There is no such thing as institutional racism.

Only individual people are capable of racism. An institution is an abstract concept, not a person.

If you believe in institutional racism, you are obliged to accept the MacPherson definition of racism, by which I or anyone could deem this post racist.

Let me get this straight. Schools are racist towards black children from Carribean backgrounds but not from African backgrounds? That is a subtle distinction for most racists to make, isn’t it? Whether they are the instituitional or the old fashioned kind?

Strange that Strand’s research doesn’t consider gender. I’d be very surprised if white teachers found black (Afro-caribbean) girls “confrontational” but perhaps they do these days.

I think the very different policy prescriptions of Gus John and Lee Jasper are worth noting – they represent two strands of thinking within their community which are poles apart – and this is the fracture which means that it has never “punched its weight” in British politics. In effect, it has two different political agendas which have failed to achieve a meaningful dialogue with each other let alone anyone else.

Why should this be so? (And the matter is exacerbated as they see people of African, as opposed to Caribbean, descent – despite being just as black if not more so and being more recent immigrants – getting on faster than they do.) It can only be the legacy of slavery. Those who think like John (which necessarily includes all our present and future MPs from that community) hold that the world has moved on: the “Jasperites” – though they’d never articulate it in these terms – recognise that slavery persists inside the hearts and minds of Afro-Caribbeans (as it does in black America: Obama is only a candidate because he isn’t of slave descent). Public policy has never recognised slave descent as a cause of discrimination in itself yet the most obvious conclusion from Strand’s research is that it should indeed do so.

The interesting thing about this story is not just ‘are schools institutionally racist’ but, also, ‘how has a conference presentation that has not actually been formally peer reviewed or published yet, suddenly got a load of coverage’.

And, of course, why is everyone rushing to talk about research they cannot possibly criticise in an informed way? The methodology is not available. The results are not actually available. The only word we currently have on the findings are a press release from the British Educational Research Association (here: http://www.bera.ac.uk/news/newsdetail.php?id=148), a brief interview with this author, and the article by Polly Curtis which reads very much like a reframing on the press release.

Could we please have a moratorium on analysis of research that nobody is likely to have actually read? Let’s wait until the paper is out and we can get a view of it that is not framed by people with conferences to promote and newspapers to sell.

I think it is very unhelpful to fling the word “racism” around because it introduces an implicit moral dimension (or rather implies a moral failing) when it could just be a matter of teachers not being able to connect to some pupils as well as others. Of course, the underlying reason for the problem is that schools do not compete in a market for pupils. If they did, black families would have more opportunity to pick schools that catered to their needs and appreciated their demands. Schools in black areas would have to adapt to those needs or lose pupils to the better managed ones, or the ones with the superior ethos. As it stands, schools (and teachers) need “reforming” using much more coercive means that always end up making out they have some sort of moral failing, rather than the fact they just haven’t been introduced to better teaching strategies.

Mike – I think the legacy is rather more straightforward than the somewhat essentialist theory you have (who the hell can know who is actually a descendant from a slave unless they know them and their genealogy?). The institution of slavery disrupted family structures and the cultures around them. Even after slavery has been abolished, redeveloping that culture and stable family ties is likely to be long and hard (not helped by government policy that mitigates against it). But though black afro-carribeans are certainly disadvantaged by this, it is not in the main due to racism within the host country.

Nick – most Afro-Caribbeans will be of mixed slave and free descent. What matters is not the genealogy itself but what people identify with. For Gus John (or David Lammy) slavery is in the past, for Lee Jasper it isn’t. This is not to make a comment about their personal ancestry, but about how they see the world.

Is there any information in the report about the ethnicities of the teachers? Do teachers of Caribbean extraction (unwittingly) discriminate in the same way?

xD.

It’s hair-splitting time.

Educational qualifications are the means by which pupils and students are judged, but whether some institutional structures inherently allow their function to spill over into judgemental attitudes which can be described as deterministic shouldn’t mean that all schools are criticised for prejudice.

That’s just a cheap and lazy way to cause politically motivated harm to the system – why does anyone think the Guardian is a reliable source of reporting?

Such statements are damaging because they provide excuses rather than reasons and the response of many of those affected will be to tolerate failings rather than inspire the fulfillment of potential.

If teachers are making assumptions about students in their care then it is because they are overstretched, under-resourced and incapable of serving the needs they are charged with providing. But who can blame staff when pupil to teacher ratios are still so high and mentoring, advice and counselling provision remains underdeveloped?

‘Institutional racism’ is a divisive buzz-phrase which is guaranteed to garner attention for the study which the authors have a financial interest in promoting, but the ‘organisational arrangements’ which this actually refers to are hardly explained in any detail or depth and no amount of statistics will shine a light on any policy prescriptions to help improve the situation in which some groups clearly suffer.

“Tony Sewell says it is wrong to blame teachers when the biggest problem is an anti-learning culture among black boys.”

This is the most elementary and self-evidently obvious truth to anybody who knows anything about black families and the difficulties they face with their teenage sons. I say ‘families’ in a very lose sense of the word because many black boys have no fathers, or have different fathers every few years; of course another obvious problem which is worsened by social policies that encourage the creation of households such as this. Why when these explanations can be offered, do you even bother to posit the stupid question of whether schools are ‘instituionally racist’? I have worked in an inner London school (as a supply teacher for many years) and I can tell you decidedly that this is a crock of shite. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either 1) a deluded imbecile or 2) is trying to distract attention from the obvious explanations.

“Nick – most Afro-Caribbeans will be of mixed slave and free descent. What matters is not the genealogy itself but what people identify with. For Gus John (or David Lammy) slavery is in the past, for Lee Jasper it isn’t. This is not to make a comment about their personal ancestry, but about how they see the world.”

You mean, whether they see themselves as a victim?

The left must keep putting forward these types of ‘fact’ in order to pander to an ageing and increasingly isolated core of hardline Marxist race theorists like Jasper.

Meanwhile in the real world people are increasingly aware that race equality has improved over the last 30 years, and excuses like ‘institutional racism’ are wearing thin.

Anyone who seriously cares about the fortunes of the left in the next 10 years must be prepared to say what is currently un-sayable in lefty circles.

Where have you ever seen a serious discussion on the left about, say, the damage that Carribean ‘baby mother’ culture has on the community?

What about the legitimising of patois and street-speak as forms of communication, effectively excluding inner-city children who can only speak like that from any professional career (you get me blud?)

And who has the courage to tackle the deeply racist (and homophobic) beliefs at the heart of the Rastafari religion, which have such a pervasive influence in Carribean culture and music?

Uncomfortable subjects certainly, but necessary if the left is to de-contaminate its brand from all the trouble Marxist race theory has caused.

[11] Victimhood is one form it might take. Another would be an unwillingness to forgive white people for having enslaved their ancestors, compounded perhaps by annoyance at the recent self-congratulatory anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade and an ongoing resentment that white people think they have a moral duty to forgive – or indeed, to see education itself as a desirable good. Remember the urban myth from apartheid South Africa: the white lady says to her black servant “surely you wouldn’t kill me, we’ve been together so long” to which the servant replies “no, I’d kill the lady next door and her servant would come here to kill you”. Basically the attitude is: you whites demand we treat you as humans, but we say you have no right whatever to demand anything of us.

I’m not saying I agree with it, of course I don’t – I am just left with the uncomfortable feeling that the reason I disagree with it is because I’m white myself.

“Lee Jasper has been quoted as saying that the answer is schools run by black governors and staffed by black teachers with the specific needs of black youngsters in mind.”

Mmmm…. I’d like to see the response if a white Conservative politician had suggested that – did someone mention a return to segregated schools?

This great piece of writing made it into my NetCast for today, but I agree with Sunny. It’s much better as a post here.

[13] “Basically the attitude is: you whites demand we treat you as humans, but we say you have no right whatever to demand anything of us.

I’m not saying I agree with it, of course I don’t – I am just left with the uncomfortable feeling that the reason I disagree with it is because I’m white myself.”

Oh please.

The reason it’s disagreeable is because it’s an unreasonable load of bollocks.

EVERYONE involved in slavery is dead, and it can never be put right.

The really sad thing is that most people who died slaves are probably turning in their graves to see young children turning their back on every opportunity offered them, as if it is some sort of twisted racial duty to do so.

“did someone mention a return to segregated schools?”

Isn’t that why conservatives on both the right and left are pushing for the expansion of faith schools and academies – so that like minds can associate together and reinforce their biases?

[17] thomas

Yes, that would have been the one.

Strange, I would never have taken Lee jasper for Tory – just goes to show…

I cannot help bu think of this blog:

http://tomisswithlove.blogspot.com/

ac256 – are you going to bother addressing the points made in the article or is this another one of your parrot-like renditions of how the left is to blame for everything.

Let me get this straight. For a guy who wants to have better racial harmony among people of black and white families, what you’re saying is that the only people responsible for the under-achievement of black kids are ‘carribean baby mamas’.

Is that right? could you just confirm your theory for me please?

Sunny,

my approach in this debate is to sidestep the well-worn arguments about the inherent racism of white society and its structures. Those theories were discussed longer and better in the 1970s and 80s.

The point is that for all those seductive theories, many black carribeans are still struggling while the Africans (and Asians who no longer identify as black) have climbed the ladder in spite of all those racist white structures. My current workplace is hugely diverse, with the notable exception of enough black people.

What never gets discussed are the specific conditions pertaining to black carribeans in the UK by which they might be holding THEMSELVES back.

So by all means continue flogging the ‘institutional racism’ horse while joe public sees through it more and more, but why is it so hard to expand the debate into obvious and known problem areas?

Suppressing those debates just pushes them underground and into the hands of people who DON’T have black people’s best interests at heart. If that’s what the Liberal Left is comfortable with, then let’s just keep talking about unwitting/inherent/institutional racism.

Okay, let the data hound at the rabbit…

First, these kinds of stories seriously piss me off for the simple reason that there’s no link to the research paper on which the article is based, so what we’ve got a bunch of assertions but no way of assessing their validity or checking for any methodological issues or confounding that might compromise the results.

Of the top of my head, one thing that needs to be verified is whether the study controls for differences between schools attended by those included in the study and their general policy as regards entry for SATs. Its often the case that poorer performing schools will enter the majority of pupils for the lower level of test in order to increase the likelihood of their getting an acceptable grade than risk entering for the more difficult test and risk a failure.

This goes on all the time at with GSCEs where the foundation level paper – on which a maximum C grade can be attained – is often favoured over the higher paper for borderline candidates under the premise that if someone predicted to get a C grade they’ll get that more safely from the easier foundation paper than they will from tackling the higher paper, even though, if they have a real good day come the exam, they could exceed expectations and gain a higher grade.

In such cases its the emphasis that the school place on racking up the Cs to bolster their position in the school league tables that induces them to take the safe option rather than risk entering pupils for the higher paper, where the risk of failure is higher.

If Strand hasn’t controlled for something like that then while it doesn’t invalidate his arguments it does shift them into a somewhat different context, one in which its much less a matter of race and more a function of expediency and low expectations based on perceived social class.

On a related note, Strand did publish a paper looking at education aspirations earlier this year, the abstract for which states that:

There were no significant differences in aspirations by gender or year group, but differences between ethnic groups were marked. Black African, Asian Other and Pakistani groups had significantly higher educational aspirations than the White British group, who had the lowest aspirations. The results suggest the high aspirations of Black African, Asian Other and Pakistani pupils are mediated through strong academic self-concept, positive peer support, a commitment to schooling and high educational aspirations in the home. They also suggest that low educational aspirations may have different mediating influences in different ethnic groups. The low aspirations of White British pupils seem to relate most strongly to poor academic self-concept and low educational aspirations in the home, while for Black Caribbean pupils disaffection, negative peers and low commitment to schooling appear more relevant. Interviews with pupils corroborated the above findings and further illuminated the factors students described as important in their educational aspirations.

All of which relevant to the different opinions of Jasper and Sewell.

I’d comment further but at £15 for a fucking reprint and no free pdf, that as much as you’ll be getting from me….

Let me get this straight. For a guy who wants to have better racial harmony among people of black and white families, what you’re saying is that the only people responsible for the under-achievement of black kids are ‘carribean baby mamas’. ”

Sunny, if the report is accurate, the study doesn’t find widespread underachievement among ‘black kids’ but only among black kids with Carribean family backgrounds. It is difficult to see how a school could be institutionally racist with such fine grain as to distinguish between physically similar black children from Africa and those from Africa via the West Indies, unless there were explicit policies requiring teachers to make the distinction. It may be that there is a racist factor at work, but that is far from an obvious candidate to explain this pattern. Why do teachers not have low expectations of black children with, say, Nigerian parents, but do of children with, say, Jamaican parents? How does ‘racism’ explain that? Perhaps the study shows how, but at first blush it looks very tenuous.

[23] John asks Why do teachers not have low expectations of black children with, say, Nigerian parents, but do of children with, say, Jamaican parents? How does ‘racism’ explain that?

Re-read the end of the previous post, John, and remeber the “intervening variable”. Or do a thought experiment – suppose another such study were to find discrimination against travellers’ kids in schools – you wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand on the grounds that they don’t have a different skin colour.

[24] “remeber” – “remember”. I do try to proof-read, honest!

“Re-read the end of the previous post, John, and remeber the “intervening variable”. Or do a thought experiment – suppose another such study were to find discrimination against travellers’ kids in schools – you wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand on the grounds that they don’t have a different skin colour.”

The end of the previous post suggests that poor performance by black boys is not due to racism, if I unerstand you.

Your analogy with travellers is not exact enough to be revealing. A better analogy would be if a study found discrimination against travellers whose parents had, say, a Romanian background, but not against travellers wose parents had, say, an Albanian background (allowing that they are all of the same skin clour). That might be down to anti-Romainian traveller prejudice but that seems unlikely. Racism is not usually so fine-grained.

[23] Well, it depends on what you count as racism. If you only allow skin colour, then you define differential treatment of Africans and Afro-Caribbeans as something else. But most of us have a broader definition.

Perhaps I should have made it clear: the intervening variable is of course the pupils’ expectation of the education system, and the impact of that on their behaviour. The argument is that a significant proportion of Afro-Caribbean pupils but no others consider that school has nothing to offer them, are disruptive and disconnected, and then scapegoated/abandoned by their teachers. Jasper’s case is that this can only be addressed by educating them separately. No one has yet said he’s wrong. Education does enforce hard choices – boys learn better when girls are around but girls learn better when boys aren’t around – so either our sons or our daughters get a second-best education and there is no fix for it. I don’t see how to rule out, a priori, a similar conundrum in terms of ethnicities.

I’m not convinced by Jasper because I think the heart of the matter is peer-group pressure, particularly among boys, and an attitude among (some) Afro-Caribbean boys that education itself is “cissy” – perhaps itself a consequence of a deeper belief that happiness doesn’t exist and that all that life has to offer is the exercise of power and the gratification of desire, and re-inforced by the higher academic performance of Afro-Caribbean girls. Such a view would follow from the continued internalisation of a “slave mentality”. It seems to me that educating Afro-Caribbean boys apart from all others would be as likely to intensify as to oppose such a world-view. Nor do I think the existing private sector “black schools” provide a counter-argument, since there is no reason to suppose that the parents who choose them are typical (and some reason to think the opposite).

Sunny, have I answered your question? Others seem to agree with me.

Or is this just another time when you jump on my back?

What never gets discussed are the specific conditions pertaining to black carribeans in the UK by which they might be holding THEMSELVES back.

ac256, that’s not a response, that’s just a poor excuse. You still haven’t explained what exactly those conditions are.

The condition I usually focus on here is class. White Caribbeans are more likely than black Africans to be working class (a lot of richer Africans send over their children to study).

The same goes for Asians. If you break down the figures, Indians do way better than Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Similarly, white working class boys are at the bottom of the pile.

So maybe you can tell us about the ‘conditions’ that keep white working class boys back? Or are you going to blame the ‘race industry’ for that?

the point here is about CLASS – that is the factor that determines educational achievement better than any other measure. You blaming the left is just the usual rubbish response that you can muster.

I notice you are the only commenter on this post who doesn’t get it.

The research being commented about points to race, not class.

Re-framing as a class issue- very Harman 2008 / Scargill 1974.

…and I assume you’ll be re-naming your other site ‘Middle Class Asians in Media’?

I notice you are the only commenter on this post who doesn’t get it.

The research being commented about points to race, not class.

You really are idiotic beyond belief. The report may be looking at race, but that doesn’t mean factors such as class are irrelevant,.

Rather than talking nonsense all the time, I have a suggestion for you. Go through the points I made in the above post and tell me where I’m wrong (about different attainment rates among different groups).

Then, come crawling back once you’ve got something intelligent to write in response.

This thread is about specifically the attainment of Black Carribean boys.

You need to explain why it is so difficult to discuss this group in particular, which is my whole point and you are just proving it.

You also need to stop abusing your admin privileges by making ad-hominem comments to me.

Bah, if you stop arguing for a minute you’ll start seeing that between class and race there is a large overlap which needs disentangling.

People do have multiple identities and different individuals place different emphasis on different aspects. Perhaps it would have been better for this study to address this point so as to prevent us getting diverted down a dead-end argument.

You need to explain why it is so difficult to discuss this group in particular, which is my whole point and you are just proving it.

You’re a bit slow aren’t you?

The problem isn’t about ‘discussing’ anyone, though you seem to love making stereotypical pronouncements about why Carribean ‘baby mamas’ are to blame for everything.

We’re talking about why certain boys (note, not girls) are doing worse than other racial groups.

Now rather than having a fixed stereotype in your head about why they are to blame, you might want to consider that class and gender is a bigger factor in differences in attainment.

In fact, in many places across the country, white working class boys do the worst in education.

Now, what theory are you going to come up to blame them?

“You’re a bit slow aren’t you?”

I’m sure it’s what you want, but I’m not bothering with your posts while you flout your own rules on ad-hominem posting.