Ethnicity

18 Nov 2017

In Defence of British Values

Teachwell Education Policy, Ethnicity, Humanity, Race, Social Class, Teaching and Learning British Values 2

For a while now I have been meaning to write about British values and its teaching in schools.

We are human and we have the capacity to do things in good faith or bad. What I am taking aim at here is the bad faith arguments against teaching British values not the genuine concerns that some may have.

The fundamental British values are listed as:

democracy;
the rule of law;
individual liberty;
mutual respect for and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs and for those without faith

So here are the main arguments I’ve come across against teaching them:

1) British values are just human values

The world is full of counter-examples. Even when other countries have these values, we still need to teach children about how these have developed in our society and the reasons why. By all means compare and contrast but to pretend that there is a uniform journey across all nations or that these values are practised in one way only is not true.

2) It’s racist.

What isn’t these days thanks to the postmodernists and critical race theorists?

Anyone who associates being British purely with being white is the racist here (regardless of political persuasion). They haven’t been paying attention to society at large and they are assuming that those of us with different colour skin who were born here or live here do or should associate with some foreign country elsewhere.

In essence, the far right use this aspect of identity to undermine my birthright and the left do it to reject the nation state.

Either way, I don’t see what right anyone else has to impose on me what priority different aspects of my identity should have.

I can’t be from anywhere else and I couldn’t care less that the majority of people in the country of my birth are white and have been throughout history. Those who claim this is an inherent problem are usually hoping to exploit the division but rarely have a rational reason for the belief they hold.

Why don’t you want non-white people to see themselves as British is a fair question to ask people of all political persuasions.

3) The British don’t live up to these values – look at our history.

If perfection is your poison then sure. No person, group, nation should ever claim to have any values because guaranteed there will have failed at some point or another to live up to them.

This is a nihilistic argument and it pays little attention to the guidance I have come across. I’m happy to be corrected, but nowhere have I seen that you should lie or be dishonest. There is no reason I know of why you can’t look at both when we have lived up to these values and where were haven’t so that we can, together, learn from this.

4) Acceptance not tolerance.

The definitions of acceptance are as follows:

The action of consenting to receive or undertake something offered.

The process or fact of being received as adequate, valid, or suitable.

Agreement with or belief in an idea or explanation.

I am not religious and I can’t do the above for those that are. The argument is essentially one of validation which stems from a personal insecurity.

Tolerance is the correct term – it’s based on the fact that we are not carbon copies and so at some level we should live and let live as far as possible. We also need to be aware of when we are at the limit of our tolerance and be able to state this to each other. PC culture is reviled by some precisely because it limits our ability to state this in favour of protecting people’s feelings and has become a way of pretending that problems don’t exist when they do.

5) We should be challenging these values.

By all means my anti-British values friends. As long as you are willing to critique the alternative values and those doing the challenging then I have no issue with that at all.

If the purpose is to create or promote a separate set of values which furthers ones own ideological cause (be it political, social, religious) with no examination of the pros and cons of those values then it should be seen for what it is – the kind of bad faith argument that we should reject.

6) The nation state is a problem as is identity at that level.

I can only repeat points made in 5). Does this involve a critique of both nationalism and internationalism? If so, fine; if not, why not?

The middle class left in particular may wish to consider how their own near addiction to radicalism for it’s own sake, utopian internationalism and hatred of the nation state has fed into the extremist thinking present in this country. Critiquing others is easy, thinking critically about ones own beliefs and ideas, less so.

7) It’s a right wing imposition that the left wing should resist.

Only by cherry picking from the history of the British left can one end up at this position. A position that startlingly ignores the role of the left in ensuring that we do live in a truely representative democracy, to give just one example of the contribution made to these British values.

It was a fundamental mistake on the part of the left to hand over British identity to the far right in the past. This requires rectifying not doubling down.

All societies need core values in order to exist peacefully. In Rwanda the lack of this core was identified as having contributed to the genocide and constructing one essential to preventing future conflicts. We are not in such dire straits but we are a society lacking cohesion and the cracks exist. Papering over them with meaningless statements about how we are all the same is not enough. How are we? In what way? Why?

British values provides us with a core that recognisibly stems from the history of the British, they are the best of our values.

Should the core be added to? Should it change? Yes because all societies evolve over time but this doesn’t mean a complete rejection of everything and a requirement to start anew.

What I am rejecting more than anything is utopian/dystopian visions and ideas, which feed off a nihilism based on an inability to cope with human imperfection.

Britain can’t be all things to all people but it can’t be nothing either. Its people can’t be nothing. My parents came here to contribute to Britain not to seek revenge or settle scores – their positive contributions are in danger of being written out by those who seek the use a single period of the history of my ancestors to impose a national self-loathing.

Yet history dwelt upon is not history learnt from.

British values gives us a core, they give us the basis of a conversation, they give us the capacity to examine ourselves and they give us a way forward.

31 Oct 2017

Statues Must Fall – Erasing History or Righting Wrongs?

Teachwell Ethnicity, Humanity, Other Events, Race critical race theory, history, Racism, sjw's, statues 2

It was a pleasure and privilege to be invited by Claire Fox to take part in the debate on statues alongside Patrick Vernon OBE (@ppvernon), Dr Cheryl Hudson (@HudsCheryl) and Dr Nicholas Draper.

The link to the debate and initial readings is here: https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/session/statues-must-fall-erasing-history-or-righting-wrongs/

Here is my 5 minute introduction speech that I made (the focus of which was the UK more than the US, as were my responses during the debate):

One of the most interesting aspects of this issue is how little it is about the statues involved, the past or the current state of race relations in either the US or the UK.

Are wrongs being righted here? What’s done is done and it can’t be undone. You can remove all the statues, street names, symbols, etc and it won’t make a jot of difference to what has actually happened in the past. The dead can neither be punished nor compensated.

What we are witnessing is a casual re-racialisation of society by critical race theorists unable or unwilling to process changes in society which they are removed from in their academic echo chambers and the need of pampered, insecure middle class students who want to recreate the sanitised world they have become accustomed to at school and home in the world at large.

What is striking is the lack of debate not the quality of it.

I tried to find reasons why removing statues would lead to some tangible improvement in either race relations or in society and what I came across was just a script.

The script goes like this:

Racism is rife in our society.

There is a statue from the past linked to slavery/colonialism. This statue is venerated or celebrated/not known about (often both are claimed by the writer about the same statue – particularly in the case of Rhodes in the UK).

A sentence referring to suffering of people during slavery or colonialism.

Repeated assertions (as much to convince themselves as anyone else) that institutional racism and prejudice are real with little or no evidence (what evidence there is, is vague and not clearly related to race)

Statements about how society is also ridden with prejudice regarding gender, disability, LGBTQ, etc.

The statue being removed is essential to ridding society of prejudice and part of the journey to creating a utopian world where everyone is safe and feels included.

The SJW movement is just a set of about 15 statements which they repeat and expect everyone to agree with without question or thought. These are the articles of faith of a secular religion where victimhood is sanctified and whose main goal is to embed a caste system into society based on divisions.

They remind me of the Dothraki in Game of Thrones who make statements about the world, which they follow by a simple “It is known” as they have no reason or explanation for their beliefs:

We live in a white supremacist state – it is known.

Statues cause us harm – it is known.

Power plus prejudice is racism – it is known.

I can understand why they demand safe spaces and refuse debate because a cursory examination of their ideas and beliefs demonstrates a lack of evidence, inability or unwillingness to develop historical perspective and an authoritarian stance which does the very things they claim they oppose – marginalise and silence individuals and groups.

The whole movement is a case study in hypocrisy, replicating so much of what caused the problems they state they wish to change.

The dismissal of universal humanist concepts as racist means that we now have a situation where the model of race proposed by Linnaeus and others is unquestionally accepted by racists and anti-racists alike. The core tenets – racial categories, biological determinism, necessity for separation of the races is agreed upon. Where they disagree is simply how they divvy up human characteristics between the different groups and a minor re-naming of terms – coloured people becoming people of colour.

Both rely on a stunted, sanitised and conflated versions of history, in which slavery and colonisation is the only history that matters. Yet such a focus serves to shore up the idea of white European exceptionalism as much as it does the narrative that history is just non-whites being subjugated by evil white people.

Racism and prejudice exists, just not in the same way and with the same intensity of the past in as many places. It says something when the NUS spent a whole report burying the fact that 93% of BME students had not experienced any racism at university.

The exaggerated claims of harm end up trivialising what happened in the past.

Rather than draw attention to and examine history, all that is happening is a middle class charade where ethnic minorities mine their ancestors suffering to barter with manufactured white guilt, which their middle class white allies are only too happy to provide. All of this allows their activist professors to continue peddling outdated models of postmodernist critical race theory without so much as a challenge to the core ideas or assumptions from their students.

Post-debate thoughts:

There is always points one wishes they had made

I was asked is there a half-way house or compromise between my view and that of Patrick Vernon in particular. My answer was no on the question of taking statues down because this is not a cost-free option and we do need to ask questions about whether this is the best way to spend money.

Patrick is an OBE and this is because of the work he has done to have black contributions to the UK seen and acknowledged. While I disagree with some initiatives (my objections to Black History Month as it stands can be read here and here), I would rather money was spent on erecting statues (which he mentioned but I can’t find a link to add to here) than removing them because that is about adding to this nation and enhances our historical knowledge and understanding of the past.

29 Oct 2016

The Case Against Black History Month – Impact

Teachwell Education Debate, Ethnicity, Festival of Education, Humanity, Race 0

This series of blogs is based on a talk I gave at Wellington College earlier this year. The first was on the purpose of history, the second looked at the case against Black History Month by highlighting its roots in scientific racism.

In this third blog I will focus on the impact of Black History Month. In terms of individuals, one of the core claims, that it would impact positively on black people has yet to be substantiated. It is assumed to be a good in itself and I think it is time to challenge that belief.

In the US, it has fed identity politics. Initially, black was much like “of colour” is now – a generic term for non-white people. Now the focus of Black History Month is exclusively on the history of Black/African Americans.

This narrowing in scope has led to other groups demanding that their histories also be given special status.

In a country of immigrants, it was inevitable that those from white immigrant communities would seek to have their heritage validated too.

Given the seismic ructions that occurred in the US during the civil war, well it was only inevitable that there would be a…

I didn’t even cover the full list. The only thing more farcical than Confederate History Month is the fact that there are more history months than there are months in the year.

In the UK, Black History Month has slowly gone down the same route as in the US from a generic meaning of black to a specific focus on black people from the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. Recent events at Kent University show that we are further down the road than I had thought. Zayn Malik’s inclusion on a poster for Black History Month was criticised for being culturally insensitive and Kent Union backed down even though they had consulted on these posters initially. Black means black and Zayn will have to wait for Asian History Month to be celebrated.

The saddest thing about the continued existence of Black History Month in the UK is that the 1988 history curriculum already included a wide range of histories of different people at different points in time. It is worth asking why a largely left-wing, anti-racist profession was unable to make the curriculum more inclusive given that it had the opportunity to do so. Why did they prefer to teach Black History Month instead of incorporating new units?

In the absence of research I think that the likely explanations are:

a) many anti-racists are simply adding a label to their lapel but don’t mean it,

b) conflict mongers will never be satisfied with a curriculum that doesn’t emphasise the conflictual elements of black and white history. It certainly struck me that there were some black and white colleagues who seemed hellbent on teaching the most conflictual elements of black/white history with no depth, no comparison or balance in terms of the accounts taught. I think we can put this firmly in the “radical history” model, or as I like to see it, grievance mongering.

c) it was easier to stick with units that were known,

d) there was genuine opposition to the new units (though it would be interesting to know from who and why).

The calls for black teachers for black children is rarely criticised even though it is explicitly based on the idea that different races need to be separate. The case I would make for black teachers is simply that as members of the community and this country, they should have the same opportunities to be a teacher as anyone else. I don’t see their sole role as supporting black children because it doesn’t solve the issues faced by them. It also lets white teachers off the hook in a way they are not allowed to do so for white children or indeed for other ethnic minorities. It also gives a false sense that the problems are based on race alone, when, it is clear from the performance of different ethnic groups in this country that race alone can’t explain disparities in attainment . None of this is positive and none of it actually helps us to support underprivileged black children.

The aspect of Black History Month that has always concerned me the most, however, is the acceptance of the conflict narrative that runs through the stories selected. It was simply one story after another with the same theme – black victim and white oppressor – as though there were no other dynamic between the two groups or ever could be.

Looking at the history of the US, it is clear that black and white people have lived together for hundreds of years. It’s unsurprising that the idea of a “white history” would arise given that black people were omitted from American history. The system of slavery and Jim Crow were underpinned by the idea of scientific racism. The break in history for the black people in the US and the Caribbean is real, and there is no way to trace roots to a specific location, which most of us take for granted. Thus their identities are tied to the start point they do know which is slavery. I don’t think it is surprising or indeed untrue for the black victim/white oppressor narrative to be so deeply embedded.

In settler colonies, such as the US and South Africa, it is fair to say that history has been deliberately distorted. The reign of white people has been seen as the high point and the history of different people in those nations have been deliberately ignored or sidelined. The UK was a colonial power but the country was not a settler colony and thus studying British history does not fall into the same category as these other nations.

There are key differences between British history and that of the settler colonies:

Britain was uninhabited prior to the crossing of the land bridge, there was no displacement of other people in order to settle here. Subsequent invaders and settlers were again, overwhelmingly white (with the exception of some ethnic Roman soldiers, who like most white Roman soldiers, are not taught about). Until the post-war era, there were no significant groups of non-white people living in the UK on a comparable scale to that of the US.

Even if there were no more white people in the UK tomorrow, we would still mostly be learning about white people as the overwhelming majority of people who have ever lived in the UK have been white.

Much is made of the Blackamoors and Lascars and the lack of focus on them has been taken as an indicator of a deliberately racist history being taught. Yet the same argument could be made for many other groups such as Jews. It doesn’t require much curriculum time to point out that Britain was not 100% white for its entire history up 1948. For most of this country’s history the most important changes that took place were enacted by the monarchs. It is possible to understand the Britain of today without studying the Blackamoors and Lascars, it’s not possible to do so without studying Henry VIII.

Do I think that ethnic minority children were deliberately taught “white history” in the post-war era? No. I think that the people in this country simply taught as they had been taught. That the colonial era was glorified is unsurprising, as were the stereotypes of different groups because that is what most people had to go on. The idea that the choices on the curriculum were intentionally racist is one that I have seen no evidence for.

Until the 1950s and 1960s, I don’t see why the average white teacher in Britain should or would have cared about or thought much of the impact of the history they were teaching on people living in the colonies/ex-colonies just because they were/had been part of the Empire, any more than I spend time thinking about the Falklanders or Gibraltans. I’m not interested in condemning people for not managing to do what I don’t do myself. In advance of immigration, how could they have known what impact the history they were teaching would have?

Even when the first post-war immigrants arrived, it was not clear that they would stay or settle here. My parent’s attitude was the norm for Indian immigrants, they would come, work here and then move back with their children. It didn’t happen and it didn’t happen in part because of the children of immigrants like me, who did not see those foreign shores as a home to go back to.

BAME children did suffer from racism, low expectations and discrimination in the education system but over the past 60 years, this has not been a uniform experience. The failure of all ethnic groups has given way to the situation we have now, where it is simply not true to say that race alone is the major factor in why some groups succeed and others don’t in the education system.

In addition, it has not taken hundreds of years for the history curriculum to reflect a wider range of histories; it took 40. I would ask you to look again at the 1988 history curriculum. In some cases it took less time than that as schools, pre-National Curriculum, changed aspects of their curriculum in response to teaching ethnic minority pupils. Ignorance, as well as racism, played a part in the teaching of British history and the extent to which it was the former is indicated to by the fact that changes have been enacted.

If we want to learn about British history we just have to deal with the fact that most of it will be about white people. And yes I know that colonialism means the history of Britain is linked to its colonies but let’s not forget that does not just mean African nations and India, it means the US and Australia as well. It is still only a part of the history of this country, as well as the countries that were colonised. I was speaking to my brother about this only last night, the Indian history my mother taught us made it clear to us that there was more to Indian history than the Raj and India was not singularly defined by it.

We can not cover the whole of British history on the curriculum but to focus on the colonial era onwards is to leave children in this country ignorant for the sake of political correctness. It is narcissistic to insist that the British history that is taught reflects the current population rather than the actual history of Britain. Our joint history in this country simply doesn’t stretch back that far. If you need to see yourself reflected, look in a mirror.

The Black Atlantic narrative has insisted on shoehorning and conflating US and UK history (and at times South African history). There were no Jim Crow laws, no apartheid, no laws based on race that classified black and Asian migrants as second class citizens that I know of. No separate fountains or beaches. The “No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs” sign shows that prejudices existed that were not based on race alone. It is rarely taught that the Race Relations Acts did not repeal discriminatory laws because there weren’t any to repeal. Instead, they ensured protection under the law from discrimination as that was lacking.

It also does not serve the “white history” narrative that the people who were the most discriminated against since 1948 were not ethnic minorities at all but Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland, who were not even covered by the Race Relations Acts. The Protestant majority in Stormont would not enact it as they would have had to stop discriminating based on religion and they weren’t about to do that.

The insistence on Black History Month is in some quarters is nothing more than a means of transmitting ideological beliefs about race.

The harsh truth for the BAME in this country is that no one forced our parents and grandparents to come here, they were never kept here against their will, and neither are we. Our relationship with this country and the colonial past is different to that of black Americans, and that includes the fact that we are the beneficiaries of the colonial era that did cause so much suffering to others. This is not an easy legacy or even an easy thing to admit. But it is an honest admission.

If we are to understand the nation we live in we need to learn its history and not a deliberately conflated version of those of other nations which does little to enhance our understanding of the society that we live in, worse still introduces false ideas of the past which create barriers between different groups in the here and now.