAME parents are perceived in this school. It also highlights the staff's discomfort and ignorance.

Feedback is seen as a personal attack, as opposed to systemic failures and teachers, heads and other staff being a part of the problem. I talked to John Swinney a few years ago about parental engagement and I have been involved in talking to policy makers and early years' practitioners who invite me to consult on social and racial education. I have spoken to some MSP's and will be talking and engaging with more politicians, especially now, since more people are finally starting to pay attention.

School needs to take responsibility for failing its BAME students, apologise to us as a family for all that you have put us through (you have absolutely no idea what that entails) and wake up. Other Black kids in the school have experienced racism and oppression several times too. All of this is free education and emotional labour & it continues to be exhausting.

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These patterns of behaviours and wilful ignorance aren’t new and will continue to carry on unless white people start to vehemently push back to dismantle systemic oppression and we start to decolonise our education system and curriculum.

Links:

1. https://www.tes.com/news/racism-scottish-education-can-do-better-bame-pupils

2. https://www.tes.com/news/use-school-curriculum-tackle-racism

3. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/diversity-row-after-conservatoire-is-accused-of-ableism-and transphobia-m77wr030m

4. https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/us-remembering-a-sivanandan-1923-2018/

5. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/aug/23/glasgow-university-slave-trade-reparations

6. https://www.nts.org.uk/learn/downloads/Scotland%20and%20the%20SlaveTrade.pdf

7. https://www.thestage.co.uk/news/royal-conservatoire-of-scotland-students-accuse-school-of-failing to-act-on-systemic-abuse-claims

8.https://www.youtube.com/watchv=jbcCHeA58Uw&list=PLsdFFWf9f_kodBmYB_nQj75sjn7yUOsS1&index=21&t=0s&fbclid=IwAR19QrK0GJoC5QgPccYD5s0ec5Xg8EHNY8uF_YUSSfLy2_E0akVTJnaIFN4

9. https://www.historytoday.com/history-matters/liverpool%E2%80%99s-slave-trade-legacy

10. Independent Children’s Rights Impact Assessment on the Response to Covid-19 in Scotland, 2020; https://cypcs.org.uk/wpcypcs/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/independent-cria.pdf, Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland

11. The International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study, The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2020, http://www.oecd.org/education/school/the-international-early-learning-and-child-well-being-study-the-study.htm

Books and Chapters:

1. Inglorious empire by Shashi Tharoor

2. No Problem Here: Racism in Scotland by Neil Davidson (Author, Editor), Minna Liinpaa (Editor), Maureen McBride (Editor), Satnam Virdee

3. Viruru, Radhika. (2001). Early Childhood Education: Postcolonial Perspectives from India, New Delhi: Sage.

Petitions:

1. End systemic racism at Scottish schools - http://chng.it/ntdscjHXD6

2. Teach British children about the realities of British Imperialism and Colonialism - http://chng.it/XhJVgdjXCh

3. Accountability for widespread abuse of students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland - https://secure.avaaz.org/community_petitions/en/Royal_Conservatoire_of_Scotland_ACCOUNTABILITY_FOR_WIDESPREAD_ABUSE_OF_STUDENTS_AT_THE_ROYAL_CONSERVATOIRE_OF_SCOTLAND/?fbclid=IwAR34B5lqMAoyDAH8siiN2m0DODoUSyxXXH36hck9CEnyY

Its grand building probably dates to the 18th or 19th century. It might have once been the stately home of a merchant who made his money through the exploitation of enslaved Black people on tobacco plantations. Once its owner’s family no longer had any need for the building and surrounding lands, it would have been demolished, or bought by the local government and converted into a museum for the health and educational benefits of the locals. Its displays would have been filled with cultural heritage from around Scotland and the rest of the world – some plundered in acts of extreme violence, others taken as “curiosities” by missionaries who had converted the “savages”, who were now no longer in need of the instruments of their previous religions. And don’t forget the natural history collections, showcasing resources from foreign lands, ripe for extraction.

All this done in the name of Empire. An Empire built on White supremacy. It was “,the white man’s burden” to rule and civilise the Black, Asian and Indigenous peoples of the world. A burden that involved the mass extraction of human and natural resources; “,ultraviolent” wars waged with a storm of bullets from Maxim guns against old rifles and spears; the underdevelopment of countries around the world for the development of the West; the pillaging of cultural heritage; the erasure of histories; and the dehumanisation of Black, Asian and Indigenous people.

The British Empire was central to the museum. As Professor Dan Hicks puts it, “as the border is to the nation state so the museum is to empire.”

If the Empire is racist, then the museum is racist.

The building might have been knocked down, rebuilt, redeveloped. Its displays might have been refreshed or re-interpreted. The staff might have more progressive ideas than their predecessors. They might even have a workforce, senior management and board that is ethnically diverse (don’t count on it though).

None of this changes the fact that Empire is built into its foundations. Its legacy can be felt as you walk through the galleries. Culture is collected and categorised. The galleries about Scotland that show art of White people, by White people, for White people. Where the nation’s or city’s great achievements, its struggles and its path to modernity are told; while its role in Empire and Slavery is tucked away in a corner, if it’s mentioned at all. Egyptian collections are still probably kept separate to African ones. Wouldn’t want to give visitors any ideas about Africa having advanced pre-colonial societies that influenced the world. Those “curiosities” from the former colonies of the Empire, are usually now described as art at least. However, the amount of people who died or the amount of culture that was eradicated to bring those artworks to the museum, is rarely mentioned and seldom is anything done about it. The living cultures those items once were a part of, are now frozen in time, out of context, and any violent circumstances attached to them are frozen and perpetuated alongside them.

The narrative that the visitor leaves with is one of comfortable pride and deafening silence.

We need museums though, right? How many spaces for free collective learning do we have left? Spaces we need in an increasingly insular, individualistic world, where education often comes with a hefty price tag. But what use is a space if it does little to play its part in remedying the ills of society?

Education always seems to be the most common solution to most of our social problems. And when we think of education, we think of schools.

An education that is anti-racist would have to be as deep as it is wide. For one, it would have to involve the study of societies around the world before colonisation to understand the devastating impact of their subsequent oppression and underdevelopment. It would have to explain how racism developed as a tool of colonialism that sought justification for the oppression and enslavement of Black, Asian and Indigenous peoples. Not to mention the narratives of resistance, that show enslaved and colonised peoples as active characters in their own story, rather than footnotes to someone else’s. The weight of this education is heavy, and it can’t be placed on the desks of teachers alone.

Is the museum up to the task of sharing the responsibility? Can the museum be a tool to fight against the same ideologies it helped to perpetuate, and in some cases still does? Can curators and museum educators point to the ,Benin Bronzes as examples of African artistic achievement and culture, while doing nothing to return those same objects to their rightful owners?

These are all questions that the museum has so far failed to answer.

And yet it must if it is to re-imagine its purpose, take up its responsibility and fulfil its potential as a tool for anti-racist education. “It’s not enough to be non-racist; we must be anti-racist,” applies to us all, including the museum. The value of the museum isn’t innate. Its value is in the role it plays within the society in which it exists.

Delivering anti-racist education should be a key function of the museum. Many museum educators and curators work hard to try and fulfil this function, but there will always be a contradiction at the heart of their work while the museum as an institution, fails to understand, address and rectify its own complicity in systems of racism and colonialism.

The museum’s reckoning with its own past and role within society is part of fulfilling any commitment to anti-racism.

Then, perhaps, the museum could be a space where its global collections are used to challenge and decentre Whiteness and the West. Where people can come together on an equal basis, for a free collective educational experience; where we learn about each other, our place in the world, our different and universal ways of being. A space where comfortable narratives are challenged, and where racism is no longer upheld, but actively dismantled.

So far we have discussed the history of Campus Officer’s in Scotland and the concerns around racist policing. In this post, we’ll look at some of the arguments which justify police in schools and how these often lack credibility, the root causes of youth violence and alternatives to tackling this.

As we touched on in Blog 1, the role of Campus Policing in Scottish schools has often been unclear. One of the justifications for employing Campus Officers (CO’s) in schools is that they serve an educational purpose by delivering sessions to pupils on topics related to their safety, e.g. keeping safe online, risks around drugs/alcohol. The likelihood of young people engaging in risky behaviours is often determined by factors such as mental health and past trauma but concerningly, CO’s do not receive bespoke training around these issues which can ,,increase the likelihood of young people engaging in unsafe and unhealthy behaviours. An ,,Evaluation of Campus Police Officers in Scottish Schools was undertaken in 2010, and key stakeholders were interviewed around their views on campus policing. It was reported that ‘The provision of training was generally felt to be limited and inconsistent, especially during the early stages of the initiative.’ Even more worrying is that almost all of the CO’s interviewed were involved in organising or delivering lessons with pupils.

The role of CO’s as educators in the classroom also poses a threat to young people who have had negative experiences of policing. Will this be a safe and nurturing learning environment for such pupils? Young people from ethnic minority backgrounds are more likely to have negative experiences of the police – overall ,,stop-and-search rates between 2018 and 2019 show that Black people are now nearly 10 times more likely to be stopped and searched by police than white people. The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement this year, fuelled by the killing of George Floyd, led to worldwide protests which acknowledged the violence and harm of policing towards people of colour. For a young person of colour witnessing this unfold, classroom environments can become places of threat and surveillance due to the mere presence of police officers, rather than an empowering and safe space to learn.

It is also claimed that police presence in schools can help to ‘build positive relationships’ between the police and young people. This argument alone indicates an inherent flaw in policing- there is already distrust between young people and the police. If the state is truly dedicated to building a more positive image of the police force, then surely addressing the underlying causes of distrust would be a more sensible approach rather than merely embedding the police into learning environments and hoping this will bring about harmony. Historically, UK policing has been found to be institutionally racist (see the ,,case of Stephen Lawrence) which has amplified the distrust between people of colour and the police over decades. As ,,Alpa Parmar states:

Discriminatory police practice, evidence of under-protection towards Black and minority ethnic groups and the charge of institutional racism have resulted in a fractured and acrimonious relationship between the police and ethnic minorities.

This distrust has only been further entrenched by ongoing racist policing into this decade, such as increased levels of Stop and Search that disproportionately affect young people of colour, and harsher sentences that see young Black and minority ethnic people ,,more likely to be sent to prison for offences than white defendants who have committed similar crimes. There are also substantial concerns relating to structural racism within the Scottish police system - a ,,recent report from Dame Elish Angiolini calls for a fundamental review of the police complaints system within Police Scotland following the lack of transparency of the system after the death ,,of Sheku Bayoh., How likely is it that young people of colour will trust a system which has consistently demonstrated its lack of care for people that look like them?

Part of the ,,role and remit of CO’s across Scottish schools involves: assisting in reducing anti-social behaviour and youth crime, including offending by and victimisation of, young people within the cluster community. Policing is considered to be a remedy for violence and crime yet continues to neglect the underlying causes of violence. However, the root causes of violence are varied and complex, meaning punitive measures cannot (and often will not) provide a ‘quick fix’ solution. Young people may partake in ‘youth crime and anti-social behaviour’ for a number of reasons - perhaps they are a victim of abuse, have experienced parental separation or witnessed domestic violence. Or maybe they just feel misunderstood. If young people have witnessed or been victims of violence and don’t receive adequate support to cope with their trauma, it is likely they will re-enact the violence that they have experienced themselves. A reaction to trauma may result in more difficulty regulating emotions and behaviour, meaning anger and impulsivity can form a response. Providing trauma-informed interventions, building emotional intelligence and ensuring young people are given the space to heal are just some of the ways we can overcome childhood adversity and address the root causes of violence.

We also can’t ignore the socio-economic impact on youth violence. Following the financial crisis in 2008, the UK Government introduced their austerity agenda which saw youth services face some of the largest cuts of public services,. ,Youth unemployment affected almost 1 million young people in the UK, and ethnic minorities were disproportionately impacted - in 2013, 45% of Black youth were unemployed, compared with 18% of the white population. The actions taken by the UK government only exacerbated the existing inequalities faced by young, working class people of colour. With already limited opportunities for education and employment, this group of young people saw university tuition fees tripled, jobs scrapped and the nurturing, safe havens of youth clubs being demolished. After creating more obstacles to access employment and education and taking away safe spaces, can the state really say they are shocked by the increased levels of youth violence over the past decade? Opportunity and hope are key for when young people enter and navigate early stages of adulthood, and even more essential for those that have grown up in adversity.

Initiatives set up by the Violence Reduction Unit (,,see Blog 1 for background) provide evidence of this. In 2005, Glasgow was named the murder capital of Europe, and the implementation of the VRU saw rates of crime reduce dramatically. The focus of the VRU was to treat the root causes of violence – which may range from poverty, substance misuse to unemployment. One of the most successful initiatives of the VRU is the ,,Street & Arrow project, a social enterprise that employs young people with convictions for a 12-month period. Since its launch, the project has supported 150 trainees, 120 of whom have gone on to land jobs. This initiative responds to an underlying cause of violence (lack of employment opportunities) and in turn improves job skills and confidence. The opportunity for employment is likely to prevent trainees from re-offending and regain a sense of hope for their future.

If we want to reduce youth crime and anti-social behaviour, it is essential that we acknowledge the root causes and underlying issues. Evidently, cuts to youth services and limiting opportunities for young people has only exacerbated the difficult circumstances they already have faced. There is limited evidence to show that policing in schools can effectively reduce youth crime and anti-social behaviour, but it will have a damaging impact on pupils that have had negative experiences of policing, which is more likely to be young people of colour and those from working class backgrounds.

There isn’t a ‘quick fix’ solution to an issue as complex as youth violence, however it’s clear that harsh, punitive measures do not reduce violent crime. If we truly want to move towards a society free from violence, we must invest in young people by providing bespoke mental health services, trauma-informed interventions for those impacted by violence and building resilience among young people.

Just why do we have concerns about campus officers (COs), and how does connect with our anti-racist activism? As a follow-up to our earlier post about the history of campus officers in Scotland, this article will discuss issues around racial profiling, racialisation of children, and how they inform concerns around officers being in schools. These different strands of thought come together in deep ways to govern the lives of racialised others in school settings, and are what we need to grapple with to effectively interrogate the presence and potential oppressions brought by COs.

Before discussing the facts around racial profiling, it is useful to look first of all at what we mean by “racism” and just why we bring it up in this campaign around campus officers. Definitions of racism that emphasise interpersonal abuse/violence result in treatment which would involve “educating” the racism out of society (perhaps by focusing on unconscious bias or hate crime). But a structural explanation helps us get to grips with the deep racialised inequalities of daily life in a world where vanishingly few would openly call themselves racist. How does racism persist, and in fact get worse, when many avow that the effects of racism today are less destructive? Looking at a structure allows us to understand that racism is not just what shouts at us in the street, but also that which exists without a face and flows through life often without fanfare or acknowledgement. It is the slippery sense that things benefit those racialised as white (along with the multiple intersections of power that hold privilege in society). Structural or institutional racism is what we focus on here. This idea of racism not simply being name-calling but rather a system for organising and sorting life outcomes according to how one is racialised forces us then to consider how schools fit into this (such is the purpose, after all, of this partnership between The Anti-Racism Educator and Glasgow Prisoner Solidarity).

If schools in Scotland are a productive force (meaning not neutral or just receptive, but actively making material change) when it comes to maintaining structural racism, then how does this force us to examine the presence of campus officers in a number of schools? To understand this we must look at how policing has disproportionate negative impacts on people of colour outside of school, for which we have a great deal of data.

First, some facts on what racial profiling looks like in Scotland. We may speak and have heard about it more in other settings, but it is clear that people of colour are routinely singled out for inspection by law enforcement at a disproportionately high rate. CRER have ,,reported on this and shown how policing acts to add an extra burden upon the shoulders of people of colour. They found that black people are up to five times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police, to which the reaction of Police Scotland was less than accepting and grateful. The case of the killing of Sheku Bayoh is a concrete instance of how calls for institutional racism within Scottish police have been routinely pushed back against both public and in private. Stories ,,abound of how people of colour in Scotland are excessively policed. All of this shows how the institution of the police is often one that hampers, rather than protects, the freedoms people of colour have in Scotland.

This understanding must be accompanied by accounting for the role of ,,PREVENT in schools. Whilst reporting on suspicions of radicalisation is not a statutory duty here in Scotland, the logics underpinning the agenda are certainly not absent, and anti-Muslim racism is a ,,firm part of school life right across the country. We should also account for the role migration status plays in structural racist violence, and that people in the asylum system are some of the most vulnerable when it comes to ,,explicit violence and receiving humane treatment when it comes to peers, and the ,,state. Taking in these facts around racial profiling and the general ecosystem of racism in Scotland, we can now turn to what role schools play in all of it.

Taking structural racism to be a given, then we should consider if and how Scottish schools serve to perpetuate and continue to give life to it. As previously mentioned, we should think of schools as not just being receptacles into which racism is poured by the presence and speech of unpleasant individuals (whether they be staff, children, or families), or spaces in which racism only lives to be challenged. This view furthers the cause of a liberal anti-racism which contends that racism is individuals, but not institutions and certainly not cultures, histories, or the hallowed spaces in which our children are taught. Against this liberal conception, ,,schools are a part of the wider culture previously discussed in which racism lives and is a perfectly normal part of our existence. As per critical race theory (CRT), it is almost mundane. It exists and is ,,central to how schools in Scotland work.

In appreciating the varied ways racism presents itself in daily life, for children we need to also consider how the very idea of childhood has from its conception been a racialised one. While childhood is often considered to be a time of freedom, play, and innocence, these apparent facts are not often read on the bodies of racialised minority children, and particularly those who are black. Frederick Douglass spoke of “white children [being] permitted to mature out of servitude” while black children may gain an adult body but be condemned to a childlike mind forever, and therefore need to be policed and controlled as such. More recently Audre Lorde said that “Black children are often preoccupied with survival within a fundamentally anti-Black culture, and therefore ‘never allowed to be children.’” Black children are simultaneously stripped and loaded with autonomy which white children do not have to either lack, or bear the burden of. If black and other children of colour lead lives with racism forever clouding their vision and regulating their speech and movements, how might a campus officer who has moved from the street to the classroom fit into this?

We have embarked upon this campaign to bring together these two well-documented facts. If schools and the police both perpetuate racism in distinct and observable ways, what may the effect of the presence of COs be? What are the experiences of racialised minorities with them? While we can have hypotheses and are certainly guided by the ,,examples set by ,,activists challenging police presence in schools in other countries, we must now investigate it in our settings here in Scotland.

In Scotland we don't learn much about our history as a slave trading nation. What most Scots remember from what we learned about the slave trade in school is a simplified and questionable version of history. This goes back to years of historiography which left out perspectives and contributions of ,,people of colour.

In my school experience, I was taught about the triangular trade, with emphasis on the horrors of the middle passage. I learned that slaves were taken from the West African coast to the Americas to work on sugar and tobacco plantations, at some point William Wilberforce came along and campaigned to abolish the trade. Then years later in the 1960s there was a civil rights movement in America which made racism go away.

The abolition movement was whitewashed, even as it happened and for years after. Only until the 1970s when new historians began to challenge these narratives, did things start to change. Even now, so few people know about the black presence in Britain, especially in Scotland and there tends to be the general belief that slavery and ,,racism was much worse in England. Amongst many Scots is a pride that our country is not as ,,racist as England and that people of colour have (and had) it better here. For some Brits it is comforting to learn that we were one of the first nations to abolish the slave trade and that many Britons supported campaigns for abolition. But this allows people to ignore that we were also a key slave trading nation that contributed to and enforced racist theories and attitudes that were used to expand and support the British Empire for years after the slave trade was abolished in 1807.

Scotland and England have separate legal systems and owning slaves on Scottish soil was outlawed before the the slave trade was for the whole of the United Kingdom. This is, at least in part, because of Joseph Knight. Joseph Knight was taken to Jamaica from West Africa at the age of 13 where he was bought by John Wedderburn, a Scot, and brought to Ballindean, near Dundee, in 1768. Jamaica was a British colony, and a new home to many Scots hoping to profit from trades that used slave labour, particularly sugar. Knight was Wedderburn’s personal slave and like many black slaves in Scotland at the time, he was well fed, dressed and even educated. This was often the case for slaves that were brought to Britain; they were evidence of the wealth and status of their owners, and were treated in most cases like accessories.

Knight was isolated as the one of the few black people in Scotland at the time, stripped of his identity, freedom and family in Africa and was expected to serve his master for life for free with no prospect of freedom or independence. He was also at risk of being resold and sent back to Jamaica - where the living conditions were more brutal and dangerous.

Joseph Knight was to change the law on slavery in Scotland, after hearing of similar cases in England, Knight challenged his owner by leaving his service. Knight had started a relationship with Annie Thomson, a chambermaid who worked at Wedderburn’s home, and the couple were married. Knight wanted to leave Wedderburn’s service to find work and get a home in Dundee with his wife, but Wedderburn refused Knight’s requests and dismissed Thomson from his service. He disapproved of the relationship with Thomson, probably due to her social class and background. This disagreement between master and slave began a lengthy legal battle that was eventually brought to twelve Lords of the Court of Session - Scotland’s supreme court. In 1778, after four years of legal processes and appeals, eight of the twelve Lords made their landmark ruling in support of Joseph Knight, and in doing so ended legal slavery in Scotland. This meant that in 1778 it became illegal to own a slave on Scottish soil. It meant that any slave in Scotland was free to leave their master’s service. This, however, had had no bearing on the colonies, so masters were free to keep slaves as long as it was not on Scottish soil. While the ruling meant little for the hundreds of thousands of slaves suffering in the colonies, it was a small step towards meaningful change and abolition.

After his legal victory we know nothing else of his life with Annie Thomson as a free man, although his life did inspire the eponymous ,,historical novel by James Robertson.

Before Joseph Knight’s case were two similar involving slaves brought to Scotland from the colonies by their masters. In both cases: Montgomery v Sheddan (1756) and Spens v Dalrymple (1768), masters were threatening their slaves with return to the colonies. Slaves in Scotland who rebelled against their masters did so at great personal risk and their rebellion would have taken courage and strength. The short film, ,,1745: an Untold Story about Slavery, brings to the screen the struggles faced by enslaved women in Scotland, and the graphic novel ,,Freedom Bound:Escaping Slavery in Scotland captures similar counter-narratives on paper.

The slave trade spanned hundreds of years and involved millions of human beings around the world. Understanding the scale of the trade can make it difficult to highlight the individual suffering of each slave. We rarely learn their stories, which is why it is so important to highlight them where we can. Especially in Scotland, we need to learn about the slaves who lived here and understand that a lot of Scots benefitted from the trade.

Joseph Knight is just one example of many people of colour in Britain who made a huge impact in our country, but have been left out of mainstream history. We need to challenge the way British history is taught in schools and ensure that the narratives in history that ignore perspectives and stories of people of colour don’t go unquestioned.

It's been evident for quite a while now that our education system is long overdue for an overhaul - at least it has been to those who are under-represented and who seemingly don't exist in Britain's historical landscape. Britain just came to be, somehow, because she was entitled to vast riches that cascaded down from above or somewhere else... who knows...right? The lack of acknowledgement around Britain's colonial history and its implicit erasure of identities is at the heart of imparting education that is whitewashed. This is a monumental problem as it only encourages more racism and oppression to prevail in society. The critical lens is unused and the voices of BAME groups, marginalised and vulnerable communities have been left bereft in white ideological landscapes where we are all equal and racism isn't talked about. The word ',white' is considered to be racist and of course Scotland doesn't consider itself to be racist...at all...Scotland has just internalised racism, along with the rest of Britain, to the point that racist behaviours, certain phrases, 'conversations' and systems in place are commonplace. 

When I talk about racism and our racist experiences in general, it makes many people on my personal social media pages uncomfortable. There is an ,unease sheathed in silence in not addressing or acknowledging what has been said. Situations and reflections that challenge us are discomfiting but offer loads of ,room for ruminations. There seems to be a general malaise coupled with extreme denial in reflecting what Scotland can do better to support its migrant community. The sentence "where are you from" on observing one's skin colour is one such internalised racist behaviour since it focuses on othering. 

Sofie highlights the following in her article “The pain of not addressing racism is all the more dangerous particularly in educational spheres where the minds, subjectivities and futures of minoritized youth are influenced (Solomon et al. 2006)" and the outcome of an observational study by Svendsen (2013) about Norwegian classrooms in relation to ‘race-talk’, brought five issues into light when deliberating this topic. The aim of the study was to highlight how racialised topics were discussed between students and teachers. A vast majority of the teachers were White Norwegians. The study concludes that through “denial of ‘race’…racism is enacted in the classroom (Svendsen 2013)."

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The last line is quite similar to one of my emails to the head teacher of a Gaelic school that my son attended for less than six months. I pulled him out as he was racially bullied and isolated on the playground during his time there, with no support from staff. It led to him becoming depressed, aggressive, desolate and extremely anxious. I stated that being silent in the face of bullying, not acknowledging it and blaming the victim results in the collective perpetuation of said oppression. There was a lack of acknowledgement, lots of victim-blaming, absolute denial, feigned ignorance, a stupendous lack of interest by the teachers concerned, an assessment / report that supposedly followed GIRFEC but painted my son like he was a juvenile delinquent, didn't take his views into consideration, denial around any bullying due to the teachers not having apparently observed it and an unwillingness on the part of the head teacher to acknowledge the existence of bullying in the school, let alone racism. The teachers and head involved also didn't seem to possess the bandwidth to listen or assist one child within a system whose identity and, hence, needs were different. This, to me, highlighted the lack of training around bias, diversity and bullying, since the report also included a lot of gaslighting and we then wonder why children's mental health is at risk in this country.    

My son, who was then six years old, developed anxiety, wheezing and severe migraines. He also talked about not wanting to live anymore and suffered from night terrors right through his time in school and until another few months after we pulled him out to home educate him. The very thought of going back to school the next day after a hiatus of three days resulted in an anxiety attack so bad that he stopped breathing and almost turned blue in the face. He gasped for breath and pleaded with me not to send him back to school as he couldn't stand to be bullied anymore. This incident, coupled with a few other reasons, was instrumental in our decision to home educate him. 

My son said, upon reflection, that he lost faith in the adults around him as they were unwilling to acknowledge what he went through and just decided to blame him. This goes back to the lack of interest amongst those teachers I have tried to engage with around racism, that usually stems from ,white privilege and, in my opinion, the ,lack of any sort of exposure to race, racism and forms of oppression during teacher training. 

We have raised our older one's experiences of being bullied, experiencing racism and talking to the kids about these incidents and forms of oppression, with the head and particular teachers involved. However, there seems to be a general belief from top-down that acknowledging the existence of bullying would drag the name of the school through muck.  This failure to address racism and the lack of training to acknowledge and cater to the presence of different identities in classrooms, is pivotal to the problems experienced by ,BAME children and folk in education. 

Naomi Gessesse writes in her article ,what it's like being black in the Scottish Gaelic community,

'But there is an insidious side to white ignorance; when your caregivers don’t know what racism really looks like, how can they support you?'

This has certainly been our experience in Scotland. We need to have open conversations around ideas and words that are often bandied about in media with negative connotations such as 'migration', 'immigration', 'asylum-seekers', 'diversity', 'inclusion', 'Muslims' and 'Islam', for example, and what these terms actually mean. Children who learn conditioned behaviours from the adults in their lives are bound to plagiarise and mimic these behaviours and use them as a form of acceptance to seek a threshold into a larger facet of society. The lack of addressal in this school and other schools is definitely a problem for children ,of colour/ from BAME communities and this again circles back to teacher training.

The articles above are a must-read for all, and, especially for

• a. those in denial about racism in Britain
• b. those who simplify racism down to disliking an individual based on the colour of their skin.

What, how and why we learn anything is axiomatic in shaping the way we think and perceive the world around us.

There have been innumerable times when I have been asked by white friends and acquaintances to justify and defend our racist experiences. I was asked to define, quantify, and combat existing definitions just to prove that I, my family, or those I had worked with, had experienced injustices at school, work or while living. It also came back to the 'not all white people are racist' and 'there are white people who experience poverty...so where's the privilege?' Once these conversations were had, everyone wanted to have a friendly conversation about something else and decided that all of these conversations solidified our friendships. It made them feel good knowing they had engaged in conversations around a 'difficult topic', as opposed to acknowledging that they had conversed about something that was difficult and very discomfiting for them to hear whilst getting defensive or judgemental. What was not taken into account was that the friendship was defined on THEIR terms. This is the ,power imbalance that epitomises racial ,biases and structures in place, that is so internalised, on full display - I will ask you questions, berate and dismiss your pain but then you will oblige me/us because I/ we have asked you to. There is a lack of empathy and sensitivity when having such conversations. Sadly, the responses and reactions from teachers when confronted with their biases or during discussions around race and racism are no different. I use the term 'discussions' loosely as it is usually the other party getting severely defensive, being unwilling to acknowledge an issue raised or using some sort of power play to shut us down.  Intersectionality is a whole different ball-game that I cannot even go into just now.  There is such a dismal lack of understanding around this issue across the spectrum - be it healthcare, education and what not!

Some of my white friends are unable to see the power and control they possess when they are dismissive or non-empathetic to issues around race. They use terms like ,racism interchangeably with ,prejudice and ,discrimination they have experienced and expect me/ BAME people to be okay with it. What they don't understand is the pain, embarrassment, ,sheer emotional and mental fatigue & wretchedness that accompany the whole dialogue and every experience of having to process it or explain and justify it.

I am not talking about open, mutually respectful conversations around ,race, ,racism and structural oppression. I absolutely love these and there are but a handful of white friends with whom I am able to have these. I am referring to pointed conversations around not understanding that it is not okay to dress up in black costumes and thinking blackface is acceptable and fun, for example, because it's what they have done or their grandparents did. I am talking about having to check my response to someone who asks me how I am doing or how my day has been. I have to then think if that person is capable of understanding what my day was like if my kids and I had been followed in a shop just because..., if racial slurs were hurled at my husband, if my older child comes back from school and talks about her day and is pained by her classmates' and teachers' ignorance, all the support that went into helping our son process and continue to process the utter bullshit he went through at school, my rage, frustration and pain. All of these are constant and don't stop but tend to ebb and flow. It is about understanding that I have the right to feel deeply hurt by my friends' and community's sad inability to reflect upon their questions, lack of sensitivity and openness to listening. By putting me in a position where they believe they are 'learning from me', when my experiences and dialogues around race aren't appealing to their perspectives, they decide to combat it with defensiveness. This goes back to ',white privilege' and the confusions and contradictions around the ,definitions of racism, which need to be deconstructed.

,Decolonising the existing curriculum, especially with the Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland being open to interpretation, would be the way to go. The work of ,Pran Patel and ,The Anti-Racist Educator in this area is crucial and requires allyship and support from educators, parents and citizens all over Britain.

I continue to be appalled by the number of times white folk around me - be it ex-colleagues, people I know or those in power - continue to assume that it's my responsibility alone to raise injustices I perceive in education or elsewhere. This is a reminder that I do so constantly in my professional life as well, and I am often met with silence from the school, 'educators' and other parties involved. It's up to each and every one of us to understand racism and how it impacts education, just like we need to understand inequalities and how they impact society collectively.

The children in the Gaelic school that my older child attends, don't learn about colonisation and its impacts, slave trade, apartheid, indigenous peoples and their right to their land. If the Gaelic speakers aren't white, how welcomed are they by other Gaelic speakers and how understood are their roots, culture and history under the guise of 'inclusion'? There is a systemic message that is constantly sent to non-white children that they don't belong here. So who is this system of education catering to and how are we actually preparing our children for the 'real world'? My older one asked me at the beginning of the school year who she could talk to when she has a problem. She said, "None of the teachers look like me. So I don't know if they would understand when I talk about racism or something someone has said as I am unsure if they have had any sort of training or possess any awareness." This was not only heartbreaking for me to hear as a mum, but it is certainly also the truth around the lack of representation in education and the Gaelic medium.  

I don't subscribe to the argument that it's all good if it doesn't affect us personally. That is fundamentally reductive to equality and measures to achieve social justice. I understand why some folk don't feel able to speak their truth when they feel disenfranchised, are particularly vulnerable and have been conditioned through years of oppression to ignore and try to 'fit in'. Being asked why we raise an issue in school (true story) when other kids of colour or their parents haven't reported any incidents is a grave marker of two crucial issues:

• a. Ignorance around how inequalities work
• b. Implicit bias and ingrained biases within teachers and their lack of unpacking around deep-rooted prejudices.

The lack of ,strength in numbers around reporting racism doesn't mean racism doesn't exist. It is extremely hard for many BAME parents to raise an issue around any form of inequality within schools or even elsewhere, if any sort of prior feedback hasn't been dealt with empathetically and compassionately. There is certainly an element of self-preservation and privilege amongst some parents from middle class minority ethnic backgrounds and many white parents we have met. 'What doesn't affect us is not my problem' seems to be the constant message communicated when issues around inequalities are raised or shared.  We are really grateful that our children talk to us and analyse issues from different perspectives. We know that some of their friends don't feel comfortable raising these issues, for so many reasons, which is a huge part of the issue around education in a 'post-colonial' world.

The sad truth is colonialism and colonial mindsets still very much exist here in Britain. These are deeply entrenched in our system of education and are very much prevalent, even in Scotland,  much as we would like to believe otherwise.

At least, the SQA did take the time to carry out and publish an Equality Impact Assessment. I was curious to see what the report said about bias and racial inequality in particular. You can find the report here.

Data Manipulation for Racist Discourses

When it comes to examining racial bias in previous estimates from 2019 as an equality impact exercise, page 20 of the report states that the ethnicity data is unreliable for analysis because of its sample size:

“Race: around 90% of candidate entries were either ‘White – British’ or ‘White – Other’, with the largest other ethnicity (Asian – Pakistani) being 2.5%. Thus, each non-white ethnicity is a small dataset — and small datasets are difficult to analyse and draw firm conclusions from as the data tends to be variable, meaning it is often not possible to distinguish the natural variation found in small datasets from meaningful signals.” (2020 Alternative Certification Model: Equality Impact Assessment, SQA)

Following QuantCrit and Critical Race Theory, such a statement is just a lazy cop-out that makes it easy to sweep racism under carpet. Considering that we are looking at ethnic minority populations, it’s pretty obvious that the percentages are going to be small. In fact, having 10% of the general pupil population coming from non-white backgrounds is probably the highest rate we've ever had in Scotland. From the last Scottish census data in 2011, ethnic minorities made up only 4% of the general population.

Numbers aren't neutral. Especially when they are used to present the argument that there's nae race problem here. The 2010 Count Us In: Success For All report on equality in Scottish education had no problem in using ethnicity data with small sample sizes to put forward the discourse that white pupils had the highest attainment gap and Asian pupils had the narrowest attainment gap. In other words, there couldn't possibly be a race problem in Scottish education because Asian pupils do so well and white pupils are being left behind. That report was based on government data in which Asians made up only 2.11% of the total population and the largest minority ethnic group, Asian Pakistani, made up only 1.19%. There was no mention of small datasets being difficult to analyse and unreliable back then, even though they were smaller than the ones in the SQA Equality Impact Assessment.

Drawing on Critical Race Theory, such discourses (like the one used in the 2010 Count Us In table above) are racist because they are used to shut down any claims of racial inequality in Scottish education. Note that the low attainment of Black-Caribbean pupils, for instance, was never even mentioned in the 2010 report. Some numbers are emphasised, others are overlooked and data is manipulated to fuel racist discourses. The data is only good enough when it can be used to support a policy-maker's agenda.

Analysing the SQA 2020 Equality Impact Assessment Data

With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at the data presented in the 2020 SQA Equality Impact Assessment. As part of an equality impact exercise, the SQA used data from 2019 to assess how likely teachers were to underestimate or overestimate candidates according to different protected characteristics. The data includes entries from all candidates with estimates who were on roll at a publicly-funded mainstream school. Table A1 shows the proportion of candidate entries for different protected characteristics in Diet 2019 National 5 qualifications.

Tables A2 and A3 show the distribution and the percentage point difference of estimated grades and resulted grades in Diet 2019 for each characteristic at National 5.

Looking at tables A2 and A3, it is clear that under-estimation is common for A grades at National 5 in 2019. It does happen to white Scottish pupils and it would be interesting to see how many of them come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. In the teacher estimates, pupils from lower socioeconomic backgrounds appeared to be penalised the most. However, we need to bear in mind the intersectionality of these issues. There will be many pupils of colour who also come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who may face a heightened level of disadvantage because of racial bias.

So, which groups have the highest levels of under-estimation of A grades from their teachers in 2019? Asian-Pakistani, the biggest group of all the ethnic minorities, with 8.9% of pupils being under-estimated for A grades. This group also happens to be over-represented in social deprivation and lower socioeconomic categories. Another ethnic minority group that tends to be over-represented in poverty and social deprivation is the Roma Gypsy-Traveller category which does not appear on the table as their numbers are small, or they are hidden in the "All Other Categories." Encouragingly, the SQA Equality Impact Assessment does note that Irish and Roma Gypsy-Travellers tend to face additional barriers to attainment, so they were given additional consideration in the Equality Impact Assessment.

The second group with a higher level of under-estimation is the “Mixed” category, with 8.8%. This category makes it difficult to assess the racial identities within them. Technically, I fit the “mixed” category because my mother is Indian (brown) and my father is white French. But I am racialised as brown or South Asian, never white. Same would go for a pupil with a white parent and a black parent – they would probably be racialised as black. Therefore, there are many pupils in that category who may very well have been under-estimated because of their black or brown skin, which might have added to the numbers in the Asian or Black groups. That is the challenge with ethnicity data – ethnicity does not mean race. Ethnicity refers to a common language, common cultural heritage, identity and practices, whereas race is a social construct whereby society categorises people according to skin colour and other physical features. You get to more of a say about your ethnicity - I could say I'm French or Indian. But race is predetermined for you - people see me and racialise me as brown or South Asian, not white or French. For now at least, we have to work with the ethnicity data we’ve got.

The third group with a higher level of under-estimation is the Asian-Indian group, with 7.7%. I wonder how many teachers actually know whether their South Asian pupils are Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Sri Lankan. They tend to be racialised in similar ways and so the impact of racial bias may equally be similar. In fact, if we add up those who are typically racialised as brown or South Asian, the numbers would be much higher – hinting at the important role of racial bias in teachers’ estimation of grades.

The fourth group with noticeably higher levels of under-estimation is "African / Black / Caribbean," with 7.6%, followed by Asian-Chinese with 7.3%, White non-Scottish with 7.2% and White Scottish with 7.1%. The prevalence of racial bias in teacher estimates from 2019 is clear and the data that was not analysed in the SQA Impact Assessment would suggest that teachers tend to underestimate the ability of pupils of colour.

Critically Reading Data, and Gathering Better Data, Leads to Better Anti-Racist Action

All the numbers analysed above were taken from the SQA exam results and teacher estimates from 2019, based on Scottish Government data because the SQA does not gather ethnicity data. There was no data from 2020 in the report because it was not available, as far as we're aware. So it's hard to know how much racial bias influenced the SQA results for the 2020 alternative model of assessment since there was no ethnicity data available, or published at least. But if we look at the racial bias in 2019, we can be sure that it's got a pretty big role to play today.

Thankfully, the SQA Equality Impact Assessment does conclude that it needs to explore more ways of gathering data to assess equality impacts more accurately. Institutions need to stop shying away from gathering and analysing ethnicity data if they intend to commit to race equality. You can’t fix the problem unless you see it. Refusal to properly look at the data, and uncover uncomfortable truths about racial inequalities, allows racism and racial inequalities to persist.

The 2020 report does also mention the need for “conscious or unconscious” bias training, although this needs to be much more substantial than the initial training it provided online in May 2020 for it to be useful. Racial bias is definitely not something that will be fixed with a one-off, tick-the-box unconscious bias exercise. We need much deeper, structural change and long-term commitment to anti-racism in every aspect of education. If we are committed to race equality, we need to first identify racial bias as a significant problem in assessments and racism as a pervasive feature in education more broadly. It’s going to take much more than implicit bias training to resolve. Racial literacy, assessment and curriculum changes are a must. For more solutions to fix this problem, The Anti-Racist Educator's resources is a good place to start!

Resources that might inspire anti-racist solutions:

• The Anti-Racist Educator Glossary
• Article on institutional racism and scientific racism in Scottish education
• Article on the manifestations of racism in Scottish education (part 1 and part 2)
• Article on bias and SQA exam cancellations
• Article introducing Critical Race Theory with the podcast to follow
• Podcast episode on Critical Race Theory which includes an explanation of QuantCrit (how data is manipulated to defend racist discourses)
• The Anti-Racist Educator reading list and listening list.
• The Anti-Racist Educator's webinar on Decolonising the English Curriculum with the Scottish Association for Teaching English.

When Edward Colston’s statue was toppled in Bristol, the people behind our statues were called into question more than ever before. From Winston Churchill to Henry Dundas, the legacies of figures have been re-examined. Whether these statues should be taken down or not could be debated for hours, but what is fact is that many of the statues we have are of figures who had racist attitudes, views or directly helped prolong suffering of people of colour around the British Empire and beyond.

Edinburgh is home to many statues, so it's no surprise that in June there were protests for removal of some, but while most of us now know these people have some sort of link to racism, we know little else beyond that.

So who were the people behind a few of these controversial statues?

HENRY DUNDAS

Henry Dundas, the first Viscount Melville, was a Scottish politician. He was extremely close to the Prime minister William Pitt, the Younger and had huge political influence.

Earlier on, in his career as Lord Advocate for Scotland, he defended Joseph Knight, a black slave who challenged his master for freedom. Knight’s challenge led to the end of legal slavery in Scotland in 1778, in the legal case known as Knight v. Wedderburn.

Why is Dundas controversial now?

• Dundas did not personally own slaves, but he encouraged the gradualist method of abolishing slavery
• His influence meant that he was at least partly responsible for the delay of the abolition of the slave trade for fifteen years - causing suffering for hundreds of thousands of humans under the trade
• He was also key to colonial expansion in India

DAVID HUME

David Hume was a philosopher, essayist and historian during the Scottish Enlightenment - a period of time during the late 18th to the 19th century where there were many new developments in scientific and intellectual thought. Hume is considered one of the most important philosophers of the Enlightenment era and beyond.

Why is he controversial now?

• From the Scottish Enlightenment emerged scientific racism which was used to justify and continue with slavery and imperialism.
• Hume wrote that black people were inferior to white people, as did many key figures during the Enlightenment, and while his personal beliefs may have evolved and changed during his lifetime, writings of Hume had a direct impact on the suffering of many people of colour.

I am apt to suspect the Negroes and in general all other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufacturers amongst them, no arts, no sciences. - Hume in his essay ",,Of National Characters" (1753)

• We have seen how scientific racism continues to surface in contemporary Scottish classrooms in one of our ,,previous posts, and ,,podcast episodes, and, unfortunately, this is a problem that pervades many classrooms across the globe.

Hume also has a building in the University of Edinburgh named after him.

DAVID LIVINGSTONE

Another David…

Livingstone was the most famous Scottish explorer of the Victorian era. He worked as a missionary around the continent of Africa (particularly the South), meaning he wanted Africans to convert to Christianity and abandon their prior religious beliefs. Livingstone loved Africa and its people and did not support the slave trade, but believed that it could end if African economies could become more western. He heavily criticised anti-black racism that was so prevalent from colonial settlers.

Why is he controversial now?

• Despite his criticism of anti-black racism, his missionary work is now understood as problematic because it perpetuated and added to the stereotype that Africans, and other colonised populations, were savage and uncivilised, and that colonisation actually benefited them. These stereotypes were often used to justify slavery and colonialism.
• Not criticising missionary work of Livingstone allows the stereotypes he perpetuated to go unchallenged - then we can’t learn from his mistakes.

NOT A STATUE, BUT: JAMES GILLESPIE

James Gillespie was a tobacco and snuff merchant and “philanthropist” who left money to build a free school for boys, which we now know as James Gillespie’s High School.

Why is he controversial now?

• Gillespie made his fortune from tobacco and snuff, tobacco farming used slave labour, so Gillespie’s wealth would not have been possible without the use of slaves

These are just three of the statues in Edinburgh, but there are many more of figures who are controversial now. If we look into the histories of all of the statues, we’ll find something wrong with the people behind them. So follows the argument that these people lived in another time so we can’t judge them on their beliefs - but wrong is wrong, we shouldn’t try to justify these people's wrongs but, at the very least, be honest about them and acknowledge the damage their views did.

A statue is made to honour somebody, so statues of these figures helps add to erasure of the cruelty of the British Empire, and helps idolise historical figures without acknowledging negative aspects of their lives. Our history is incomplete without acknowledging racism and oppression - we need to highlight it so we can learn and challenge racist attitudes that are so ingrained into British society.

In our ,latest episode, Dr Paul Warmington helps us unpack Critical Race Theory (CRT) and uncover some of the hidden histories of Black British intellectuals. ,Dr Paul Warmington is a Black British Professor at the University of Warwick and his book, Black British Intellectuals and Education: Multiculturalism’s Hidden History, introduces the rich British history of Black thinkers and leading activists while tracing the evolving discourses in education around multiculturalism, anti-racist education and Critical Race Theory.

This blog post includes links to all the Black intellectuals mentioned and a breakdown of Critical Race Theory following Paul's explanation on the show. Of course, please do enjoy the ,podcast and make sure to share it with any other educators and learners who might benefit from it!

Unpacking Critical Race Theory

• Racism is endemic and permanent considering that race is a social construct which continues to structure power in society.

One of the founders of CRT, Derrick Bell, was a African-American professor who argued that racism doesn't just "go away" after the implementation of new equality legislation. His book, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism, defends this point from a legal perspective.

• Racism doesn’t exist in isolation from other forms of power and inequality: intersectionality is crucial.

• Change tends to come about through interest convergence.

Social change tends to happen when there is increasing pressure and discontent; the alternative of not changing is even worse so it’s better to act for some change. This happens when the interests of racialised elites align with the interests of those who are racialised minorities. A classic example in Britain would be the murder of Stephen Lawrence, with the MacPherson Report and subsequent the Race Relations Act. Similar moments of interest-convergence happen today: the murder of George Floyd, the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the subsequent response from the Minneapolis police department.

When interests diverge, race issues such as the story of Jimmy Mubenga and Sheku Bayoh don't pick up and cause change. However, more recently, interests seem to be converging for Sheku Bayoh's case in Scotland (don't stop showing solidarity - you can help over here).

• When interests converge, there tends to be contradiction closing cases

Contradiction closing cases are small changes, such as putting up a statue, or even passing new legislation, that are often portrayed as “closing” the issue of race. This happens when racialised elites post Black Lives Matter public statements but do little to commit to genuine positive social change.

• Colour-blindness and post-racial societies

Liberal societies tend to regard themselves as non-racist by not “seeing” race. This often means not “seeing” racism and this actually allows racism to persist.

• Change is always driven from the bottom-up.

Elites never reform willingly.

• CRT has spread across many parts of the world and across identities

Paul listed a number of branches of CRT, including: DisCrit, QueerCrit, LatCrit and TribalCrit for indigenous groups in the US and Australia. He also gave examples of scholars who applied the work of white thinkers to justify CRT, with Tara Yosso using CRT to critique Pierre Bourdieu's conception of cultural wealth, and Richard Delgado who unveiled the whiteness of academia even amongst white scholars on race (see The Imperial Scholar).

Archiving, Celebrating and Using the Work of Black British Intellectuals

In the episode, we also spent some time uncovering some Black British History. Paul listed several Black British Marxists such as:

While noting the brain drain of Black intellectuals from Britain the US, Paul introduced us to his three favourite Black British intellectuals:

John La Rose also created the first International Black Book Fair and he wrote the New Cross Massacre.

Stuart Hall coined the term "Thatcherism" and he wrote about his experiences as a Jamaican coming to Britain. In the episode, Paul also mentioned the work of Ron Ramdin who dedicates a whole chapter about Black Scottish thinkers and activists:

We also challenged common assumptions of what it means to be an"intellectual," as Paul noted that, today, many politically Black writers, journalists and artists should make it on that list, from Reni Eddo Lodge, Afua Hirsch, Akala, Bernadine Evaristo, to Jackie Kay, Rowena Arshad and Nasar Meer in Scotland. You can find our own list of anti-racist texts, archiving British writers and anti-racist knowledge. We were so grateful for Paul's time and expertise - we hope you enjoy listening to his episode (that you can find here) and browsing through these extended show notes!

The worldwide response to the fight against racism during the last couple of months has been heartening, but momentum must not waver if we are to achieve actual change. Echoing these sentiments and reflecting the diversity of the protest movement are 10 wide-ranging artists, from both sides of the Atlantic, whose latest offerings serve as the perfect call to arms in the fight against injustice for the months and years ahead. You also find them all check out this Spotify playlist. Please be mindful that some of the lyrics contain explicit language, including racial language that is not appropriate for non-Black people to repeat or say out loud.

1. 'We Live Here' by Bob Vylan

Unsurprisingly untouched by the mainstream music industry, despite widespread acclaim, this genre defying anthem from the London duo, in its sound, captures the beauty of multiculturalism in the capital, whilst lyrically decrying the bigots that seek to oppose progress and tolerance in the hope of reinventing the mythical “good old days”.

Neighbours called me nigga Told me "go back to my own country" Said since we arrived This place has got so ugly But this is my fucking country And it's never been fucking lovely

2. 'I Can’t Breathe' by H.E.R

Recalling the very best of Lauryn Hill’s classic ‘MTV Unplugged 2.0’ 2002 live album, H.E.R claims her own stake amongst the legends with this searing commentary on racism in the US. The track culminates in an unapologetic spoken word monologue that deserves to become instantly iconic.

,Romanticizing the theft and bloodshed ,That made America the land of the free To take a black life, land of the free To bring a gun to a peaceful fight for civil rights You are desensitized to pulling triggers on innocent lives

3. 'Grounds' by Idles

In a mainstream music industry depressingly devoid of substance, Idles' fearless statements are more vital than ever. Originally written in 2019, this thunderous burst of empathetic energy was fittingly released last month in response to recent events.

There's nothing brave and nothing useful You scrawling your aggro shit on the walls of the cubicle Saying my race and class ain't suitable So I raise my pink fist and say black is beautiful

4. 'State of the Union (STFU)' by Public Enemy

Hip Hop legends, Public Enemy, make a welcome return to the scene with this US administration bashing banger showcasing perfectly what they do best – truth-telling sound tracked by thumping drum and bass.

"Make America Great Again," the middle just love it (Hey!) When he wanna talk, walk y'all straight to them ovens Human beings of color, yeah we be sufferin' (Hey!)

5. 'Your Ghost' by Dave Hause (feat Amythyst Kiah and Kam Franklin)

Wrestling with the worth of releasing another song about someone else’s experience, Hause recalled post-gig conversations where fans spoke of his music changing their perspectives on racial justice and decided to release this poignant tribute to George Floyd which also serves as an urgent reminder to continue the fight against racism and police brutality. All proceeds from the song are going to the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund.

Oh, what a privilege to pretend that we can't see The chain, the whip, the badge, the gun, and now the ever-pressing knee The knee we hired to protect us The same knee he used to pray

6. 'Sweeter' by Leon Bridges (feat Terrace Martin)

An emotional rumination on systemic and systematic racism in America, Texan artist, Leon Bridges, rush-released this in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. In a press release discussing the song, Bridges articulated the feelings of many Black people in America of all generations stating “From adolescence we are taught how to conduct ourselves when we encounter police to avoid the consequences of being racially profiled.”

Hoping for a life more sweeter Instead I'm just a story repeating Why do I fear with skin dark as night? Can't feel peace with those judging eyes

7. 'Certain Kind of Monster' by Bad Cop, Bad Cop

Berating hostile policy and public attitudes towards immigration, Bad Cop, Bad Cop, take on the bigots on this pertinent punk anthem styled in the mould of genre greats such as The Clash and Rancid.

Don’t call people illegal When they’ve done nothing wrong Don’t call people illegal When they’ve been here all along

8. 'Black & Ready' by Jords

Soulful poetic masterclass from UK singer and rapper, Jords. All profits from this track will be donated to The Black Curriculum, a social enterprise founded in 2019 to address the lack of Black British history in the UK Curriculum.

Then you see 'em tearin' down your history in the media That you don't learn in school, you gotta learn on Wikipedia

9. 'SUPREMACY' by FEVER 333

Sampling Blondie and KRS-One, frontman, Jason Aalon Butler, wages war against a power dynamic used against people of colour for generations.

When time turns into history The story that we'll tell will be When we were marching for our lives You stood on the other side

10. 'Frontier Glitch' by Strike Anywhere

Virginia’s finest, typical take just over a minute and a half to deliver their rallying cry to the movement, made all the more affecting by the fact that they have dedicated their entire career to the fight against injustice. A listen through their back catalogue is a must for any anti-racist with a fondness for exemplary punk rock music.

Let the ship burn We're the ocean In every shade, in every colour

,,Racism is like a coin with two sides: on one side, it disadvantages some people (we tend to focus on this), and on the other side, it simultaneously benefits some people (easier to forget: white privilege).

I initially designed this test as a starting point for a guided discussion about white privilege with a senior form class, but it is a valuable tool that could be used in many contexts. Suitable for people of all racial identities, this exercise is a great tool for adults to raise their own ,racial consciousness (as a personal and professional development exercise) and for secondary school pupils to explore their understanding of racism in the UK and Scotland. You can find this test on our ,School Resources page and you can download your free copy ,here.

I would encourage readers and participants to consider white privilege as the result of structural racial inequalities rather than just laziness, ill intention or inherent qualities of a particular group. You can check out our ,,glossary definition of privilege and ,,whiteness for more information.

The Test

To complete this test, read the following statements and keep track of your score on a separate sheet of paper. When reading the statements, do your best to isolate ,race entirely and ignore other identities that might affect your results.

For each statement, if you believe it is often true, score 0. If the statement is sometimes true, score 3. And if the statement is false, score 5. At the end, you will be asked to add up your score.

1. People often assume I am an immigrant before I even say a word.
2. The question “where are you from?” is a hard one to answer, especially if the person asking is trying to figure out why I look the way I do.
3. When I walk into any British supermarket, I will rarely find plenty of food products that meet my family’s traditions.
4. It’s hard to find the right hair products that work for my hair.
5. It’s hard to find make-up, tights and/or plasters that match my skin tone.
6. When I walk into a shop, the security guard is likely to keep a closer eye on me because of the colour of my skin.
7. When I am passing through security or immigration in an airport, I am often randomly stopped and asked more questions compared to other people of a different skin colour.
8. If ever I am stopped by the police, I would feel that it is likely they singled me out because of my skin colour.
9. Whenever there is a terrorist attack, people tend to look at me in a more fearful, hateful and/or accusing way.
10. The books I read at school rarely have characters that share the same skin colour as me.
11. In the movies I watch, the characters who share the same skin colour as me are rarely the heroes.
12. In the history I have studied, my ancestors are not given much attention or credit.
13. In the news, the people who share the same skin colour as me are often portrayed as poor, helpless, and/or dangerous.
14. From nursery to this day, the teachers I have had don’t share the same skin colour as me.
15. The only adults in schools who share the same skin colour as me are the cleaning and/or catering staff.
16. I sometimes wish that my skin and/or hair was lighter because it would make my life easier.
17. The festivals and holidays my family celebrate are not usually celebrated in schools.
18. It is difficult to find posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards and magazines featuring people who have the same skin colour as me.
19. People online or in public have directed racist slurs at me.
20. I cannot criticize our government, history and/or culture, and talk about how much I disagree with policies and practices without being seen as an outsider.
21. It is difficult for me to find many spaces where I can be in the company of people who share the same colour as me.
22. When I am told about national heritage, about human history or about civilisation, I am shown people who do not share the same culture or skin colour as me.
23. If ever I swear or behave badly, people tend to attribute these behaviours to the bad morals and/or poverty of people who share my skin colour and cultural background.
24. Whenever I do well in a challenging situation, people may call me a credit to my race.
25. I am often asked to speak for all the people of my racial, cultural and/or religious group.
26. Whenever I ask to speak to “the person in charge,” I can be sure that I will be facing someone who does not have the same skin colour as me.
27. It is difficult for me to ignore and/or minimise the impact of racism on my life.
28. I go home from most meetings of organisations and/or clubs that I attend feeling somewhat isolated, out of place, outnumbered, unheard, feared or hated, rather than tied in and welcome.
29. If my day or my week is going badly, I can’t help but wonder if the negative episodes or situations had racial overtones.
30. I am unable to discuss my racialised experiences openly and honestly at school or at work.

Total score: _________

Total score / 150 X 100 = total percentage of white privilege.

Reflections:

100% is the score of those who benefit the most from white privilege. 0% is the score of those who experience the least white privilege. What does that mean about our different life experiences and opportunities in the UK?

I would encourage you to get someone of a different racial identity to complete the test, compare results and discuss any insights gained from the process.

This score focuses only on race and it is worth noting that other intersectional identities (gender, sexuality, class, disability, etc.) will affect your experience of privilege. Moreover, ,,race is a social construct that is fluid and constantly evolving, so a person’s score may be subject to change overtime, depending on the context and their racial awareness.

Please share your reflections with us on ,,Twitter and ,,Facebook. We'd love to hear how you get on!

I discussed the disparity in how heritage languages were perceived in Scottish Education, and Scotland. This was in contrast as to how Western European languages where held up as languages of ‘enlightenment’, ‘prestige’, ‘elite’ and ‘cultured’, and encouraged in the education fora, and heritage languages such as Urdu, Punjabi, Polish and others are to be left effectively outside the school gate. This has created an internalisation by minority communities living in Scotland, that their culture, language and they themselves are not welcome in Scotland.

This is further embedded when parents and teachers approach elected representatives and local authority officials for reassurance that Urdu as an SQA accredited language is kept within schools with high populations of Pakistani/Kashmiri students, as Urdu teacher numbers dwindle from 8 to 3 in Glasgow. The parental concerns are dismissed, ears are closed, politicians and civil servants hum loudly with fingers in their ears until the parents leave (both literally and figuratively).

How embarrassing that you are perceived this way, when you spout social justice values of equality, equity and fairness, but where there is no political will to deliver it in the real world.

This continuing discourse of derision from the elected representatives and civil servants must be held up for accountability. Why is it wrong to ask for cultural heritage to be valued? Why are language policies recommending heritage languages to be implemented in schools if it is the mother tongue of the large student population, only for these recommendations to be erased in practice?

There is no acknowledgement or understanding of either the policy or the communities in which the schools are located. The focus is on assimilation and indoctrination of one world view, which in Scotland is that we live in a post-racial society and are infinitely better than the English in every way possible. It is as guilty of everything that it has complained Westminster of doing pre-devolution.

World views and culture need to be acknowledged as of value, because it is valuable. It informs all of us to look more widely outside of our little ‘Scottish exceptionalist’ bubble, learn and accept, encourage and applaud the contributions of minority communities to Scotland’s landscape, starting with who we are, our histories and our languages in our schools.

To learn more about what 'belonging' can mean for people of colour in Scotland, check out our recent podcasts and school resources which expose some of the history of racism in Scotland and which help young people of colour strengthen their sense of belonging.

We've seen a huge increase in the number of people reaching out to The Anti-Racist Educator, supporting us and wanting to engage in anti-racist action - thank you! If you haven't received a response to a message, that's because we're busy creating content and Black Lives Matter school resources, while also taking care of our well-being. Just hold on to those feelings, reflect on them and please don't let them subside six months from now.

1. 'America pt 2' by The Menzingers

The original track can be found in the ‘Hello Exile’ (2019) album. Pennsylvania punks, The Menzingers, offer their take on the past fortnight on this country tinged reworking of last year’s America (You’re Freaking Me Out).

Well George Floyd was murdered by a cop

The whole world saw the video and watched

Now justice is long overdue

2. 'Walking in the Snow' by Run The Jewels

From the album RTJ4, Rush released this song for free in response to current events. This rough and ready rap masterpiece will serve as a timely soundtrack for the months of protest ahead. Whilst being depressingly pertinent, Killer Mike, who has regularly addressed themes of racism and police brutality in various forms, will undoubtedly birth a mass of new activists courtesy of his no holds barred verse on ‘walking in the snow’.

And every day on evening news they feed you fear for free And you so numb you watch the cops choke out a man like me And 'til my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, "I can't breathe" And you sit there in the house on couch and watch it on TV The most you give's a Twitter rant and call it a tragedy

3. 'Where You From' by Riz Ahmed

Riz Ahmed offers a poetic masterclass on a concept album, 'The Long Goodbye,' which metaphorically utilises the breakup of a romantic relationship, to damningly dissect the United Kingdom’s historical and contemporary relationship with immigrants. This particular track offers an eloquent response to a question that will be all too familiar with minority ethnic communities living in the UK today.

Very few fit these labels, so I'm repping for the rest of us Who know that there's no place like home and that stretches us Who code switch, so don't piss me off with ,cricket tests for us Or question us about our loyalty, our blood and sweat's enough

4. 'Resistance Frequencies' by Anti-Flag

Few working musicians today can rival Anti-Flag’s commitment and outspokenness on race related issues in recent decades and this track, taken from this year’s modern protest classic, 20/20 Vision, proves exactly that. This song, and the entire album, embody all that is great about the punk rock movement.

The victims are just props in a public execution Of justice, freedom, liberty in neo-fascist movements It's not a dying planet that's made you less free Is it the brown child that we've caged publicly?

5. 'Everywhere That Wog Army Roams' by Cornershop

From the album 'England is a Garden,' Tijinder Singh recounts his personal experience of police harassment and racial profiling on this reworking of Norman Watson’s ‘Rasta Army’.

Everywhere that wog army roam

Policemen follow them

They follow Priti and Juja Singh,

Policemen follow them

6. ',Pursuit of Liberty' by Bad Cop, Bad Cop

Los Angeles punk quartet, Bad Cop, Bad Cop, decry US immigration policy and practice as well as negative rhetoric around the movement of people worldwide on this blistering preview from their forthcoming sophomore offering, The Ride.

By raising the fences, we're lowering the bar It seems like we're traveling back to Manzanar By persecuting people just trying to be free We're stopping them from their pursuit of liberty

7. 'Black Savage' by Royce Da 5”9

Taken from his latest self-produced concept album, The Allegory, this track not only highlights the gross racism faced by the African-American community but is also a defiant celebration of Black talent succeeding massively in spite of the horrendous obstacles their country has imposed on them.

I place value on brothers who never had justice

I am the black savage

,,Ali and Foreman in Zaire fightin' for black magic

8. 'Stealing the Future' by Asian Dub Foundation

From the album 'Access Denied,' the genre defying London collective, Asian Dub Foundation, preview their long anticipated 9th studio album with this typically socially conscious call to arms.

Go home on a boat, cause everyone here is a foreigner

Black or Brown conspirator

They be riding in a cop car

Still we brother and sister, still in the fight together

Short on hope but it still exists

You know we must resist like this!

9. 'Deeper Than Rap' by J Hus

On the final track from the critically acclaimed Big Conspiracy we are treated to a wondrous stream of consciousness from Momodou Jallow which, amongst other things, explores his views on faith, incarceration and racism.

,,We looked at the stars and then we navigated

We started thinkin' as one then we elevated

We never said a word, we just demonstrated

,,No blacks, no dogs, we were segregated

They took our history then they went and erased it

10. '2020 Riots: How Many Times' by Trey Songz

Inspired by recent events, this hymn like offering sheds light on injustice, racism and police brutality whilst acknowledging the pain and anguish that many are suffering.

How many mothers have to cry?

How many brother got to die?

How many more times? How many more times?

How many more marches? How many more signs?

How many more lives? How many more times?

Building on her analysis, I would like to examine racism as a threat to our mental well-being and what that means for Scottish education. As The Anti-Racist Educator, Intercultural Youth Scotland and the Scottish Association for Minority Ethnic Educators join forces to report on the impacts of Covid-19 on young people of colour, my understanding of the complexities of racism continues to grow. My learning journey is enriched by the work of the black psychologist Guilaine Kinouani, and her platform, Race Reflections. My own research into racial trauma has been a great reminder of how much more I have yet to learn. It is with humility and gratitude that I share some of my reflections here, as I acknowledge the labour of my predecessors and my multiple privileges that make this learning possible.

How does Racism Threaten our Mental Well-being?

Racism is both an ideology (belief in a racial hierarchy; white supremacy) and a set of behaviours and social practices that justify, and result from, this ideology. It is always worth reminding that race is not a biological reality – physiologically, we are all one human race. However, race is a social reality in the way it categorises, privileges and harms different people, generally according to their physical appearances.

In The Anti-Racist Educator glossary, our definition of racism is broken down into three main categories: interpersonal, institutional and internalised. By reading more about racial trauma, it has become clear to me that these three categories are equally valuable in understanding the mental health impacts of racism.

• Interpersonal racism

This type of racism refers to prejudices and discriminatory behaviours where one group makes assumptions about the abilities, motives, and intents of other groups based on race. This set of prejudices leads to unequal actions towards other groups, regardless whether intentional or not. Interpersonal racism can take various forms, such as overt racial hate crime (physical violence and verbal harassment) and racial microaggressions (avoidance behaviours, covert undermining of one’s worth or academic ability for instance).

What does interpersonal racism do to our mental health? It has a significant individual impact, both mentally and physiologically. In some ways, our resilience, our coping strategies and our networks of social and emotional support will determine how harmful interpersonal racism can be to us. Mental ill-health symptoms caused by interpersonal racism include trauma stress (especially if you have been violently harassed), anxiety and depression. Since interpersonal racism tends to happen to people of colour throughout our lives, the accumulation of the stress it causes (known as "weathering") reduces the quality of our lives and this leads to long-term physical health impacts. For example, rather than just blaming salty and oily “cultural” foods, we should be considering how racism has something to do with the disproportionate rates of hypertension and high blood pressure in African, Caribbean and South Asian communities in the UK. In other words, your exposure to interpersonal racism has some influence on the quality of your life and, to some extent, your life expectancy. And that’s before even looking at the disproportionate infection and death rates of Covid-19.

• Institutional racism (aka structural racism)

Institutional racism leads to racial disparities across society. It produces health disparities, increased rates of incarceration, lower representation in leadership positions, higher representation in low-skilled work and low-income households… the list goes on. With regards to Covid-19, many news headlines mention disparities in infection and death rates for people of colour in the UK, however, they often omit the root cause for these disparities: institutional racism. Such omissions cause the dangerous spread of scientific racism (the belief that racial differences are biological rather than societal).

Institutional racism is one of the most dangerous preexisting conditions for Covid-19. People of colour have faced higher death rates because of the ,,structural inequalities such as:

• Income inequality (exacerbated by loss of jobs and income during the lockdown)
• Underlying health conditions (such as diabetes, heart disease and hypertension - often connected to income inequality and interpersonal racism)
• Environmental injustice (disproportionate numbers of people of colour in North America and Europe live near incarcerators and landfills and go to schools near highways and industrial sites)
• Housing inequality (less access to green spaces, over-crowding and higher risk of homelessness)
• Disproportionate representation in occupations in close contact with Covid-19 patients (in health care and public transport for instance)
• Disproportionate rates of unemployment and precarious employment (especially for undocumented migrants who are at risk of modern-day slavery)

All of these disparities affect our physical health, our access to health care and they take a serious toll on our mental well-being. Even those people of colour who have managed to overcome many of these structural inequalities (those in middle and upper-class households) are at risk because of interpersonal racism in health care and the life-long accumulation of race-related stress. In other words, no matter your proximity to other privileges (wealth, class, gender, heterosexuality, citizenship and so on), racism remains a health and safety risk for people of colour.

no matter your proximity to other privileges (wealth, class, gender, heterosexuality, citizenship and so on), racism remains a health and safety risk for people of colour.

As the pandemic continues to aggravate these inequities, the mental health of people of colour needs to be prioritised in the context of structural racism. Otherwise, taken out of the structural context, the onus falls on the individual (and their cultural heritage) and we risk contributing to internalised racism.

• Internalised Racism (aka colonised mentality and cultural racism)

Saying that people of colour’s cultures are the cause for a unequal access to mental health services is an example of cultural racism. While there does exist stigma around mental health discussions in some communities of colour, to treat it as something inherently wrong with the culture (even though white communities equally struggle with such stigma) is deeply problematic. Such false conclusions ignores the historical and inter-generational trauma that communities of colour have endured, as a result of slavery and colonialism. Such historical trauma has often made silence a coping mechanism, a survival strategy, that generations have learned and passed on for centuries.

Moreover, cultural racism causes people of colour to internalise the devaluation of their cultural heritage and the negative stereotypes associated with their racial group (i.e. internalised racism). While there is a lack of research in this field, internalised racism arguably does cause deep psychological damage. It has been linked to feelings of shame (about one's skin colour or cultural heritage), low self-esteem, self-hate, feelings of isolation and other depressive symptoms. Internalised racism leads to a sense of inferiority and evaluation of self from the perspective of the dominant racial majority. In Scotland, we have heard several harrowing stories of people of colour suffering from internalised racism: from young children trying to whiten their skin, to children self-harming and attempting to take their lives away. Last year, we reported the case of a Scottish primary school teacher who told his pupils that ,,black people can’t swim – perpetuating an ideology of racial inferiority. Meanwhile, in one of the families attending that school, a five-year old black girl tried to whiten her skin with toothpaste and, at six, tried to self-harm. You can hear more about that story on our ,,podcast.

Internalised racism, or the colonised mentality, is explored by Franz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks: as a result of the coloniser’s physical, social and psychological oppression, the colonised individual begins to believe their inferior social status is justified and inherent. In education, the colonised mind is what decolonial movements are working to heal. For instance, in a 2004 study on people of colour’s experiences of school, parents noticed concerning levels of internalised racism in their children attending Scottish schools:

“one of my daughters [was] saying she wishes she was white ... that is

hurting, disappointing for me because I don’t want her to be like that, I want

her to be proud of her colour, proud of her culture. The school played a big

role in that.” (Arshad et al., 2004)

More recently, the ,,In Sight report by Intercultural Youth Scotland revealed that the Scottish curriculum does not value or reflect the cultural identities of young people of colour. 70% of young people of colour felt that class topics mainly focused on European culture and the majority agreed that, in English, the class read books that were not related to their culture, heritage and background. Internalised racism can be exacerbated by curricula that erase our ancestors of colour’s contributions to humanity and their wealth of knowledge across history.

When we argue for decolonising the curriculum, it isn’t just to stop white pupils from learning racial prejudice and reproducing it. It is to empower the pupil of colour, to counteract internalised racism, to build a stronger sense of self-esteem and to foster pride in their racial and cultural identity. Unless we decolonise the Scottish curriculum, we risk inadvertently reproducing ideologies of white supremacy, contributing to internalised racism and damaging the mental health of pupils of colour.

Intersectionality

As we recognise that racism is a threat to our mental health, it is important that we don’t forget how other forms of oppression simultaneously aggravate mental health. We need to consider how multiple paths of marginalisation intersect, paying extra attention to supporting those who are caught between those multiple forms of oppression. In other words, we need to ask how sexism, toxic masculinity, homophobia, transphobia, colourism, anti-Muslim racism, ableism, ageism (and so on) intersects with racism and places certain individuals most at risk. For instance, I was shocked (but upon reflection, not so much) to find out that, in the UK, there are disproportionately high rates of suicide among older South Asian women and higher rates of clinical depression among Black women.

In Scotland, the higher rates of mental ill-health among LGBTQ+ young people are relatively well documented. A ,,Scottish study from 2017 reported that 96% of transgender young people indicated mental health problems and 63% experienced suicidal thoughts and behaviours. But what does that mean for young queer people of colour, who equally carry the psychological burden of racism? Finally, as I have referred to “people of colour” throughout this piece of writing, it is important to remember that this term is not adequate for representing the complex, heterogeneous nature of the people it refers to. In the context of whiteness, our proximity to whiteness (the lighter your skin, the more “palatable” you are for white people) will equally affect how psychologically harmful racism can be to us. To illustrate, as a light-skinned woman of colour, I have never experienced people avoiding sitting next to me on public transport, while my darker-skinned friends have reported this to be a regular occurrence that risked damaging their self-esteem and mental health. Similarly, I have not had to deal with pupils making monkey sounds in my classes or leaving racial slurs gratified on my desk, as has been the case for some Black and Muslim teachers in Scotland.

Survival Strategies

As with all our anti-racist work, after analysing the problems with racism, it is necessary to identify anti-racist solutions. As depressing as it sounds, there is no quick fix for racism and, unfortunately, people of colour are likely to experience racism as a threat to their mental health for the rest of their lives. Therefore, strategies that help us survive, cope with and buffer the negative psychological impacts are the best we can do so far. These strategies need to address every form of racism outlined above, to avoid counter-productively internalising racism or other intersectional forms of oppression. Some of these strategies include:

• Better representation of people of colour in therapy and social work.
• More culturally-responsive and race-informed therapy
• Strong networks of social and emotional support (such as SAMEE for educators of colour and Intercultural Youth Scotland for young people of colour)
• Anti-racist education, decolonised curricula and increased racial literacy for all educators and young people of colour (for people of colour in particular, realising the structural nature of racism can help rationalise some feelings of anxiety and depression)
• Finding ways of expressing your racialised experiences (through art, personal story-telling, etc). ,,The Colour of Madness is a great example of UK-based people of colour using writing and art to express these racialised experiences of mental health
• Building a strong racial identity and pride in your cultural heritage
• Activism (developing a sense of agency and empowerment in the face of injustice)
• Seek therapy and support (especially in times of crisis)
• Practise self-care (such as mindfulness and visualisation)

References:

Abiọ́dún Abdul (2020), Scottish Racism in Medicine

Arshad, R., Almeida Diniz, F., Kelly, E., O’Hara, P. Sharp, S. & Syed, R. (2004). Minority Ethnic Pupils’ Experiences in Scotland. Edinburgh: Centre for Education for Race Equality in Scotland.

BBC Future (2020). Coronavirus: Why some racial groups are more vulnerable

Franz Fanon (1952). Black Skin, White Masks

Guilaine Kinouani, Race Reflections

Intercultural Youth Scotland (2019). In Sight: The Perceptions and Experiences of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Young People in Scottish Schools.

Linton, S. & Walcott, W. (2018). The Colour of Madness

LGBT Youth Scotland (2017). Life in Scotland for LGBT Young People

Pieterse, A. & Powell, S. (2016) A Theoretical Overview of the Impact of Racism on People of Colour. The American Psychology Association

The Scottish Association for Minority Ethnic Educators (SAMEE)

The Anti-Racist Educator (2019). In conversation with Ann: Institutional Racism in Education, Impact on Young People and Hopes for the Future

The Anti-Racist Educator (2019). Scottish Council Used Scientific Racism to Deny Racist Allegations: Institutional Racism Uncovered

The Anti-Racist Glossary

Some will say that to discuss race related issues at such a time is not appropriate but I beg to differ. The fallout from this unprecedented global crisis will bring about many repercussions, one of which could be the deepening of racial divides across the world. This a danger that we should not be complacent about. If we are, then we risk reversing decades of hard work fighting for equality for all. More than ever, the basic need for people to support one another, regardless of colour, faith or sexual orientation, is clear for all to see. We should capitalise on the positive stories of people of all backgrounds and communities working together to fight for a common cause and use this unique opportunity to remember that there is more that unites us than divides us.

To rouse the spirits and help inspire the battle against all injustice, below, I have included 20 of my favourite anti-racist songs which I hope will be of some solace for the predictably hard months ahead.

1. "Racists" by Anti-Flag

Album: American Fall (2017)

Dedicated supporters of the anti-racist movement, veteran Pittsburgh punks, Anti-Flag, don’t hold back on this rousing anthem calling out bigotry and hatred.

"I know you weren’t alive at the time of slavery, but that’s no excuse to ignore its legacy"

2. "American Skin (41 Shots)" by Bruce Springsteen

Album: High Hopes (Originally recorded in 2001. Studio version on High Hopes released in 2016)

Written in the aftermath of the murder of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed 23 year old Guinean migrant who was shot dead by 4 NYPD officers in 1999, this sombre reflection on hatred and loss unveils the powers of Springsteen’s storytelling and the sheer horror of police brutality and racial profiling.

“If an officer stops you, promise me you'll always be polite And that you'll never ever run away Promise Mama you'll keep your hands in sight"

3. ",Black White" by Asian Dub Foundation

Album: Rafi’s Revenge (1998)

Taken from their Mercury Music Prize nominated debut, the London outlet celebrate the union of different cultures fittingly accompanied by a melting pot of sounds from both East and West.

“,Black and white here has united ,We're here to show you how we've been delighted ,Black and white here has united ,Building this community of sound”

4. ",(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais" by The Clash

Album: The Clash (1977)

Key pioneers of the punk rock movement, The Clash, stamped the genre’s message of inclusivity and tolerance over, somewhat ironically, reggae influenced rhythms on this track taken from their eponymous debut.

“All over people changing their votes Along with their overcoats If Adolf Hitler flew in today They'd send a limousine anyway”

5. ",The Blacker The Berry" by Kendrick Lamar

Album: To Pimp A Butterfly (2015)

Taken from his Grammy winning third album, this is a no holds barred lyrical assault on racists past, present and future. However, like much of Kendrick’s work, there are complexities – whilst denouncing discrimination he also questions his own behaviour referencing the self-hatred experienced by minority groups who have been negatively racially stereotyped.

“Church me with your fake prophesizing that I'ma be just another slave in my head, Institutionalized manipulation and lies”

6. ",Taxi Driver" by The King Blues

Album: Off With Their Heads (2016)

Laden with anger, wit and a healthy dose of irony, Taxi Driver makes a mockery of bigotry in, exactly, 2 minutes of razor sharp punk rock.

The lyrics have to be heard to be understood. Written here without the context of the song would only cause confusion!

7. ",America" by Tracy Chapman

Album: Where You Live (2005)

Taken from one of her lesser known albums this low-key offering sees the singer-songwriter take on colonisers and oppressors, both historic and modern.

“,You found bodies to serve ,Submit and degrade ,While you were conquering America ,Made us soldiers and junkies ,Prisoners and slaves”

8. ",Avenues & Alleyways" by Rancid

Album: …And Out Come the Wolves (1995)

Stirring call to arms for unity delivered in characteristically raucous fashion by the punk legends.

“,Actions could erase all the fear that we suffer ,People segregated, no one understands each other ,He's a different color but we're the same kin ,I'll treat him like my brother, he'll treat me like his”

9. ",Europe is Lost" by Kate Tempest

Album: Let Them Chaos (2016)

Often on songs with such depth, context is key. Here, bleak accounts of the mundanity of modern British life are expertly used to highlight the apathy and ignorance of many towards matters of importance such as climate change, poverty and racism.

“,The wrongs of our past have resurfaced ,Despite all we did to vanquish the traces ,My very language is tainted ,With all that we stole to replace it with this”

10. ",Capture Land" by Chronnix

Album: Dread & Terrible (2014)

Reggae superstar Chronnix dissects the racial motivation underlying the colonisation of countless nations in typically swaggering style.

“,Yuh tink me nuh memba King Ferdinand ,And teifing Columbus have a Golden plan ,Dem make a wrong turn and end up in the Caribbean ,One rass genocide kill nuff Indian”

11. ",SYM" by Kano

Album: Hoodies All Summer (2019)

Taken from my favourite album of last year– a vital soundtrack for our times which will speak volumes to anyone who has felt marginalised or ostracised from mainstream society. Kano produced a searing social commentary on what it is to be Black in Britain today over a soulful melting pot of genre spanning sounds ranging from hip hop to dancehall, garage to grime. This anthemic closer signs off the album with the poise and panache we have come to expect from the East London Grime legend.

“They want throw banana skins at John Barnsey's

They tell us to go fuckin' back to our own country

But they won't even give us back our own countries

Every entrance to a door, has a footprint left by the ones that came before”

12. ",Slave Driver" by Bob Marley

Album: Catch a Fire (1973)

Widely considered to be one of the greatest reggae albums of all time, Catch a Fire is undoubtedly an album of protest. The lyrics to ‘Slave Driver’ covey this clearly with Marley connecting the past and present to shine light on injustices suffered by countless generations.

“,Every time I hear the crack of a whip ,My blood runs cold ,I remember on the slave ship ,How they brutalize the very souls”

13. ",Black " by Dave

Album: Psychodrama (2019)

Released as the first single of his critically acclaimed debut, Psychodrama, South London rapper, Dave, addresses themes of racial and social inequality.

“,Our heritage been severed, you never got to experiment with family trees, 'cause they teach you 'bout famine and greed ,and show you pictures of our fam on their knees”

14. ",Hurricane" by Bob Dylan

Album: Desire (1976)

Written in response to the wrongful imprisonment of boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, Dylan describes the racism and profiling which led to a false trial and conviction in 1960s America.

"In Paterson that's just the way things go If you're black you might as well not show up on the street 'Less you wanna draw the heat"

15. ",Harder Than You Think" by Public Enemy

Album: How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul (2007)

Hip-Hop heroes, Public Enemy, call out apathetic contemporaries and predecessors for failing to address racism and other injustices over an uncharacteristically upbeat instrumental.

"Check the facts, expose those cats Who pose as heroes and take advantage of blacks Your government's gangster, so cut the crap A war going on so where y'all at?"

16. ",For the Kids of the Multiculture" by Sonic Boom Six

Album: Sonic Boom Six (2012)

An unapologetic celebration of diversity and the benefits it brings complemented perfectly by the vocals of frontwoman Laila Khan on a joyous chorus.

“,I feel lucky to be living in a town that's mixed there's ,European Caribbean every flavour in between ,From the shops to the mosque to the cuisine ,Reggae posters in Polish grocers ,Getting on together like chips and samosas”

17. ",All You Fascists" by Billy Bragg and Wilco

Album: Mermaid Avenue Vol.II (2000)

Modern day folk hero, Billy Bragg, reworks his own hero Woody Guthrie’s classic with the help of Americana band Wilco.

“,Race hatred cannot stop us, this one thing I know ,Poll tax and Jim Crow and greed have got to go ,You're bound to lose”

18. ",Maangamizi" by Akala

Album: The Thieves Banquet (2013)

Rapper, author and activist, Akala, showcases his lyrical prowess with historical knowledge to match on what is a painful yet vital exploration of Africa’s past.

“,What awaited was not just enslavement ,But a genocidal impulse craving ,They committed unspeakable abuses ,To make a nigger from an African human”

19. ",Old Rock n Roll" by Young Fathers

Album: White Men Are Black Men Too (2015)

The Edinburgh trio question the validity of labels on this track taken from their superb follow up album to the Mercury Music Prize winning debut, Dead.

“,I said I'm tired of playing the good black ,I'm tired of having to hold back ,I'm tired of wearing this hallmark for some evils that happened way back”

20. ",White Man’s World" by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

Album: The Nashville Sound (2017)

Four time Grammy Award winner, Jason Isbell, discusses his perspective on race and gender on this moving plea for equality.

“I'm a white man looking in a black man's eyes Wishing I'd never been one of the guys Who pretended not to hear another white man's joke Oh, times aint forgotten”

We want to see:

• agency (people of colour in lead roles, making complex decisions and not merely falling into racial stereotypes)
• compassion (viewers feel strongly for those characters)
• criticality (intersectional social commentary on the obstacles characters face).

Of course, some movies and series may be more radical than others and some may make problematic representations and simplifications that we don’t always agree with. But that’s where the opportunities for discussion and critique arise. If we didn’t have these diverse representations of people of colour (as was the case a decade ago), we wouldn’t have these opportunities to develop our criticality. This post is the first in a series of anti-racist TV shows and movies that will be listed and rated according to our three anti-racist criteria.

• Top Boy

Recommended by Sangeeta, this Netflix drama follows the lives of drug dealers in the inner city housing estates of East London. Against a background of austerity, racism, gentrification and callous immigration officials, the drama gives a deep insight into the struggles that people of colour and, more specifically, black youths face today in the UK. Throughout the show, we see stereotypical portrayals of ‘black masculinity’ challenged: vulnerability, tears and compassion among black male protagonists is not something we are used to seeing on our screens. Top Boy provides an honest depiction of the lives of young black people in modern day Britain, which have largely been impacted by racism and austerity. Ashley Walters, who stars in the show, summed it up well when he said “I hope Boris Johnson watches Top Boy”.

Agency: 5 stars

Compassion: 5 stars

Criticality: 4 stars

While Top Boy featured female protagonists, the show could have benefited from further exploration of black women's lives, which were very much weaved into the lives of their male counterparts. Shelley’s role was focused around being Dushane’s love interest, and the scenes in which she featured saw her acting as a source of support to Dushane when he was struggling with his own issues, or when his mother was ill. Considering that it was Little Simz, the highly successful and edgy musician from North London who played Shelley, I had expected more from Shelley’s role: Little Simz certainly has a lot more to bring to the table than being someone’s love interest or shoulder to cry on. I would have liked to see black women's stories in Top Boy portrayed with the same level of depth that their male counterparts had.

• Self-Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C. J. Walker

Recommended by Titi and Mélina, this Netflix miniseries is an adaptation of the biography On Her Own Ground by A’Lelia Bundles, starring Octovia Spencer. Madam C. J. Walker, born Sarah Breedlove (1867 - 1919), started her career as a washer woman until she thrived as an entrepreneur developing a line of hair products that promoted self-love for black women. We are shown how she relentlessly overcomes the intersectional challenges of sexism and anti-blackness in a segregated America. The heartwarming drama depicts an empowering representation of black femininity, while successfully providing an insight into the mechanisms of toxic anti-blackness, misogyny and heteronormativity. A good reminder that hair is political. Watching this will make any woman of colour feel invincible!

Agency: 5 stars

Compassion: 5 stars

Criticality: 4 stars

The celebration of a self-made millionaire doesn't do much to critique the capitalist system which perpetuates, and is built on, racial and gender inequality.

• Gentefied

Recommended by Mélina, this Netflix series follows the lives of three Mexican-American cousins in California who chase the American Dream. Throughout the first season, it becomes clear that this dream is often at odds with the things they wish to protect: their neighbourhood, their immigrant grandfather and their family taco shop. The show manages to perfectly balance lighthearted, humorous moments with incisive social commentary around issues of gentrification, migration, internalised racism, cultural appropriation, homosexuality and more.

Agency: 5 stars

Compassion: 5 stars

Criticality: 4 stars

While the majority of the characters are brown Mexican Americans, the only black character ends the first season falling out with the family. She remains in the margins and she makes subtle hints about anti-blackness, challenging the stereotype of the loud, angry black woman in the community, but this issue is not explored further. We hope the second season will create more space for her story.

• Noughts and Crosses

Recommended by Titi and Mélina, this BBC series brings to life Malorie Blackman’s eponymous novel. In this somewhat dystopian (yet very close to home) world, the show experiments with the concept of reverse racism where black “Cross” people colonised Albion (i.e. the UK) and enforce segregation on the native white “Nought” people. Issues of police brutality, institutional racism, colonised education and more are explored in the first season. You can listen to the podcast ,,Obsessed with Noughts and Crosses, hosted by Kelechi Okafor, to hear an analysis of the anti-racist messages underlining the series.

Agency: 5 stars

Compassion: 4 stars

Even though the show is meant to be critiquing white people’s power and privilege in our current society, there is only one black person who isn’t portrayed as unsympathetic compared to all the other white main characters. What implicit message does that send to viewers? This can inadvertently cause the majority of the black characters to be demonised.

Criticality: 4 stars

While the reverse-racist world created is a fantastic opportunity to critique our current society, it can be problematic because it seems to target a white audience. Is the show made for the white gaze? It is in fact breath-taking and inspiring to finally see so many black people in positions of power in a Western society. The cinematography, the attention to detail and the the black aesthetic being celebrated is impeccable. But we are encouraged to feel more sympathy for the white characters as they suffer from the structures of inequality. That is probably to prove that the structures of inequality are the problem, not the skin colour of each person. Yet, what bothers me is that it relies too much on white empathy: can white people only “get” racism and feel sympathy for the victims of racism when they are white?

Do you have any favourite anti-racist TV shows or movies to recommend? Get in touch and send them to us with you thoughts and your ratings on Twitter (,,@AntiRacistEd) or via email (theantiracisteducator@gmail.com)

Gathering family stories that would otherwise be lost, erased and denied allows us to learn about our elders' lives under colonial rules. It is a crucial aspect of decolonising the curriculum, especially the typically white-washed History taught in schools.

The unit I developed for my own National 5 and Higher English classes could be adapted for pupils in S1 - S6 (11 - 17 years old).

For older pupils, this unit would be a good starting point for a reflective or creative essay for the National 5 or Higher portfolio. The unit presents other possible outcomes for younger pupils (even in primary school), such as designing the missing pages of a History textbook, creating a newspaper article, writing a poem, drawing a comic and making a Thank You postcard inspired by family stories. In fact, you could use this project as a parent with your children or as an individual looking for some structure to guide the discovery of your own family history. If you would like to get a free PDF version of my unit, please send your request to theantiracisteducator@gmail.com

Preserving Family History Project

Once Upon a Lockdown…

A lot of us will be stuck at home with our family, spending a lot more time with our relatives (whether we like it or not).

This is the perfect chance to bond and learn more about our family’s past.

We think we know our family members and their lives, but now we can discover some of the stories that we’ve never heard before.

A Phone Call Away…

For some of us, our family may be far, far away. But technology is great for helping us stay in touch.

Now is the time to Skype, FaceTime, Zoom or make a simple phone call to speak to the relatives who do not currently live with you.

For this project, you will need:

- A pen and some paper to take notes

- A device to make calls (if you want to speak to family members not currently living with you)

- Relatives to speak to (arrange this in advance if they are busy)

- Curiosity, compassion and creativity

- An open mind

At the end of this project, you will have recorded some of your family stories to preserve and celebrate your family’s history. This could be through a piece of writing and a piece of art.

What counts as History?

We often think that ‘history’ refers to all the big, significant world events. However, the definitions of ‘history’ may vary. Take a look at the following definitions and consider which ones resonate the most with your understanding.

The second pictured definition focuses on the idea of a ‘story.’ In that sense, the history of your family will be made of all the stories family members have to tell.

Bear in mind that there are many sides to one story.

Those different family perspectives can make our history all the more exciting. Our family may very well have a different side to the stories present in History textbooks.

Where Is My History?

British-Pakistani poet, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan explores what ‘history’ means to her in her poem entitled "Where Is My History?" She pays particular attention to her family’s history that tends to be forgotten in all the History textbooks and museums.

Here is an extract from her poem for you to think about:

My history is imprinted in the spaces between the ink printed on pressed pages
My history is the screams shouting out through the silent slots in syllabi
It is caged in glass cases said to be for its own safety by the institutions which narrate it as their own
 
Because my history lies in the choices not recorded
About which stories should be hoarded
And called archives
 
And my archives 
Are the chicken shops
The taxi stops
The backseats of rentals
And inside hems of headscarves
 
Women’s conversations
Women’s congregations
Women’s contemplations
 
Which you won’t find in your local heritage site

When we study history, we tend to focus on ‘significant’ events in a country and around the world. However, who gets to decide what counts as ‘significant’?

Who decides whose stories are more important?

Churchill himself is guilty of being a "victor writing History": he claimed that the Bengal famine was caused by Indians "breeding like rabbits" rather than admitting that his own colonial policies were responsible for the famine.

Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan's poem highlights the fact that a lot of our family history is not recorded and not included in textbooks and museums. By investigating and recording some of your family history, you will get a chance to take back control. You will get to preserve and celebrate the stories of your relatives and ancestors that may otherwise be forgotten.

Family Tree

Use the family tree below to get you started, starting off with yourself at the bottom, your parents above that, their parents and so on. Use the space around and above the tree to add extra boxes and branches as required (aunts, uncles, step-mothers/fathers, etc.). Alternatively, you can use an online family tree creator following this link.

How far out do your branches reach out? Can you extend any branches and add more boxes? Are there people missing that you don’t know about? You can ask a family member to help you at this stage.

Jot down the things you already know about your family members on the tree. If you run out of space, you can do this on a separate sheet of paper. This could include:

• names/nicknames (and the stories behind these)
• relationships
• jobs
• significant family events (weddings, birthdays, funerals, etc.)
• world/national events that may have affected your family (wars, national independence, civil rights/women’s rights movements, genocides, persecutions, famines, plagues, natural disasters, etc.)

Preparing Questions

• The Interviewer (you)

Are there any gaps on your tree? Are there things you simply don’t know? Write down any questions that have come to your mind about your family’s experiences:

Questions:

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What stories have you already heard from your relatives? What else could you find out about those stories? Or are there any new stories you would like to hear?

Take notes of those stories as follows:

1. Stories I know

E.g. That time when my parents first met.

2. Questions about those stories

E.g. What were their first impressions of each other? When did they first realise that they were ready to get married?

3. New stories I would like to discover

E.g.The first time grandmother was allowed to vote.

These are some of the family stories and questions my class came up with during our first week of lockdown and virtual learning:

• What was it like being a wartime type-writer?
• How did you fight off a snake in the village?
• Whose idea was it to put me (as a baby) in the fridge when it was too hot? And what were they thinking?
• What was your scariest experience as a police officer?
• Why did you run away from boarding school?
• What was it like for my great-grandfather to fight for the British during World War One? He was stuck in Burma and he had to walk all the way back home to India using leaves as shoes.
• What was it like moving away from Pakistan to build a family in the UK? Do you regret your choice?
• What was it like living in Glasgow tenements with temporary shelters for air raids during World War Two?
• What was it like for my grandmother to experience the loss of her daughter who suffered from malnutrition?
• How did it feel for my grandfather to leave his remote village in Pakistan, get a degree and move to the UK, against all the odds?
• What was it like being forced to leave Iraq because of war?
• How did grandmother feel when she married grandfather and had to live with his other wives?
• What was it like to go to the cinema for the first time?
• How did grandfather escape after being captured as a prisoner of war?
• What was your favourite thing about opening a restaurant?

Other generic questions:

· What does "home" mean to you?

· Tell me about your earliest memory?

· What are you most proud of in your life?

· What are some of the scariest moments of your life?

· What are some of the happiest moments of your life?

· What are some of the saddest moments of your life?

· What are some of the most difficult times of your life?

· Tell me about some of the most exciting experiences in your life.

· Do you have any claims to fame?

· Do you have any regrets?

· If you could go back in time and relive one moment in your life, what would it be? Why? Tell me more about it.

· Who were your role models in life? What did you admire about them?

· Could you share what you have learned about life? What wisdom could you share with me?

Take a note of other questions you would like to ask.

__________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

• The Interviewee(s) (family members)

Once you have thought of questions, you might want to think of the best people to ask for this project. Unfortunately, not all our relatives will be alive to answer the questions we might have for them. However, you might find that those who are alive may have their answers for you!

You may choose several people to speak to and you might even gather different versions of the same story. The more perspectives, the better!

· Interviewee 1: ______________________________

How will I speak to them (circle the answer): in person / phone call

When would be a good time for them? ________________________

Will I need anybody to help me speak to them (if they speak a different language for example, or if they struggle with disabilities)? ___________

· Interviewee 2: ______________________________

How will I speak to them (circle the answer): in person / phone call

When would be a good time for them? ________________________

Will I need anybody to help me speak to them (if they speak a different language for example, or if they struggle with disabilities)? ___________

· Interviewee 3: ______________________________

How will I speak to them (circle the answer): in person / phone call

When would be a good time for them? ________________________

Will I need anybody to help me speak to them (if they speak a different language for example, or if they struggle with disabilities)? __________

The Interviewing Process

Make sure that your interviewees are aware that this is a school project and that you will be recording and using some of their stories. There are many ways of recording stories this:

- Write notes on paper

- Type notes in a Word document on a tablet or Ipad

- Use a phone to record what your relative is saying

- Doodle some ideas while you listen to their stories

Active listening means asking questions…

It doesn’t have to be a one-way conversation.

Ask questions to check that you understand everything they are telling you.

Show that you are listening by nodding, smiling and using your body language to show that you care.

However, you don’t want to be firing away questions one after the other. That can put people off… We all need time to think when we are asked questions. And it takes time to tell stories properly, from beginning to end. Give your interviewee time to think and develop their answers and stories. Be patient and enjoy the conversation.

You don’t have to stick to a script. Express your reactions, your surprise, your compassion and your curiosity when hearing new stories.

Take a note of your feelings because this might help you with your final piece of writing/art.

Hearing these family stories made me feel…

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

You may have more questions after the conversation is over. Take a note of these and, later on, pick up the conversation where you left it. Repeat the interviewing process several times to get the juiciest bits of your family stories!

Transforming Oral Stories

Using your notes, pick your favourite bits of the family history you explored. Use these ideas to create any of the following genres of writing:

- A reflective essay

- A creative short story

- A poem

- A comic

- A newspaper article

- The missing pages of a History textbook

- A postcard

You can test a couple of them first and you can choose to do more than one (e.g. a poem and a postcard). The next part of this unit provides guidance for each genre.

A Reflective Essay

For this type of writing, you will need to write the story from your personal perspective. Reflection involves contemplating, thinking more deeply about what you learned from this process of hearing family stories.

Using some of these questions may guide your reflection:

• Did you have any interesting realisations about your family?
• How did it feel discovering this family history?
• Did it change your impression of your family?
• How did it affect your sense of identity?
• Has your understanding of your family heritage changed?
• Do you think you used to value your family members enough before this process?

A reflective essay can take the form of:

• a short story (with a beginning, middle and end)
• a motivational speech
• a letter to your future/past self or a family member
• a diary entry

Here is an extract from a reflective essay written by an S4 pupil. He reflects on his mother’s incredible story from her childhood when she lived in a remote village in India.

For a split second the eyes of the wolf and my mum lock together. Her eyes sunk with fear and she let out a deafening shriek that woke the entire village from their slumber. (…) She ran as fast as her legs could carry but the wolf was too quick, which was slowly closing the distance between them. Her determination to live was remarkable, knowing fine well the slim odds of her survival, yet she still persevered. (…) It’s unsettling to think about how quickly things can change. My mum was jolted from her tranquil sleep and soon running for her life, filled with shock and horror. But the wolf on the other hand, it could taste victory, but soon lost everything, including its life.

A Creative Essay

For this type of writing, you can ‘embellish’ your family history and use your imagination to fill in the gaps.

For example, my mother recently told me that one of her distant aunts in India was a black woman who looked like she had African ancestry. My mother doesn’t know anything beyond that potential history, but I could fill in the gaps based on my understanding of Indian history, colonisation and the slave trade. It is very likely that my ancestors were a mix of African slaves transported to Goa, Portuguese colonisers and native Indians. Now, I can use my imagination to fill in the gap and describe what my ancestors’ lives may have been like.

You probably only heard one side of the story, so you could play around with different perspectives to figure out what would bring the story to life. Toni Morrison does the same in her award-winning novel, Beloved. The following extract explains what inspired her to write the story:

Margaret Garner, a young mother who, having escaped slavery, was arrested for killing her children (and trying to kill the others) rather than let them be returned to the owner’s plantation. (…) 
The historical Margaret Garner is fascinating, but to a novelist, confining. (…) So I would invent her thoughts, plumb them for a subtext that was historically true in essence, but not strictly factual in order to relate her history to contemporary issues about freedom, responsibility and women’s “place.” The heroine would represent the unapologetic acceptance of shame and terror; assume the consequences of choosing infanticide; claim her own freedom. The terrain, slavery, was formidable and pathless. To invite readers (and myself) into the repellent landscape (hidden, but not completely; deliberately buried, but not forgotten) was to pitch a tent in a cemetery inhabited by highly vocal ghosts.

A Poem

Poetry requires you to be brief and concise. It often requires a process of writing and re-writing:

• Try writing a few paragraphs about your chosen story or experience, emphasising emotions and using as much description as possible.
• Underline the key words and emotions that stand out
• Create a word bank to see if you can come up with synonyms and better ways of expressing the key words you underlined.
• Play around with the structure of your poem to create a rhythm (saying it out loud will help).

In the following poem, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan celebrates her grandmother’s everyday life.

Nani
She smells like untouched snow
And morning mountain dew
Her fingers peel potato skins
Like unwrapping giggles from children’s lips
She coaxes rice grains into scoops
And evaluates inexact measurements exactly
(…)
She slips money into children’s hands with a two-eyed wink
And she is fresh fresh freshly bathed
Clean like rose water
Knees like old age
But lips murmur over English words
Learning learning learning
She gave and she gives

Nairobi Thompson’s collection of poems (Bayonets, Mangoes and Beads: African Diasporic Voices from WWI and WWII) explores the forgotten history of the African diaspora’s contributions to World Wars. The following poem conveys the experience of Senegalese soldiers forced to join the French army, drawing strong parallels to slavery (which was officially abolished at the time).

Dark Forces
Villages were raided to fill French quotas
For French trenches
Hard task masters sent
Bent on capture of the poorest from Senegal
Ripping them from soft loving arms of wailing mothers
Old fathers, new wives, new borns
Leaving broken families of unplanted fields
So too defenceless orphan boys – stolen children
With no one to fight for them were taken
 
Bound in chains and herded to the collection stations. Herded and bound. Herded and bound in chains. Not slaves. Not this time. Called to save. Not slaves. Shipped to Europe in the belly of the ship. In the ship’s hungry belly. Not slaves. Not slaves. Not this time.
(…)

The Force Noire. Forced to enlist. To be a tour de force to be reckoned with. Conscripted to fight for Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Emancipation – for everyone as long as it was not their own.

A Comic

A lot like poetry, comics require you to be brief and selective with your use of words. Images should enhance the plot, allowing you to show the story rather than tell. Also a lot like a short story, you need to make sure there is a clear beginning, middle and end.

The extracts above come from the graphic novel ‘Freedom Bound: Escaping Slavery in Scoltand’ by Warren Pleece, Shazleen Khan and Robin Jones. 

Just like the creative short story, you may need to use your imagination to fill in the gaps. However, it is also possible to be more factual and reflective if you wish to stick more closely to your interviewee’s stories.

Newspaper Article or Missing Pages from a History Textbook

In the following extract, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan questions what counts as ‘significant’ enough to be classed as History.

On one level, ‘where’ my past is is a question of where it is in what is called the subject of History. My past is missing from textbooks, curriculums and documentary and other recordings of History in the sense that if the history of, for example, Pakistan is told, it is told through the eyes of diplomats, South Asian elites and Britons with their own assumptions and political goals. 
Or in the case of migration, the history of Pakistani migrants to the UK is told as part of the history of ‘migration’ which obscures the role of British colonialism and the commonwealth in that migration. It also often obscures the place of women – who are not only excluded from ‘migrant’ histories but also ‘women’s history’ (for being migrants) and larger ‘British history.’
Such placement of my history is an outcome of the decisions that go into selecting what is a historical document and what is not – e.g. what piece of evidence is an important piece of the past and what piece of evidence is not: what is a scribble on a piece of paper and what is a ‘source,’ what is an oral history and what is a story told by my grandma? 

By selecting the most interesting and exciting parts of your interviewees’ stories, you have the choice of:

• Writing a newspaper article with the story as a headline (as if it was published at the time that it happened).
• Writing a page from a textbook that uses your family’s stories as source to inform the reader about some aspect of your (or the world’s) history.

You can look up examples of contemporary newspaper front pages or History textbooks to follow as a model.

A Postcard

This is a great way to thank your interviewees for taking part. You could illustrate one of their stories and write and thank you message for them.

Possible illustrations for the front:

• An extract from your comic
• Your favourite lines from your creative writing/reflective essay
• Your poem with illustrations
• Your newspaper headlines
• A picture of their favourite moment/story in life

What you could write at the back:

• Thank them for taking part in your school project
• Express your gratitude for their time and patience during the interview
• Explain how it made you feel to hear their stories
• Tell them how much you love them

If you enjoyed this project and completed any of the written and artistic outcomes, please share them with us by sending us an email (theantiracisteducator@gmail.com) or tagging us on Twitter (@AntiRacistEd). We'd love to discover your decolonised versions of history!