Three generations of racism: Black middle-class children and schooling

Abstract

This paper draws on qualitative data exploring the experiences of first-generation middle-class Black Caribbean-heritage parents, their own parents, and their children. We focus on the different ways in which race and class intersect in shaping attitudes towards education and subsequent educational practices. We argue that the nature of racism has changed, but it still remains, mainly in more subtle, insidious forms. We conclude that race cannot be simply ‘added on’ to class. Race changes how class works, how it is experienced, and the subjectivites available to individuals. The paper illustrates how the two intersect, in complex ways, in different historical ‘moments’.

Keywords:

• Black Caribbean
• family
• social mobility

Notes

1. Several of the respondents mentioned the effect on them of seeing Roots, the 1977 television mini series on slavery. Kwame Kwei-Armah, the Black British playwright and actor, who is of the same generation as the respondents in our study has written about his reactions as a child (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6480995.stm).

2. Multicultural education meant ‘adding on’ references to other cultures in the curriculum, (the ‘Three Ss’ of saris, samosas, and steel bands, Troyna and Carrington 1990). Anti racist approaches emphasised the explicit promotion of racial equality.

3. Other National Statistics Socio-Economic Classifications (NS-SEC) groups include intermediate workers (e.g. clerical and administrative work), own account workers and those in semi-routine and routine occupations.

4. Anansi, featuring in Caribbean and West African fables, is a clever spider, outwitting those around him.

5. A recent interview with 26-year-old Dominique Walker, whose brother Anthony was murdered in a racist attack on Merseyside, and who is now in the police force, described growing up, a generation after most of our respondents, but sharing some of their experiences of overt racist abuse (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/10/liverpool-police-dominique-walker-interview).