Written by: Bradley Day – Assistant Head Teacher at Trevelyan Middle School with responsibility for culture, pastoral care and inclusion.
Prejudiced monsters…
Ever since she first appeared in the third series of Big Brother, I followed the life and ultimately tragic death of Jade Goody quite closely. This was partly because of her association with Harlow in Essex, where I grew up and where Jade was something of a local celebrity, and partly because she was one of the first major success stories within the rapidly growing genre of reality television. Jade’s story was one of success against the odds. Despite becoming the object of nightly ridicule for her lack of basic geographical knowledge among other things, she drew success from the exposure the press and public’s vociferous reactions had given her. As such, she went on to earn millions across a range of television, publishing and business ventures.
Yet, in 2007, everything changed for Jade Goody when she made the ill-fated decision to re-enter the Big Brother House (this time, the Celebrity version). Jade displayed racism on repeated occasions to Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty. It was of course right that the racism was condemned – and it was by everyone from then Prime Minister Gordon Brown to all major news outlets.
It was also very easy to condemn. The racism was overt, building on decades of well-known tropes of abuse aimed at people of South Asian descent. It was notable that it was the tabloids, once again, who were especially energetic in their daily critique of Jade Goody’s racism. These are the same tabloids who have arguably engaged in only marginally subtler forms of racism and prejudice both before and, indeed, after the Jade and Shilpa controversy, whether through the repeated accusations of Muslim’s inability to fit into “British Culture” or the far more recent attacks on Meghan Markle.
One of my favourite units to teach at Trevelyan Middle School is our Year 8 study of Gothic Horror. The unit itself was inspired by a series of seminars I undertook at university themed around the notion of “monstrosity” (coincidentally, around the same time that Jade Goody and Shilpa Shetty entered the Big Brother house together). Within the unit, we explore how writer’s create monsters and what these monsters represent. We look at the fact that monsters, more often than not, are an expression of everything the writer fears – and everything they don’t want to see themselves as being.
Take Dracula, for example. Count Dracula represented everything Victorian Britain saw themselves as not: infectious; un-Christian; and morally deviant. The concept of the monster creates a neat binary whereby we can see ourselves as “all that is good” and the monster as “all that is evil”.
Just as the character of Count Dracula sought to position moral deviance in stark opposition to the upstanding ethics of the Victorian gentry, perhaps the tabloids (and others) sought to cast Jade Goody as the monster of all prejudice. In other words, by being the ones to call out the monstrosity of racism, they could not be accused of racism themselves. After all, how can you be racist if you are attacking racism?
While Jade Goody versus the tabloids might be an extreme example, I would suggest that too often our thinking has been guided by the notion that people either are prejudiced or are not prejudiced. In other words, we like to see prejudice as a binary rather than a spectrum – and we all know what side of the binary we like to claim we sit.
It’s not that simple…
In thinking about how we got to this point, it is worth considering how matters of prejudice were taught over the decades. While making a statement such as “I don’t see race” may now seem so ridiculous as to be worthy of satire, the act of refusing to notice difference has arguably been the policy steering our education system (and wider society) for decades.
As Professor Farzana Shain points out in her comprehensive overview of race and education in Britain since the 1950s, the educational policies of the 1950s to 1970s were overtly assimilationist and based on the principle that black and Asian pupils should have the chance to fit in but only by subscribing to the dominant white culture. Despite the Scarman Report of 1981 (commissioned in the aftermath of the Brixton riots) leading to the state moving towards a policy of multiculturalism that could embrace difference, such a policy always failed to make its way into education specific policy. Instead, educational policy throughout the 1980s and 1990s was based on the idea of colour-blindness – treating everyone equally no matter who they were.
Yet, one possible result of this is that there are many well-meaning people who would argue that treating everyone with absolute equality – and not acknowledging difference – is a clear-cut way to eradicate any potential for prejudice (be it regarding race or any other marginalised group). However, while such an attitude may prevent such overt examples of prejudice such as the language used by Jade Goody in 2007, it is by refusing to acknowledge people’s differences that less visible but equally damaging forms of prejudice are able to grow.
This thinking is nothing new. In the early 1980s, Professor David Gillborn conducted two years of research within an inner city comprehensive secondary school with a large proportion of Afro-Caribbean, Asian and white pupils. The school had very much in its mantra a colour-blind approach. This did not in any way represent a callous approach to the school’s diverse cohort. Indeed, Gillborn’s research comments on the extent to which the staff cared about all pupils having an equality of opportunity.
However, in examining the school’s detention data, white and Asian pupils largely received detentions for examples of the objective breaking of school rules (eg. truancy or smoking). Afro-Caribbean pupils, on the other hand, would more commonly receive detentions for highly subjective reasons, such as “attitude” or “arrogance”. To synthesis, while the teachers may have worked with the belief that they applied discipline equally to all pupils (and were content to give the same sanction out to all), the reality was that their own invisible prejudices were a factor in the reasoning for the sanctions they would dish out to pupils of a certain race.
While we might hope for it to be otherwise, such invisible forms of racism and other invisible prejudices continue to thrive. They thrive because we let ourselves believe that we are not racist or homophobic or transphobic or sexist or ableist because “we treat everyone the same”. Just like the tabloids did with Jade Goody, we make monsters out of those who use overt examples of prejudice and therefore bask in the comfort that we are the complete opposite of such monstrosity.
For us as educationalists…
At Pioneer Educational Trust, we often draw on the Future Engage Deliver model as a tool for the planning and execution of leadership. In considering how we take on those less visible forms of prejudice, this model perhaps offers some inspiration.
FUTURE:
The first stage of the FED leadership model is to conceive the future that you want to see.
The first thing we all need to do as leaders is acknowledge that – when it comes to tackling prejudice- we do need to see a future that is distinct from the present. Put another way, the status quo is not good enough. Invisible prejudice still presents significant harm and therefore epithets of treating everyone equally will not cut it.
However, acknowledging the need for a changed future can be difficult in itself. It can be difficult when we are often, through the media and our politicians, hearing endless success stories that tell us issues of prejudice have been “dealt with”: equal marriage; the Equalities Act; and second-generation immigrants holding three of the four Great Offices of State. It can be difficult because most of us grew up embracing the notion of multi-culturalism; gay rights; and a belief that women should have the same opportunities as men.
To be told you’ve been getting something wrong when it isn’t something you didn’t really care about anyway is one thing. To be told you may be still falling foul of fundamental values that you hold dear is quite another. That’s when the defence mechanisms go up. That’s why the very act of suggesting we are not there yet can be a brave act to take
ENGAGE:
The second stage of the FED leadership model is to engage those who can help you build this future.
This word, engage, is especially pertinent in considering the matter of invisible prejudice. Engagement means real, exploratory and explicit teaching opportunities about issues of diversity and inclusion. It means going far deeper than the mere assumption that we believe everyone is equal. Instead, the belief must be that we are indeed all equal in the innate value we hold, but our life experiences are vastly contrasting. There is therefore an infinite amount of lived experiences to explore.
Being educationalists, we are well placed to lead to the way (or, indeed, pioneer) with this work – whether in regard to staff CPDL or the pupil-facing curriculum. One of our values at Trevelyan Middle School is that of curiosity. This is crucial – providing safe spaces for both staff and pupils alike to ask difficult and sometimes awkward questions.
Stonewall, the charity, have had great impact with their campaign slogan: “Some People are Gay – get over it!” However, while the sentiment is one I completely agree with in order that young LGBT people can be free to focus on their lives and education, perhaps an alternative slogan might read, “Gay people exist – engage with it!” And that, of course, goes for any other marginalised whose lived experiences are simply not understood.
In City Road Comprehensive, they tried to administer discipline with absolute equally but ended up culturally judging in how they dished out detentions to certain pupils of colour. Tackling prejudice is not simply “common sense” – it is the act of continuous educational work to undo centuries of oppression and discrimination. It is, therefore, of good fortune that we are an organisation whose primary purpose is to educate.
DELIVER:
The third and final stage of FED leadership model is to deliver.
This calls on us to think about the specifics. What issues do we need to explore? What tools can we use to explore them?
As I hope this blog has shown, there is a wealth of research into the issues of invisible prejudice and related matters. Much of this research begun a long time ago. The notion of a micro-aggression, to describe common but often unintentional hostile acts towards marginalised groups, was first coined by Dr Chester Middlebrook Pierce in 1970. We’ve already seen that research to challenge the orthodox approach to colour-blindness, in favour of recognising difference, was taking place in the 1980s.
While it may be of regret that such research was not brought into the mainstream sooner, it is of benefit that it is gaining some traction now (arguably prompted by the death of George Floyd). Like all good practice within schools, it is important this work is evidence based and research-led.
There is one particular resource I would conclude by drawing our attention to. Funded by the European Union’s Erasmus Programme, the STAR project brought together partners from four countries in order to combat everyday racism. In 2020, they published Constellations, a manual for working with young people on the topic of racism and invisible racism. This highly readable guide contains much content that could be applied to any marginalised group. In particular, it provides some analysis for categorising the different forms stereotyping takes about different groups; it breaks down the aforementioned microaggressions; and it provides a vast array of practical activities suitable for both young people and adults alike.
To conclude
For me, the Jade Goody example – while perhaps a little niche and revealing of an adolescence spent watching too much Big Brother and not doing enough studying– perfectly illustrates the problem we have when it comes to approaching the subject of marginalised groups. We are often very good at avoiding the overt stuff (though not always!), but it is our own instinctive desire to be “in the right” that means we put forward over-simplistic solutions (“treat everyone equally and be done with it” or “don’t be like those prejudiced monsters”) to problems of immense complexity.
Given the complexity involved, this piece is far from a clear plan of action. Nor is it any claim to contain highly original thought – instead, I’ve sought to draw on the research and thinking of others over different decades. However, just as this piece as flowed from many hours of conversations with colleagues across our trust, I hope it might add something to conversations and action for the future.