Georgia L. Gilholy is a Young Voices UK contributor.
Over 4000 parents have now signed a petition in protest of Brighton and Hove City Council’s five-year “anti-racist” education plan.
The petition, launched last June, disputes the council’s “racial literacy training” that 300 teachers have now undertaken. Although Freedom of Information requests to view its materials have been refused, the local authority is reportedly instructing teachers to inform children as young as seven that they are not “racially innocent” as white people are “at the top of the hierarchy”.
John Hayes, a former Education Minister, has vowed to urgently raise the controversy in the Commons, and will ask Nadhim Zahawi issue legal guidance to prevent “ideological race materials” being rolled out in schools.
Both the outrage of Sir John and thousands of local people is understandable.
As Kemi Badenoch has previously argued, it is inappropriate and illegal to teach the concept of ‘white privilege’ as fact given that it is a highly contested political concept. While the growing popularity of the idea in certain circles suggests that it must be confronted and dissected, there is no reason it ought to be spoon-fed to children whose brains are not equipped to process it critically.
Besides, the notion of white privilege fails to reflect the reality of modern Britain. Economically deprived white teenagers in England’s postindustrial and coastal towns are one of the least likely groups to progress to higher education.
Last year, just 13 per cent of white boys on free school meals went to university compared to 57 per cent of Indian, 59 per cent of black African and 32 per cent of black Caribbean youngsters on the scheme. The idea of whites consistently resting at the “top” of a pyramid of privilege has never been a more inept analogy.
Sadly, racial bullying remains a problem in many schools. A 2020 poll showed that one-third of British children reported hearing “racist comments at school”. However perpetuating the idea that white children are uniquely culpable is not only racially bigoted in and of itself, but it risks inflaming rather than harmonising racial divisions.
Racial hatred is a social contagion, and teaching children that their white classmates are inherently morally inferior can only provoke bullying and heighten prejudice where they may have been little prior. Incidents of racial abuse must be dealt with seriously, but not at the expense of encouraging the stereotyping of white children.
Many critical race theory advocates defend their ideology by arguing that while whites may not always be entirely ‘privileged’, they will never suffer race-based discrimination.
This is plainly false. Only a few days ago, two Orthodox Jewish men were viciously attacked by a black teenager in North London. Anyone with an ounce of common sense can see that all groups are capable of racialised prejudice.
While Brighton Council claims their plans will counterbalance the flawed eurocentrism of previous curricula, the notion of white privilege will do precisely the contrary. The concept robs young people of the chance to understand the complexities of contemporary and historical discrimination in Britain and across the world.
Under this training, children are to be taught that Christianity is linked to the slave trade. While it is true that many Christians have been involved in the crime of slavery, Christianity has also proved one of the world’s most powerful ideological antidotes to the practice.
It was evangelical groups who spearheaded abolitionism in the British Empire, and medieval clergy who near-eliminated slavery in Western Europe prior to the conquest of the Americas. Moreover, the 40 million people currently enslaved in 2022, chiefly across Asia and the Middle East, is a testament to the fact that the crime of slavery has persisted across most civilisations in various forms, and is not solely a white versus black phenomenon.
Like all conspiracy theories, white privilege is dangerously one-dimensional, and it does not deserve to be ushered into any educational setting as objective truth. Teachers must encourage learning and spark debate, not accuse pupils of immutable defects.
One Minister has already admitted that presenting white privilege as non-negotiable to students is against the law. It is time the Government took swift action to root out schemes such as Brighton’s from our schooling. It is not enough to occasionally complain about the folly of “wokeness” while doing little to stop it in its tracks.