The purpose of this blog post is to highlight why it is imperative for White children, trainee teachers, educators and parents to have access to and engage with an antiracist multicultural education.

During the racist riots in England in the summer of 2024, demonstrators bellowed slogans such as ‘go back home’ to visibly non-White communities, including those born here. This showed a clear lack of understanding of how Black and Asian people came to be in Britain in the first place (see Iqbal, 2024). Social media ignited and broadcast disturbing visions of furious White crowds attacking mosques and hotel residences that were housing asylum seekers (see Bhui et al., 2024). The rioters chanted racial slurs at police and looted property (see Downs, 2024), and children as young as 12, were convicted. The riots compelled me to cancel an annual holiday, and I was left with a perturbing question from my nine-year-old daughter: ‘Why do people hate us?’

Racism is not confined to our homes, cities or places of work and study. Ongoing geopolitical crises such as the Palestinian genocide (Albanese & Mofokeng, 2024) have impacted numerous communities globally. England’s National Education Union highlights how entrenched such geopolitical issues have become within the English educational and social spheres and provide comprehensive guidance on how these issues can be addressed (NEU, 2024). As the Core Content Framework does not make it mandatory to teach racial literacy, student teachers are ill-equipped to handle racism in the classroom and White teacher educators are not compelled to engage with it seriously. Consequently, when faced with complex conversations in the classroom, teachers firefight when responding to children’s understanding about conflicts, or in managing the profound impact of racial conflict on children and staff (NEU, 2024).

‘As the Core Content Framework does not make it mandatory to teach racial literacy, student teachers are ill-equipped to handle racism in the classroom and White teacher educators are not compelled to engage with it seriously.’

This begs the question: Are teachers confined to teaching only subject knowledge serving a neoliberal system of education, or should they develop, in their learners, critical thinking about the world we live in? Teacher educators have a duty to embed a thorough understanding of racism in the classroom – for example, by educating student teachers about how to respond to racism, structural violence, microaggression and unconscious bias through module content. In this way student teachers can become adept at distinguishing and naming these problems. Teacher educators must strive to improve the quality of mentor training to actively incorporate a deeper understanding of the different facets of microaggression in teacher education (Tereshchenko et al., 2024). This would build a culture of self-reflection and understanding. The first step in moving towards an antiracist culture is to honestly self-evaluate institutional practices. Unfortunately, many higher education institutions are structurally violent, fundamentally White, and reproduce racial inequalities through both overt and subtle mechanisms (Arday & Mirza, 2018).

Alongside decolonisation of the curriculum, researchers at Leeds Beckett University have called for the adoption of an antiracist framework for teacher education. While such a framework has been implemented by several institutions, it is not mandatory, which is problematic. Without a systematic approach to antiracist education, it is challenging to track the disparity that currently exists. The lack of monitoring and evaluation becomes a significant structural barrier to developing teacher ‘critical race consciousness’ (Lander et al., 2023, p. 437).

The task of antiracist education also requires cultivating teacher/parent partnership with predominantly White parents. There is a need to puncture the ‘White bubble’ of parental ignorance about race (see Payne, 2021). Parent workshops, webinars and the creation of accessible resources could build understanding around racism and microaggression in a comprehensive manner. Barriers of colourblindness, prejudice, disbelief and avoidance must be broken down to equip White parents to have race-related conversations with their children.

This blog post urges stakeholders in the education of children and teachers to listen, to reflect and to actively try harder to build accessible spaces for antiracist dialogue with openness to learn, even if what is learned is uncomfortable.

References

Albanese, F., & Mofokeng, T. (2024). ‘It is important to call a genocide a genocide’: Consider suspending Israel’s credential as un member state, experts tell Palestinian rights committee. [Press release] United Nations. https://press.un.org/en/2024/gapal1473.doc.htm

Arday, J., & Mirza, H. (Eds.). (2018). Dismantling race in higher education. Palgrave Macmillan.

Bhui, K., Roberts, D., Lashley, M., Jones, E., & Kaufman, K. R. (2024). Extremism, racism and riots: Exploring the political, social and cultural determinants of poor mental health. BJPsych Open, 10(6). https://doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2024.830

Downs, W. (2024). Policing response to the 2024 summer riots. House of Commons Library. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/policing-response-to-the-2024-summer-riots/

Iqbal, K. (2024). We are here because you were there. Birmingham Voluntary Service Council (BVSC) Blog. https://www.bvsc.org/blog/we-are-here-because-you-were-there

Lander, V., Nicholson, L., & Goenechea, C. (2023). Breaking the cycle of couscous pedagogy: Are future teachers empowered to teach in multicultural societies? Journal of Education for Teaching, 50(3), 435–449. https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2023.2274919

National Education Union [NEU]. (2023). Israel/Palestine: Issues for schools.  https://neu.org.uk/latest/library/israelpalestine-issues-schools   

Payne, L. (2021). White British parents’ perspective on talking to children about race  [Doctoral thesis, University of East London School of Psychology]. https://doi.org/10.15123/uel.89z0w

Tereshchenko, A., Kaur, B., Cara, O., Wiggins, A., & Pillinger, C. (2024). Racial microaggressions on the initial teacher education programmes: Implications for minority ethnic teacher retention. Teachers and Teaching. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2024.2397583