Racism in Children's Lives

A Study of Mainly-white Primary Schools

Barry Troyna, Richard Hatcher

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429761614
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Originally published in 1992. Both teachers and the general public have traditionally been unwilling to acknowledge that concepts of 'race' might play a part in the lives of primary school children. For this book the authors spent a term in each of three mainly white primary schools. They talked to black and white pupils individually and in small groups about issues, not necessarily of 'race', which the children themselves saw as important. From these conversations they present a fascinating study of how 'race' emerges for young children as a plausible explanatory framework for incidents in their everyday lives. The final picture is both disturbing in its demonstration of how significant racism is and hopeful in showing how frequently anti-racist attitudes exist even in the thinking of children who engage in racist behaviour. A final chapter looks at how school policy can combat racism and build on these positive elements.

Chapter 1

Introduction

‘RACIST’ screamed the front page headline of the Newcastle Evening Chronicle in March 1987. And the news item? The decision of a local primary school headteacher to designate a white child’s refusal to hold hands with a black school mate as a ‘racial’ incident and report it to the local council offices. The headteacher’s action was in line with the City Council’s policy on racial equality and its guidelines to all schools on how to monitor ‘racial’ incidents. But the headteacher’s action provoked a hostile response from local Conservative councillor Mike Summerby who insisted that ‘the whole thing appears to be ludicrous’. As he put it to the paper’s Municipal Editor, Peter Young:

I was aware we require headteachers to report any racial incidents at their schools, which seems to be perfectly reasonable.

I have taken this to mean hard evidence of racial prejudice or maybe, the National Front standing outside a school with leaflets.

But to suggest there is anything racial in a primary school pupil refusing to hold hands with another primary school pupil is ridiculous.

(13 March 1987, p. 1)

Councillor Summerby’s outrage at the headteacher’s alleged inflation of what constitutes a ‘racial’ incident and his reluctance to accept that children of primary school age might participate in such activities are not uncommon. Nor is the status conferred on the item by the Evening Chronicle. In 1988, for instance, ‘RACIST CHECK ON TODDLERS’ was emblazoned across the front page of the Daily Mail: a critical response to the publication of Hertfordshire County Council’s initiative to tackle racism in all its educational institutions. This was followed, a week later, by an article and editorial in the Mail denouncing the nature of the research reported in this book. Under the heading, ‘Big brother and tiny tots’ the Mail editorial informed its readers that this ‘galumping project … sounds about as sensible as unleashing a bloodhound in a doll’s house’ (11 October 1988, p. 6).

The thrust and tenor of these headlines and articles resonate with the central themes of this book. To begin with they articulate the widespread reluctance of professional teachers and laypersons to accept that ‘race’ might shape and constrain young children’s lives. The availability of an impressive array of empirical research on this matter, drawn from an equally impressive range of methodologies and settings, continues to sit uneasily with commonsense assumptions about children and an idealised conception of the world in which they reside. ‘They’re too Young to Notice’, the deliberately ironic title of Ian Menter’s (1989) review of research on young children and racism is testimony to how widespread and tenacious are these assumptions. Councillor Summerby’s indignation at the suggestion that a ‘racial incident’ might consist of something more insidious and pervasive than the overt forms of racism associated with groups such as the National Front is another common assertion. But others disagree and the lack of agreement over the defining criteria of ‘racial’ incidents inhibits the development of effective policy responses. Indeed, as we argue in the following chapter, the term ‘racial’ incidents needs to be deconstructed in order to differentiate between incidents which are legitimated by and expressive of racism and those which involve conflict, in one form or another, between individuals or groups perceived to be racially different. We want to designate the former as racist, the latter as ‘racial’ or ‘inter-racial’ incidents.

A third, less obvious, linkage in these articles relates to the salience, or otherwise, of ‘race’ in the lives of white youngsters living in predominantly white areas of the country. During the course of our research a county adviser for multicultural education informed us that the London Evening Standard had summarily dismissed the relevance of Hertfordshire’s policy on anti-racism with the phrase: ‘Racism in Hertfordshire what next - gay bars in Gateshead!’ The proposition that racism is confined to distinctive geographical locales, namely those with a sizeable black (Afro-Caribbean and South Asian origin) population, has a long history, of course. Multicultural education, for instance, was originally conceived as an educational orthodoxy appropriate only as a response to the perceived ‘special needs’ of black pupils. Despite the intervention of the Swann Committee (DES, 1985) and its insistence that multicultural education should form part of an education for all, irrespective of the location or ethnic mix of schools, this inclusive definition continues to have limited application (Troyna and Carrington, 1990). Yet the evidence of racism in schools where there are only a few black children is unassailable (Akhtar and Stronach, 1986; Gaine, 1987; Mould, 1987). A study commissioned by Lord Swann and his colleagues for their inquiry into the education of ethnic minority children consolidated this evidence. The inquiry concluded that: ‘it might generally be felt that racist attitudes and behaviour would be less common in schools with few or no ethnic minority pupils … we believe this is regrettably far from the case’ (DES, 1985, p. 36).

In 1989 we embarked on a two-year research project (funded by the Economic and Social Research Council) which aimed to clarify the various and interlocking themes encapsulated in these newspaper articles and related pieces. In the preceding ten years or so there had been a discernible shift in the way local education authorities (LEAs) had formulated and implemented policies on multicultural education. An increasing number had ‘racialised’ their stance to encourage anti-racist initiatives on the agenda of educational reform (Troyna and Williams, 1986). There had also been a trend towards more prescriptive and prescriptive modes of intervention, contrasting with the earlier laissez-faire or permissive style which characterised policy initiatives up to the early 1980s.

Another distinguishing feature of recent policy initiatives at LEA (and individual school) level had been advice on how to identify and deal with ‘racial’ incidents in schools and colleges. In some authorities it was part of an overarching policy to tackle these incidents in all of its services: housing, education, social services and so on. But despite an increased awareness that ‘racial’ incidents impact on the educational careers, security and welfare of black children, there remains a number of important gaps and limitations in understanding their antecedents, incidence and consequences. In turn, this has inhibited the emergence of an effective policy, not only in response but also in attempts to pre-empt the outbreak of these incidents.

Our research stemmed from the conviction that these incidents could only be understood in relation to the salience of ‘race’ in children’s perceptions and interpretations of their everyday realities. Logically, this could only be addressed by exploring its place in the totality of children’s worlds; teasing out, in other words, the ideological lens through which they make sense of that world and act within it. Why, and under what circumstances, does ‘race’ emerge as an appealing and plausible mode of reasoning for young people? What are the conditions which prompt young children to operationalise ‘race’ as an organising principle and explanatory framework for their day-to-day judgements and actions? To what extent do racialised understandings of the world suffuse their interaction and relationships with other children? In our efforts to clarify these questions we spent a term in each of three primary schools engaging with pupils aged 10 and 11 in the final two years of their primary education.

As we will see in Chapter 3, much of the research on young children and ‘race’ has tended to be constructed from quantitative methods. Researchers have been determined to compose a picture of what is happening through the assembling of data which are amenable to statistical analysis. Whilst not entirely disillusioned with the application of this methodology to our field of interest we were clear that its imperatives were incompatible with our own. We were less concerned with documenting and describing the frequency of racist incidents in schools than with digging beneath this ground and uncovering the nutrients on which they feed. We therefore rejected quantitative methods in favour of a qualitative research methodology, broadly defined as ethnography. As Martin Hammersley and Paul Atkinson acknowledge, ethnography embraces an eclectic range of sources of information. Thus,

The ethnographer participates, overtly or covertly, in people’s daily lives for an extended period of time, watching what happens, listening to what is said, asking questions; in fact collecting whatever data are available to throw light on the issues with which he or she is concerned.

(Hammersley and Atkinson, 1989, p. 3)

Whatever specific research approaches might be employed by ethnographers, researchers working within this paradigm are committed, above all else, to exploring ‘the routine ways in which people make sense of their world in everyday life’ (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1989, p. 3).

The research was based in two neighbouring LEAs in England which to preserve anonymity we’ll call ‘Greenshire’ and ‘Woodshire’. Both are Shire counties and black citizens in each of the counties comprise less that 3 per cent of the respective total populations. In Greenshire these communities include citizens of Afro-Caribbean and South Asian origin and are concentrated in the county town. The population of South Asian origin includes mainly Sikhs and Muslims. In Woodshire the black presence is dispersed throughout the county’s three main centres. It is represented primarily by citizens of South Asian origin; again, Sikhs and Muslims figure most prominently within these communities.

Both LEAs have produced policy statements on racial equality and these have been augmented by the appointment of advisory and support staff. The adviser in Woodshire informed us that the policy was embedded in ‘multiculturalism rather than anti-racism’. He continued: ‘We have deliberately not taken a hard confrontational approach with staff because the experience of some of us is that this is often counter-productive.’ He conceded that this laissez-faire approach often failed to ensure the support of and commitment to multicultural education from local schools. ‘There is an official policy’, he told us, ‘but how far that actually goes through the system is very much another matter’. The policy on racial equality in Greenshire assumed a much higher profile and was propelled by a more vigorous, interventionist procedure. It had also produced guidelines on ‘racial’ incidents. The adviser in Woodshire recalled how he had tried to develop a policy on ‘racial’ harassment along the lines recommended by the Home Office in 1989; namely, an overarching policy supported and regulated by all of Woodshire’s departments. ‘When that came out’, he told us, ‘I went to see the Deputy County Clerk who didn’t want to know and said: “We don’t have that problem here, there aren’t any racial riots here. We don’t need to do anything about it.”’

Two of the sample schools were based in Woodshire, the other in Greenshire. Woodshire Primary School is in one of the LEA’s main population centres and draws on a catchment area comprising a predominantly working-class community. The headteacher told us that of the 414 pupils on roll there were ‘very few children whose parents are from professional classes, or occupations’ whilst there was ‘a fairly high number of children whose parents don’t have jobs’. And the ethnic mix of the school?

In terms of percentage we have approximately 14% of children from ethnic minorities. Of those the majority are of Asian background and the majority of these are Sikh in background. And we have a handful of children who are Muslim, a couple of Hindus and the rest are Afro-Caribbean.

The staff’s perspective on multicultural education corresponded, more or less, with the views espoused in Woodshire’s policy document. The headteacher admitted that ‘racial’ incidents did take place in the school mainly in the form of name-calling. None the less, he did not ‘believe it to be a great problem ... you get name calling about all sorts of things’.

Hillside Junior School is in another of the LEA’s major towns. Of the 175 children in the school about two-thirds came from a working-class background, the remainder from a middle-class one. The black population in the school was around 17 per cent: ‘mainly Muslim with some Sikhs and Hindus as well as Euro-Caribbean kids’, according to the headteacher. Again, the publication of the LEA’s policy on multicultural education had made little difference to the prevailing ethos of the school; ‘it’s not significant’, the headteacher told us, ‘I would say that the attitude of most teachers would follow that approach anyway. It only reinforces existing attitudes’. For him racism in the school was not ‘a problem’ - but ‘there are problems’. As he put it later: ‘The difficulty is in knowing whether that problem has arisen because of racial reasons or the racism has crept in as a weapon as it were in an argument.’ He maintained that he would ‘come down like a ton of bricks’ if he overheard abuse of any kind and that ‘racial abuse is high on the list of no-noes’. However, other than ‘social training, discussion of people’s rights and values and that usual sort of thing’ there were no distinctive strategies for dealing with such incidents.

The third school was based over the county border in Greenshire. ‘Mainly served by housing estates’ according to the headteacher, the school comprised 223 children. Of these, a relatively high proportion, around 25 per cent, were of South Asian origin, the majority of whom were Sikh. Greenshire Community Primary School used the LEA’s policy on racial equality as ‘something to fall back on if need be‘ and staff were committed to mounting a full-frontal attack on racism, when necessary. The headteacher told us of the school’s policy on anti-racism which ensured that ‘we will act on any racist comment’. And what of the LEA’s guidelines on recording ‘racial’ incidents? The headteacher explained:

We have never done that before so that is something now that we will look into and follow up. I think it is very important as well that the non-teaching staff is involved and obviously need to know what we decide in the school. We will hold a meeting of all our dinner supervisors, caretaker, the cooks and everyone that works in the kitchen so that they are aware of what the procedures are and so that if anything happens at lunch-times they can come straight to me and sort it out that way.

She also intended to ‘hold meetings with parents about it’ and reckoned that ‘through educating our own children in this school about racism this has helped a lot with parents’. The school had also developed guidelines on how its staff ‘will support a child’s culture, background, religion, mother tongue, and that we will make a stance on racist comments that are heard in school’. Its stance on racism, then, was more overt than those of our other sample schools.

We spent one term in each of the three schools, beginning in the autumn term with Woodshire school. Here we carried out an intensive study of one Year 6 class containing thirty-two children. All the children were white apart from two Asian boys and two Asian girls. We also worked with several children in the parallel Year 6 class, in particular with a group of four girls, two of whom were White, and two Afro-Caribbean. Six months later, at the end of the summer term, we returned to this school for several days.

In Hillside school we worked with one Year 6 class of thirty-one children, with three Asian boys and one Asian girl. We also worked, though less intensively, with a parallel class which contained a mixture of Year 6 and Year 5 children, including three Asian boys, one Asian girl and an Afro-Caribbean boy.

We spent the summer term in Greenshire school, studying two parallel classes of mixed Year 4 and Year 5 children. There was a total of 77 children, of whom 15 were black: 7 Asian girls, 6 Asian boys, and 2 Afro-Caribbean girls.

We explained to the children that our purpose in the school was to gather material for a book about children. We did not specify any particular interest in issues of ‘race’. The bulk of our research took the form of discussions with children, individually and in small self-selected groups, outside the classroom situation. These discussions did not follow a previously structured format. There was of course a number of themes that we wanted to explore, revolving mainly around their ideas about issues of ‘race’ and their experiences of ‘race’ in their own lives. But we had the time to allow discussions to take their course, to let the children talk about what mattered to them and to pick up and respond to issues that they raised. We didn’t talk only about issues of ‘race’, or necessarily even mainly about it in any particular session. We talked to all the children on several occasions, for periods of time ranging from half an hour to, in the case of one group on one occasion, an entire school day. Sometimes we used materials to stimulate discussion: photographs, some taken by the children, some of other schools, stories, poems and case-studies. But in general the children needed no stimulus apart from the opportunity to talk freely to an adult who wasn’t taking the role of a teacher, who promised to treat everything they said in complete confidence, and who was willing to listen sympathetically and take seriously whatever they wanted to say, without making judgements.

In addition to our discussions we used a number of other approaches. We spent break-times and lunch-times with the children, we shadowed some children during their school day, we carried out surveys of relationships among the children, and some of them wrote diarie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Lists of figures and tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Feeling harassed? Racist incidents in Britain
• 3 Friend or foe? Relationships between black and white children in school
• 4 Children’s cultures, black experiences
• 5 The meanings of racist name-calling
• 6 Case studies
• 7 Sources of racism
• 8 Responses to racist incidents
• 9 The four girls
• 10 Conclusions
• References
• Subject Index
• Name Index