Posted: February 2011
"Uh-oh, mind your back. We're off to hell in a handcart again" says The Guardian's Hugh Muir. Commenting on the Daily Mail piece based on my research, Muir says: "The Daily Mail would have us believe measures to record racism in school are wrong. But that misses the point: there is a problem that needs addressing". Apparantly, as Muir concludes, the problem is 'the parents' (Guardian reading parents excepted of course).
I should cut Hugh a little slack. He's seen the Mail's front page headline '30,000 pupils branded as bigots' and he's only got so much time to knock 500 words out for his 'Hideously diverse Britain' column. And its kind of a rule at The Guardian to regard everything in the Mail as 'pc-gone mad', tabloid-bonkers nonsense right? So he gives the article a quick once over. Hmm, someone from that pesky "civil rights" loving Manifesto Club has found the annual figure for racist incidents and seems to think they generate the illusion of a problem. Ah ha! Racism denial! ...
So, after phoning his teacher friends Terry and Thelma, Hugh has his riposte. Thelma thinks reporting procedures are a pretty sensible, "necessary evil": "You want to know what is going on; what is happening and where, who it is happening to, who is doing it, what time of day; what's the pattern." Thelma thinks the problem is the parents (including eastern European parents). Terry agrees "antisemetic stuff is big right now [ ] thats coming from the parents. 'Gay' is massively derogatory and used quite casually".
"[According to Adrian Hart] the reporting is the problem. I thought the problem was the problem. That's me to the back of the class", sighs Hugh.
Actually yes, you should go to the back of the class. Disagree by all means but at least give my claims a minute or two of critical thought. Primary school kids saying things like 'school is so gay' or being called 'batty boy' by a friend and responding with 'brocolli head' make up the majority of the 30,000 hate incidents reported to local authorities in 2008/2009. Let Thelma and Terry keep an eye out for a pattern of persistant, targetted bullying by all means but to force every school to intervene on and report every single incident perceived to be racist or homophobic is another matter. Teachers are told that a good school is one that reports significant numbers of incidents - it proves to Equality Officers, who dont really trust Thelma or Terry, that the school has a tough 'zero tolerance' approach. And it allows the state to be advised by lobby groups that there's an "epidemic" of homophobia in Britains schools - or that racist incidents in the playground are merely 'the tip of the iceberg' of Britain's racist society.
Hugh Muir may feel compelled to dismiss the Daily Mail piece as an absurd rant but to counter it by saying 'and its the parents who are the real bigots' is about as vulgar and lazy a conclusion as any stitched together by a fleet street hack.
Hugh, if you ever read this - I know you write these things in a hurry but if you want a copy of The Myth of Racist Kids email me and I'll send you one. It wont take you to hell on a handcart, in fact the book explores how this generation of kids embody everything that's positive about the new diversity. How, in more and more school playgrounds, an increasingly 'mixed race', mixed everything generation is bubbling up. Kids are doing anti-racism all by themselves! We should be enabling this process - but too often top-down regulation interferes. Blind to fact that kids are inventing 'colour-blind' models of multi-cultural, multi-ethnic interaction right under their noses, policymakers misunderstand child development and fret over their banter and insult exchange. Of course they insult each other, they're kids!
