Prejudice

10 Nov 2015

Stories My Mother Told Me and What I Learnt About Teachers (Part Two)

Teachwell Ethnicity, Humanity, Race Prejudice, Racism, Sexism, Teachers 4

Black and White – Racism Unites?

One of the most astonishing and fascinating interactions I would occasionally observe was how well the racists on both sides understood the others mentality. Their world views were similarly constructed, just the content and stereotypes differed. Now in a country where the majority of people are white British, racists from other backgrounds are not going to be able to have the impact on their lives that white British racists can have on theirs. There is no doubt about that.

This doesn’t excuse being racist oneself. Because if you support the idea that it is acceptable, you also support the fact that it is acceptable for society to be racist in the first place. You support the world view that race is THE most important thing about a person, including yourself. It’s a belief that one group alone can be in charge, have power, to gain the privileges and do the discriminating. An acceptance of the racial survival of the fittest.

In the school, both types of racism had its outlets.

Black children were treated differently by individual white members of staff.
Standards were lower, and I have to say the excuses came from both sides.
Black British Caribbean parents were more likely to be referred to social services and less likely to be supported.
Racist parents accusing either group of teachers (whether they were racist or not) of racism if they chastised their child. The majority of parents wanted stronger discipline and were ignored. This was one of the reasons why some parents (correctly it has to be said) identified some teachers as racist – regardless of the teachers’ ethnicity.
Year group teams were usually of only one background – i.e. one year group would have just white teachers and another black teachers or a mix of black and ethnic minority teachers. This was from the SLT who were trying to be PC but at the same time probably figured it avoided conflict.
White members of staff (provided they were British) had CPD meetings where they chose the courses they wanted, the rest of us never even saw the courses folder. So the one time I got accused of playing the race card was hilarious because there were as many foreign white teachers who signed the letter of complaint as black or Asian teachers. But then this is where the politics of race comes in. I wasn’t accusing them of anything at that point, it was only when SLT tried to stop the two meetings, tried to insinuate they were not legal and then refused to answer the very simple question. (On what basis/criteria were teachers selected to go on courses or indeed allowed to choose a course themselves?) that I understood how deep-rooted the prejudice was.
One year, a storyteller was hired for Black History Month – who told the story of how beautiful black people were all happy and then angry white Portuguese (yes that would be the ethnic minority in the school) people came over and made them slaves. Then they started to have babies, and that’s where Chinese and Indian people came from. Great stuff. The white British NQT sat not knowing what to do just listened and then left. Not before she had insisted on a high five with the children who knew the story behind the Notting Hill Carnival. It was only when my black British colleague went in with her year 2 class (she stopped the session as soon as ‘angry white Portuguese’ was uttered) and alerted SLT, did they realise that this person was unsuitable for the task at hand.
This was the same member of SLT, who told my two black British colleagues and me that we had to move our comparative history topic (Nightingale and Seacole) to the second half term to be studied during Black History Month. We refused. I love people who are trying to be PC tell me what my attitude on these matters should be because that is not patronising at all.
The Year 1 teacher from a black British background (who very much saw herself there to teach black children) put on an assembly of the Rosa Park’s story complete with a white child playing the racist bus driver. These children were 5 and trusted her. No, I don’t think it’s ok. No, I don’t think what ‘white’ people have done justifies assigning children the role of a racist. Anyone who has taught young children knows that they adore you. It is one thing to play a baddie; it’s another to play a racist. It’s called betraying a person’s trust. If you derive pleasure from something like this, then I don’t think you are suitable to teach any more than a member of the BNP quite frankly.

Black History Month

My opposition to Black History Month grew due to a lot of disturbing incidents at school and the way it seemed to promote conflict. The same story over and over – black people vs. white people, occasionally you get other non-white people vs. white people, but essentially that is what it comes down to. I remember a member of staff stating that it was acceptable, and that white people should feel sorry about the past. When I asked what that had to do with the children we taught, she just sort of shrugged it off. They too were white and needed to understand that they should feel bad about the things that white people have done.

I appreciate the fact that there might be other schools that teach less conflict or study it in a less biased, white-bashing way, but I find that the fact that many schools don’t doesn’t surprise me. I wouldn’t use some of the materials either because they are racist in themselves and the way they depict white people as some sort of racist, homogenous mass. Mostly because it doesn’t seem to deal with Britain at all or in the minds of young people is attempting to compare this country with apartheid South Africa or the USA in the 1950s/1960s.

Which is one of the reasons why one of my black British Caribbean colleagues told me she didn’t teach it – we were together in two different year groups (including Year 2 when we demonstrated our insensitivity during BHM). We taught about Maori’s the first year and then we had already planned what we considered a broad curriculum so didn’t bother. Not everyone was happy about the idea, which I found out later, but then we were not going to be listened to in a climate like that.

This is worthy of its own post and will get one soon.

Brainwashed

When I asked some of my colleagues about putting some of the units on the curriculum straight both black and white members of staff made their excuses. It was too controversial, white people would never allow it, it wasn’t worth discussing as the other side did not want to know.

Which left me feeling a bit flummoxed as I had been taught what they considered to be ‘black history’ topics at school on the curriculum. We had covered the Aborigines and Colonialism in primary and the Civil Rights Movement and Apartheid in secondary. Like most people, I had assumed that my experience was that of other people but no, no-one else had been taught in this way themselves. My teachers did just present the reality of the history in so far as they knew it. I don’t recall any of it being one-sided at all. However, equally I don’t remember it being some sort of white apologist version either. Still it’s pretty mind-boggling to find out that you were taught at school on the curriculum with no fuss or fanfare was considered to be too controversial to replicate in the school you were teaching almost 30 years later.

Nearly all my teachers were white British, and there was never any point at which I had felt that I was treated badly or differently to anyone else. Equally, I did not see my teachers who were from ethnic minority backgrounds treat children differently. Got praised and told off for the same things.

No discrimination at all. Not because of my colour, ethnicity or gender. Nada. Sorry really boring. Child goes to school; child gets taught well by teachers she adores and child moves on to next school, then college, then university, then another university.

The reactions I got from people from ethnic minority backgrounds were just – oh they brainwashed you into thinking you weren’t discriminated against!! But then I do think seeing the world through the prism of race does lead to paranoia and conspiracy theories. These were people who did not talk to each other the way they would do with a member of their group and admitted this. I was informed that I should be guarded when speaking to or interacting with the average white person because they would use any weakness or vulnerability against me as standard. The few people who did understand seemed to have had similar experiences to my own and, therefore, could not fit into this simple them and us, black and white world that existed.

So, in the end, I came back home, in search of some sanity, and because I didn’t want to end up racist myself. It took time to shake it off, but things always were different in Leicester. I knew that when I left for Dublin but to have had those experiences in my country was something else. It was a bit like travelling through the twilight zone and ending up somewhere that did not resemble the Britain I knew. Naive, brainwashed, enlightened, tolerant, ignorant – whatever positives or negatives people want to throw at me. I don’t want to change my white British friends, teachers, neighbours and aunt into my white British friends, teachers, neighbours, and aunt. Who would?

I learnt valuable lessons and the fact is that the problems we face in our society are due to members of all ethnic groups. That greater moral responsibility falls to white British people, given that they are the majority may be true, but equally, people from different ethnic minority backgrounds have a responsibility too. For a start, we could stop supporting ridiculous extremists who use hashtags like #whyismycurriculumwhite and talk about white supremacy. This is Britain, not the USA. We need to think about our problems and solutions not live out the conflicts of past generations to fight anew. There is no battle here other than the one we choose to create.

9 Nov 2015

Stories My Mother Told Me and What I Learnt about Teachers (Part One)

Teachwell Ethnicity, Humanity, Race Discipline, Prejudice, Racism, Sexism, Teachers 2

I am grateful that the issue of race didn’t affect me until I was 31. Most people are not that fortunate. Ignorance, prejudice, and idiocy yes but not racism. Working in Brixton meant that for the first time I saw ‘race’ as a living/breathing concept, as opposed to a dead, incorrect theory consigned to history.

When I moved back to Leicester 4 years later, I upset my mum by asking her if she had felt that our mainly white British teachers had been racist. I am sorry for having done that. I asked because of all the craziness of the previous few years had made me even doubt myself. She may have made her mistakes but the one thing she had got right for us was our education.

‘I didn’t think they were racist because they never treated you any differently’ was her reply. Indeed, that’s how I, my siblings and my old school friends remember it. Even now, when parents and pupils talk of my Primary School Head Teacher, Mrs Abbott, it is with a certain reverence. That she managed to win to the support and trust of all the different ethnic groups in her school was not, as I had assumed, the norm. But, all power to her, too many are failing all these decades on.

Whose Side Are You on?

I worked for 3 years in Brixton. The world became black and white and one had to pick a side. It wasn’t ok to just get along with everyone as I had always done and become friends on the basis of who you had a good relationship with, who cared, treated you well, etc. Race was on the agenda and it was, whether you liked it or not, agreed or not, THE most important aspect of who you were.

Teachers at the school were mainly white British and Black Caribbean. Yet my interactions with other ethnic minorities in London did not lead me to believe that had the black teachers been British Indian ones instead, that the experience would have been much different. I do not buy the argument that only white people are racist and I will examine that in a bit more detail below. I got a good view of both racists from all sides – it’s ugly no matter who is perpetrating it.

The school population consisted of mostly black British Caribbean children with other groups including a sizeable number white Portuguese children, some British Indian families, some Black African families and the odd white British family and some children from mixed heritage background. It was the most racist place I have ever worked at.

I actually find the all those labels a bit nonsensical but it’s the language of our higgledy, piggledy classification system. I have some sympathy for the need for it and it has been positive in terms of identifying underperforming groups in schools or how much more likely men from those black Caribbean and African backgrounds are likely to be stopped and searched.

Yet it makes me wonder the extent to which we simply reinforce race. While I doubt many people still believe in the concept of biological races, that does not mean that all of those ideas, which were embedded to greater or lesser degree in people across the world, have simply gone away.

We know that we are all part of the human race but we don’t seem to have accepted it fully yet.

The Rest of Us – Hidden Minority/Majority?

Anyway Brixton – I could see the fault lines drawn and so could others. No matter what we felt, these were not going to be erased anytime soon.

This was a school where the majority of staff could not relate to each other except on the basis of race. It was the elephant in the room. It was understood that it could not be talked about openly, instead you closed doors, checked to see who was in the car park if you were having a cigarette or talked about it outside of school.

Let me be clear those who identified themselves most strongly with being white or black/ethnic were the ones most likely to be racist. It was as though there was no other lens through which they could view life. It is these members of staff whose racism that I generalise about.

Each saw the other as not quite human. White members of staff felt the parents assumed they were racist and felt unable to deal with the children’s behaviour. They felt black members of staff also held this view (not that they usually bothered to find out) and undermined them (which some of them did). They bought into the angry, aggressive, black person stereotype. Of course they tried their best to be PC but then I don’t believe the right on PC folk are any less racist. But that is worthy of a post of its own. So it seemed that they could get on with some ethnic minorities as long as they weren’t too well like a member of an ethnic minority. Those teachers were trusted a little more than the black teachers but not much in the end.

Similarly the black members of staff viewed the white members of staff as inherently racist. I was told point blank that all white people were racist by nature, it was in their DNA, that they were not to be trusted as they could not override this instinct within them. They couldn’t help but undermine, discriminate and treat you badly. Cognitive dissonance? Plenty. There were of course white people who, for some reason never explained to me, were not like this, who rejected white culture, married out of their ‘race’ and understood the issues even if they didn’t face the discrimination. These were the selected few allowed into the inner sanctum and given some but not as much trust as those of the same ethnic background.

Writing this now after years have passed by it still strikes me how wholeheartedly both groups adopted the racist mindset and the behaviour that came with it.

Do I think I am any better? No, I am just as capable of it and struggled with maintaining the values that I grew up with. Hence the fact that I moved back home because I could feel that environment, that way of thinking and those prejudices starting to seep in and I could see it wasn’t going to lead me to who I wanted to be.

(Part Two coming up!!)

8 Nov 2015

Stories my Mother Told Me About Family

Teachwell Ethnicity, Humanity, Race Prejudice, Racism 3

This is the third blog in a series (here and here) of posts about my experiences of race and ethnicity.

My parents were old-fashioned in their views on arranged marriages and, indeed, marrying anyone out of the specific group that we belonged to was not something they could contemplate for their children. I don’t want to misrepresent my mum as some hippy liberal. That mum was ignorant and had prejudiced views at times is part of the reason she is of interest here. We are all products of our upbringing but the effect it has on our views and actions is, nonetheless, mitigated by experience.

My Aunt:

My father’s older brother had come to England several years before the rest of the family followed. He fell in love with a white British woman and, knowing my grandparents would disapprove, he decided to marry her before their arrival to prevent them from stopping him. I have no memories of my aunt or indeed my four cousins.

In the end, my uncle’s alcoholism contributed to his inability to treat either his wife or his children well. Social services eventually intervened. My aunt was given an ultimatum to leave effectively with the children or for them to be put into care. After this, she lost contact with my mum. My cousins have made their peace with my uncle to varying degrees but our estrangement from this uncle means I have not met them since infancy.

But let’s back up. Mum recalls my aunt making every effort to try to integrate with the family. She changed the way she dressed, tried to learn Punjabi and did her best to take part in family life. In Indian families, the different members of the family have all sorts of ceremonial roles, for example, during weddings. It is a way of stressing the importance of each member of the family during these important times. Even with the same background, the difference between my parents on the issue of family relationships was highlighted by this experience. My grandmother rejected my aunt and cousins and my father, aunt and younger uncle shared her contempt.

What got to my mum, and even now I don’t think she can understand why is the way my grandmother treated my cousins. She didn’t want to know them and treated them completely differently to children who were ‘ethnically’ acceptable to her, relatives or no. Mum understood the reasons why my gran disapproved but she couldn’t believe that it translated into actions. What kind of person would treat their grandchildren badly? What kind of person would do that because of their ethnicity? At the end of the day, approve or disapprove of ones grandchildren are one’s grandchildren.

Therein lay the difference between the rest of my family and her. For them, it was their white British sister-in-law and mixed nephews and nieces whereas for my mum it was her white British sister-in-law and mixed nephews and nieces. Same words but the emphasis makes a world of difference, as I have learnt in my experiences.

In the end, my parents reconciled but it was hard for mum that my uncle’s marriage broke down, as it meant a source of support went too.

For me, growing up knowing that my family were not some purebred Punjabi Sikh family had a huge effect. None of my other family members ever mentioned my aunt or my cousins – other than it was wrong to marry outside of the faith and culture. Mum alone was willing to tell the truth of what happened and what my aunt was really like, as well as their poor treatment of her and my cousins.

Mum represents the reality of the struggle between wanting to maintain one’s culture and tradition through marriage but also the bonds, duties and obligations that one has to members of one’s family regardless of what group they belong to. It is to the shame of my family that they did not do more to accept my aunt and my cousins. While I would rather have not learnt the importance of family in this way, it is at least one positive to have come out of this my mother’s melancholy experience.