‘So incredibly equal’: how polite exclusion becomes invisible in the classroom

Abstract

This article focuses on the discrepancy between school staffs’ views of a permissive, inclusive classroom climate, and high-performing minority students’ stories of social exclusion. The students are seemingly well-integrated into the Swedish school system, they have good grades, high ambitions, and attend a prestigious school. However, students with migration backgrounds describe recurring experiences of polite exclusion in the form of subtle, often unspoken, distancing from the students termed ‘the Swedes’, while school staff describe an equal and inclusive class climate, welcoming and accepting of all students. This study is based on participant observation in a prestigious high school, as well as interviews with students and staff.

Keywords:

• Ethnicity
• race
• inclusion
• exclusion
• micro-aggression
• high-performing students
• teachers

Introduction

In present-day Western societies, racism and discrimination are officially banned and legally and morally prohibited. Most Western countries share the official belief that discrimination and racism therefore no longer exist as a structural characteristic of society or the state, and that they only persist at the individual level (Van Dijk 1992, 95). The dominant discourse on race tends to interpret racism as extreme and violent acts or verbal manifestations, rather than subtle and pervasive features of current social structures. Contemporary racism is rarely directly expressed or openly tolerated, it is simply not what it used to be, with the result that our understanding of it evolves as new forms emerge (Fleras 2016). Expressions of prejudice often take forms that can be difficult to identify as clearly prejudicial and thus they are confusing and complex for the individual to deal with (Caplan and Ford 2014). Research studies indicate that school staff are unclear about how to act on or address challenges concerning race, and that schools and their staff are often seen as part of the solution, not the problem (Arneback and Jämte 2021). Gillborn (2006) claims that it is of central importance for the term racism to be used not only in relation to crude and obvious acts of hatred, but also to describe the more hidden and subtle operation of power leading to hindrances being experienced by minority groups.

However, when the dominant consensus is that there is no racism, minority-group experiences and their feelings about them are often disregarded. At best, school principals often ignore institutional challenges associated with racial discrimination, and at worst they are unprepared for how to deal with such challenges (Miller 2021). Gillborn (2005) claims that institutional racism is multidimensional, often non-obvious and non-aggressive. Such subtle forms of social exclusion are problematic because they frequently remain unnoticed by a school’s administration, resulting in long-lasting negative effects on ethnic minority students’ educational opportunities (Mampaey and Zanoni 2016). Many white teachers fear that talking about race or ethnicity will leave them open to accusations of racism. This results in a taboo on discussions about race in many classrooms, which hinders productive classroom conversations and prevents teachers from addressing evidence of racial inequality (Modica 2015). Therefore, the prevailing approach becomes to occupy a colour-blind position, meaning that race or ethnicity are treated as invisible and hence lack meaning in the school context.

However, this benevolent idea, which is intended to reduce or eliminate differences between students, risks having the opposite effect, with negative implications. The silence denies students both the skills they need to talk openly about race and the opportunity to think about how race affects them and their society. A failure to acknowledge acts of exclusion and racism results in a failure to act (Bhopal and Chapman 2019). Thus, this article focuses on those educators who do not seem to notice such exclusion and its connection to ethnic background (cf. Gillborn 2005).

The interest of this article lies in the complex variability between the school staff’s perspective of an accepting, tolerant, and inclusive social climate and the students’ perspective of social exclusion. Ethnic studies often turn their gaze toward vulnerable groups such as minority students in the school environment. In contrast, this study turns the lens to those who educate them as well as the students. The aim is to explore how school staff’s colour-blind approach generates a failure to see beyond their own views of the positive social climate, and discover the polite exclusion experienced by students with migration backgrounds.

Inclusion and exclusion are often presented as dichotomous variables, but by viewing them in terms of an ongoing process, we can avoid a fixed explanation anchored to a binary either/or explanation. It is crucial to look for experiences of exclusion among young people who, according to conventional standards, are well-integrated (Fangen 2010), as is the case for the students in the present study. They have high ambitions, receive good grades, and attend a prestigious school.

The school staff in this study hold positive views of diversity as enriching, and describe the class in question with a sense of pride, speaking of students as tolerant, accepting, and inclusive. Yet, I have described in previous articles (Wiltgren 2020, 2021, 2022) how students with migration backgrounds feel ignored and excluded by classmates whom they commonly refer to as ‘the Swedes’.

This article focuses on the discrepancy between the feelings of social exclusion experienced by students with migration backgrounds and their school staff’s impression of a permissive, tolerant, and welcoming class climate. The voices of students are essential if we are to understand their experiences of social acceptance and feelings of being valued, as is the perspective of the authorities in their daily lives. The research field of Critical Race Theory exhorts us to focus on systematic power imbalances between different racial identities in order to take action on inequality and achieve social justice (Arneback and Jämte 2021). It enables us to challenge the prevailing White and nativism stories where all migrants, regardless of origin, are assumed to be inferior to Whites (Pinson and Arnot, 2020). Critical Race Theory has been used as a tool for explaining existing inequality in education since the 1990s with an aim to develop new ways to think about the failure of schools to properly educating minority students (Ledesma and Calderón 2015). In schools, as well as other institutions, there are places, both real and virtual, that are often marked as implicitly White territory, mediated through a silence that remains unvoiced (Bhopal and Chapman 2019). This creates a sense in non-White students of being the Other, instilled through subtle signals that highlight non-belonging and difference. These signals may even be thought of as polite, but they still result in a constant preparedness for self-defence and not being able to relax one’s guard (Vincent et al. 2013).

In many Western countries, ever since World War Two, education has been considered an important arena for ending discrimination and racial oppression (Lynch, Swartz, and Isaacs 2017). In Sweden, schools are obliged to teach and resolve issues of societal values. Policies about diversity and procedures for reporting incidents of discrimination and offense are codified in school law (Skollagen 2010, 800). Even so, students with migration backgrounds have been left to handle some of these acts in silence, as school staff saw no problems. This has led to a lack of opportunities for improvement in the situation of the students with migration backgrounds.

Method

This study is based on participant observation in a prestigious high school in a middle-sized Swedish city. The research focused on the students, and I spent a semester following students from a single, prestigious high-school class during their lessons, breaks, and lunches. The observations, and later interviews, took place entirely in the school and I interacted with students in the least adult role (cf. Epstein 1998). The interviews were scheduled in a small conversation room in school, commonly used for conversations between students and teachers and took place both during and in some cases after school hours.

The school program the class belongs to is a high-prestige, three-year national program, open to all students eligible to study in Sweden. The principal describes the class as ‘extremely high-performing from academic homes’. The program has an international profile, and entry exams in mathematics and English. The program is given in English, which is the official class language. Thus it attracts many newly arrived students who have good knowledge of English but have yet to learn Swedish, as well as ambitious local students interested in international mobility and gaining international perspectives and understandings. The program is described as a pre-university course that prepares students for all university level education in Sweden as well as abroad.

Even though the majority of students enrolled at the school have a Swedish background, in this class about two-thirds have migration backgrounds, meaning that either they or their parents have migrated to Sweden. Students’ background includes South America, the Middle East, China, South East Asia, South- and Central Africa, and Europe. Conferring with supervisory teachers, the school principal recommended this particular class because it was seen to match the study’s overall research criterion of examining high-performing students with migration backgrounds, their success strategies, and the obstacles they face.

Teachers and school principals describe the students enrolled in this class as ambitious, motivated, and high-performing, and the class is seen by school staff as an example of successful integration. The majority of the students are from middle-class families and have university-educated parents. Most of the newly arrived students have moved to Sweden due to their parents having accepted job offers, but a few are refugees or in Sweden specifically to attend the program in question.

The participant observation was complemented by 36 interviews with individual students, one group interview with five students with Swedish background, six individual interviews with teachers, and one individual interview with a school principal. All students who agreed to participate in an interview were interviewed. The interviews all began with an open question ‘how would you describe the social climate in your class?’ and the follow-up questions were based on the students’ and staffs’ answers. Follow-up questions were open-ended and probing in response to the participants answers, intended to keep the participants talking as freely as possible, such as ‘could you tell me more?’ or ‘why do you think this happens?’ and ‘how would you have liked it to be?’ The interviews took place during the end phase of the field work and I was able to ask more specific questions based on my observations. My presence enabled the students to draw on our shared experiences of the classroom climate. The interviews lasted between 15 min and 1 h.

A minority of students, most of whom had Swedish backgrounds, shared a positive view of the classroom climate, and are not included in this article as the focus is on the obstacles the students with migration background face. Three out of four students with migration background described experiences of social exclusion by their classmates commonly referred to as the Swedes.

All school staff interviewed for this study are White, with a background in Europe. Students and staff were allowed to choose whether to hold the interviews in Swedish, English, or a mixture of both languages. The study has passed ethical review (approved by Regionala etikprövningsnämnden Dnr 2016/123-31), participants and guardians were informed of the purpose of this study both verbally and in writing, as well as their ability to at any time accept or decline participation. All names are pseudonyms.

The analyses are based on thematic analysis whereby field notes are combined with interview transcripts and codified in order to discover recurring themes related to the study’s overarching aims (Braun and Clarke 2006), followed by repeated re-examination of the source materials in order to confirm the themes. In this context, themes denote clusters of meaningful patterns that can be tied to the study’s research aims. Some themes were discovered early during the fieldwork, for example the exclusion described to me on my first day of fieldwork by students with migration backgrounds. This allowed me to follow up and focus on these themes during interviews with students and staff.

The study is based on a school context, but the acts and experiences taking place there are part of a larger context, in accordance with Marcus (1998) views of ethnography as strategically situated. This means that local ethnography can help us to understand not only the local subject but also something more general, for example how inclusion and exclusion can be understood in a wider societal context. The study has a triple focus: the researcher’s field observations, the teachers’ perspectives, and the students’ perspectives, thus enabling a wider contextual understanding.

An ideal class

The main reason I was given access to the class I followed as a participant observer was that this class is regarded by all interviewed teachers and the school principal as an ideal group in terms of integration as well as academic achievement. It also fulfilled the requirement that the class should include students with migration background. My own response to my first visit to the class was to note how students were segregated in the classroom, with the White students, with a few exceptions, choosing to sit on the left-hand side while the rest, who consisted of two-thirds of the class, sat in the middle and on the right-hand side. The class was hence segregated by ethnic background rather than by gender. In the hierarchy of oppression there is a discourse of a general assumption that gender in education has greater impact than race (Bhopal 2020). My observations shows however that gender was subordinate to race in students’ daily interactions. During our first lunch break, students with a migration background confirmed that ‘Swedish people don’t want to be with us’. The students are, however, repeatedly described by teachers and school principals as tolerant, appreciating differences, and accepting of all people regardless of background. Rickard, one of the teachers, states that:

In other classes, you’re forced into a certain mode of being even if you feel that you’re different, and people are of course different. You can be different, but you think that now that I’m in social studies at [school], I should act this way, or now I’m on the science track so I should be this way. In [name of the class that I’m following] you can become whomever you are. […] If you visit a social studies class, you’ll notice that everyone looks the same at first glance. Of course, they aren’t and you can see that once you get to know them. But the boys look the same, the few boys who study social sciences, and the girls have maybe two different looks. In economics, everyone looks the same. But this isn’t as important in [name of class].

Rickard

The contrast with the other classes described by Rickard relates to how students in other classes are forced to adjust to the existing norms by giving up their individuality, while students in the current class are allowed to become whomever they are. This description is shared by several members of the school staff, who described the class I was following as inclusive, tolerant, and accepting, an ideal class:

Things that would be impossible in other tracks. […] it’s not a problem here.

School principal

I’m responsible for a different class in the same grade, a science class, and I have several girls there who wear, what’s it called, veils, and they keep themselves apart. […] they’re so much more cautious in their ways of socializing and garnering attention in the class. There are signals that are sent out that you’re different.

Selma

However, the picture painted by school staff is irreconcilable with the students’ perspective. During both informal talks and formal interviews, students with migration backgrounds described acts of exclusion, connecting them to their ethnic background and stating that access to the Swedish peer group requires a sameness to this group. This is confirmed when interviewing the students with Swedish backgrounds. However, this latter group does not relate sameness to ethnicity, but rather to social similarity, youth culture, and community.

Students are not called names, teased, harassed, or verbally challenged. Instead, the exclusion is expressed in tiny, everyday interactions, such as answering questions very curtly, or not being greeted during encounters in the school corridors. It is in large part an exclusion by avoidance, by avoiding eye contact with students from migration backgrounds and choosing not to sit next to them in class or during lunches and breaks (Wiltgren 2021, 2022). This in contrast to other studies where students from minority groups self-segregate in order to maintain a safe space (cf: Yeo 2010; Tatum 2017).

The majority of students with migration backgrounds described the segregation, where some students described it in class in metaphorical terms, such as living in different worlds, stating that their Swedish classmates built walls around themselves, and when trying to pass through these walls, they are met by closed doors. When I ask Emanuel, a newly arrived student about the social climate in class, he state that:

Swedish people want to have their world and we have our other world, and it’s not like really inclusive

I ask Emanuel how he interpret his Swedish classmates’ behaviour and he gives the following answer:

It’s polite cause, I mean they wouldn’t say a thing to me, they wouldn’t be like ‘shut up’ or anything. They would just show it with their actions.

Three students connected these acts of exclusion to a wider social context, stating that their Swedish peers will one day hold positions in the government, parliament, or other powerful positions in society, and that if they only choose to socialize with people who resemble themselves, this will increase the segregation in society even more as one of the students Ali state:

My point is that if these are people that are gonna rule the world or their country someday, I do not feel hopeful.

Where the students with migration backgrounds describe exposure and exclusion, the school staff describe inclusion and acceptance. How can this contrast be understood?

One explanation might be that school staff do not understand the nature and extent of racism, and are ill-equipped to deal with expressions of racism (Miller 2021). Even though school staff are aware that ethnicity is relevant at a general level, they tend to assume that it is not a factor in their school or their class, the underlying aim being that this assumption will contribute to the elimination of ethnic differences (Aveling 2007). In cases where racism is acknowledged in school, teachers tend to downplay it (Dovemark 2013) or claim that it is due to ‘bad apple syndrome’, referring to a minority of White students who come from openly racist homes. A vicious cycle emerges where teachers do very little because they do not regard racism in school as a serious problem, and students do not report racism because nothing is done about it (Crozier and Davies 2008).

Moreover, there is an assumption among teachers that an anti-racist teacher is someone who lacks preconceived notions about ethnicity and race, someone who lacks prejudice, who does not discriminate against students by background, and who at the same time celebrates diversity. Ignoring ethnicity and race has been described in terms of the privilege of whiteness, a privilege that passes as natural and unmarked and thus remains unnoticed (Fleras 2016).

‘I barely see you’

Inclusion and exclusion should be treated not as a dichotomy but as a continuous, multidimensional variable, with many fine gradations and flavours. When students with migration backgrounds are included at many levels within a school, the exclusion can refer to Gamson’s (1995) notion of indirect exclusion, which is characterized by subtle forms of exclusion, through social invisibility. This is a form of exclusion that may barely be noticed by the included (e.g. the White students and teachers) but may hurt more than more obvious, overt varieties of exclusion (Gillborn 2006).

The research field of Critical Race Theory highlights the concept of micro-aggressions, defined as the subtle forms of racism that exist in daily life, which may be difficult to pinpoint as racism but cause harm nonetheless (Kohli and Solórzano 2012, 6). Micro-aggressions can be described as subtle verbal and non-verbal insults, often carried out unconsciously, which are layered and cumulative in nature (Kohli and Solórzano 2012). It refers to those covert and nuanced expressions of everyday racism that look innocuous on the surface, but implicitly communicate an affront (Fleras 2016). The consequences of a single micro-aggression are minuscule, but continuous repetition risks ending up as discrimination, leaving minorities feeling uncomfortable, marginalized, or fearful (Sue 2010), regardless of the perpetrator’s intent or awareness levels (Fleras 2016). Students describe exclusionary acts by classmates with a Swedish background as follows:

They’re not especially excited about my existence, like if I was there or if I was not there would make no difference.

Emanuel

They give off the vibe that they don’t want to talk to you.

Andrea

You knock on the door, and they open and then they close immediately, like a door slams in your face.

Ali

Students are left to handle feelings of exclusion on their own, because school staff are reluctant to view ethnicity as relevant at their particular school. These seemingly harmless slights can carry the weight of an emotional burden or mental distress, and can be particularly acute when neither victim nor perpetrator fully grasps the inferences of the innuendo (Fleras 2016). Targets of micro-aggression have to deal with issues such as whether they imagined the situation, if it was deliberate or unintentional, the burden of proving what actually took place, and whether it is worth the punitive consequences, including increased hostility from the perpetrator (Caplan and Ford 2014). School staff, on the other hand, tend to perceive structural problems as individual (Lynch, Swartz, and Isaacs 2017). Direct interview questions regarding the relevance of ethnicity in the school are challenged by staff:

- I don’t understand the question. Why should their ethnic background matter?

- It seems that you don’t differentiate between students, you see them as individuals instead of members of various groups?

- Yes, I think so.

Johanna

There is a reluctance among the interviewed staff to view the class segregation in terms of ethnicity or race. Despite the segregation being conspicuous, the school principal, who regularly meets the class, does not relate the grouping to ethnicity or race, but rather to interests, attitudes, motivation for studies, and home location:

I think there are groups. Not as many as in other classes, but there certainly are groups based on interest and what you have… your attitude to your studies and such. […] It could be where you live, if you commute together or… It could be other factors as well, of course. Interests, if you like music, or movies…

School principal

When I ask one of the teachers, Axel, why he thinks that the student do not seem to integrate, and that the students with Swedish-born parents stick together, he, too, initially tries to find other explanations than ethnicity:

- You know where the lockers are, outside my office? I think that’s the place to see the interactions within the class. Because there, these groups splinter. But there are background issues, there are reasons, why we have these groups. On the one hand, we’ve got those who’ve been held back a year, the boys, they’re immigrants, they stick together in a certain way, they do. But that’s not it, either, because they have relations with others, but mainly immigrants. Then you’ve got the group who knew each other before they got here. It’s them you mean, I’m thinking, those on the left, Elsa, and August, and Samuel and, like, Klara, Hugo Johansson. They knew each other beforehand.

- They attended the same class before?

- No, but I’m thinking in junior high, they knew each other. And then it’s natural that they sort of stick together. And then you’ve got another group, Andrea and Christine for example, who don’t know all that much Swedish, so they stick with those who will speak English with them. So there are, you see, certain patterns. It’s one of the reasons you should have… seating plans, and switch them around.

Axel

Axel seems a bit uneasy with my question, initially trying to highlight the fact that there are other interactions occurring beside the lockers, a fact that he then quickly dismisses. He follows this with the thought that there are background issues and reasons, referring to the boys who have been held back. There are, in fact, two such boys in the class and although they always stick together, they also interact with other students with migration backgrounds. Axel therefore rejects the hypothesis. He returns to my question about the students commonly referred to as ‘the Swedes’ and suggests the idea that they attended the same junior high school as an explanation for their fierce cohesion, describing it as ‘natural that they sort of stick together’.

During my group interview with the students whom Axel argues attended the same junior high school, however, they reveal that this is not the case. They did not know each other before attending the current class; however, they inform me that it did not take long before they knew whom they wanted to hang out with.

Another explanation given by Axel is that those students who do not speak Swedish socialize with those who are willing to speak English with them. This implies that the students who are commonly referred to as the Swedes refuse to speak English with their classmates during recess, even though they have actively chosen an English-speaking educational program. This is, however, not unique to this school setting. Children and young people speak their home language in general outwith class. Specific to this context is that Swedish-speaking students with foreign backgrounds, e.g. students born in Sweden with migrant parents who speak the Swedish language fluently, automatically codeswitch from Swedish to English when non-Swedish speaking classmates join. This is rarely done by those commonly referred to as the Swedes. This issue is raised during interviews with non-Swedish-speaking students as a source of exclusion. The teachers, on the other hand, do not address the language issue as a form of exclusion. Axel concludes however that you should have seating plans, partially accepting responsibility for the situation. Although this is a first step, scholars emphasize that there is no single approach that works as a quick fix and that a variety of actions are required to achieve inclusion (Arneback and Jämte 2021).

There is, however, a reluctance among the teachers to see identity categories as an important factor in school, leading to the assumption that ‘we have no racism at this school’ (Aveling 2007). Selma stresses that she does not even see the Muslim girls’ dress style, she only sees their personalities and she reassures me that she has no reason to pretend this. Instead, she claims that these are her true feelings, a discovery and an insight that surprises herself:

- I don’t see their [Muslim girls’] dress. I really don’t. I don’t know your thoughts on this, but I have no reason to pretend, these are my true feelings. I know, because you question yourself: am I such a person, or could I be? And then I feel that I, how amazing it is to not even see it. Because when I talk to them, I really see their personalities. And it surprised me, too, when I realized that I don’t even see…

- That you as a teacher see them as individuals and not –

- Yes, exactly!

- and not part of a group, that you’re a girl, you’re a Muslim, you’re Somali. You don’t see their group affiliations?

- Exactly! [happily] When I’m engaged with something, it’s struck me after a while, that wow, how many nationalities we’ve got here. But I don’t see it.

- How can you not see it?

- I understand, but you become engaged, when you, just like you and me, talk and discuss. I barely see you.

Selma

The question I posed to Selma during the interview concerned obstacles relating to students’ ethnic backgrounds, not their religion or dress style. Selma’s answer relates to religious dress code without me asking about it. At the same time, she states that she does not see it. I get the impression that the teachers’ true ambition is to treat all students equally, which in turn creates a self-image and a standard of conduct that leads to a colour-blind strategy. This might be precisely how minority students who have historically been subjected to discrimination and disadvantages would like to be treated, i.e. equally regardless of their group affiliations and background, especially when it comes to teachers’ expectation on their academic ability. There is however a risk, concerning the dominant and high status groups denying people’s identity and their lived experiences of social exclusion (Fleras 2016). The denial of racism within institutions such as schools helps to construct the dominant White consensus, leading to both a positive self-presentation and a positive image of one’s society that few Whites would have reason or interest to doubt, let alone oppose (Van Dijk 1992, 89).

Diversity as a happy sign

Attempts to be colour-blind do not end racism. In fact, ignoring race increases the likelihood that racism will occur in schools and society (Modica 2015, 398). The term ‘colour mute’ (as opposed to colour-blind) can be used as a way to highlight the fact that the real problem is an unwillingness to openly discuss racial issues, rather than a lack of recognition of the significance of race (Pollock 2009). Racism and discrimination exist in the everyday life of institutions, such as schools, despite the absence of any ill intentions (Gillborn 2005). But when teachers choose not to see racism, and thus do not challenge it, they condone or even affirm racial hierarchies through their attitudes and actions (Kohli 2009). However, there is an exception to this colour-mute strategy: when speaking of diversity as enriching. Diversity becomes a ‘happy sign’ that racism has been overcome and an institutional desire for good practice (Ahmed 2007, 164). When I ask about the significance of the fact that the majority of students in the class have migration backgrounds, all the staff interviewed express positive views:

People from other cultures, who have different… They’re seen as assets, almost never as something negative, around here. […] Because they have experiences others don’t, they can share stories, expand our reality, they can show different methods. It’s part of [name of class] philosophy that you consider people from other cultures as assets.

John

It’s multicultural, they’re so open, such accepting students, who have an understanding of others and develop their understanding of others because… they come from different backgrounds and environments.

School principal

During both formal interviews and informal talks with students, painful feelings of exclusion were articulated, as well as discouragement about the possibilities for change (Wiltgren 2020; cf. Crozier and Davies 2008). However, both school staff and the school principal described the classroom environment as accepting, caring, and tolerant of differences:

I believe that the integration, the understanding of others, and the level of tolerance are huge. I think that’s amazing. You understand that others’ experiences and viewpoints add something. You become enriched by them, and are able to move forward yourself.

School principal

Students with a migration background ‘add something’ leading to enrichment and personal development. One of the teachers, Selma concludes that the accepting climate leads to openness and the immediate acceptance of people who are considered to be different.

It’s a lot more accepted to be different, you dare to say what you think. The openness is exhibited in that you have different cultures, and they think it’s all right that you arrive and just end up and become a part of the group. Immediately! You might have seen it yourself, Emanuel just arrived. […] He’s been taken care of in class. […] They’re open on so many levels.

Selma

Emanuel, the newly arrived student mentioned by Selma, is in fact one of the students who most painfully describes acts of exclusion. While White teachers may miss seeing processes of micro-aggressions, teachers who stand outside of the norms tend to see injustices more easily (Kohli 2009). These implications are not visible to school staff in this study, who in both informal talk and interviews repeatedly describe the class as open and positive to different cultures, with no exceptions at all, and where newly arrived students are immediately included:

- It contributes to an open climate. That you’re more open to different cultures, different customs, and see them as something positive. Mmm.

- Do you believe everyone sees it that way?

- Yes, I do. […] It’s in the nature of the program that you’re different.

- Because of what?

- Well, background maybe. There are many students who haven’t lived here all their lives, a lot of them have come directly from China or Brazil because their parents work here. They’re immediately included here.

Rickard

This view is shared by all the school staff interviewed in this study. Selma, for example, describes the class as equal and says that students with an immigrant background believe they are all equally important and they are entirely accepted:

I see so many immigrant students here, and I don’t see anything negative. I see them assimilating, becoming accepted for what they are. […] You feel so equal. That’s what I feel. It’s because they believe they’re all equally important. They take as much space in discussions as anyone. And it was a fantastic feeling when I realized why it becomes so incredibly equal somehow. It’s entirely accepting!

Selma

It is doubtlessly an ideal class that is being described by the teachers, while at the same time a different image is described by students with migration backgrounds. One of the students, Andrea, says that the avoidance shown by her Swedish peers makes her feel ‘inferior’.

I think it kind of makes me feel inferior, I kind of feel like you know, this is their country, they’re the Swedes. I just kind of feel like, why can’t we like all, talk to each other and be friends?!

Christine, a newly arrived students, says that it makes her sad:

I wish they [the Swedish classmates] were more open and I wish they were more caring about other people. It’s just hard sometimes. But I try not to think about that. Because I would feel sad and I wouldn’t achieve anything from being sad.

Ali reason how it would have been, had he been the only student with a migration background in the class:

That would be so bad for me, cause then there would be a lot of doors that would be shut and then my social person would try my best to talk to people and they would ignore me and I would be the social outcast. You know, that person in the background that really wants to talk to people but people won’t talk back to him.

The school staff’s unanimous positive image of the class makes it even harder for students to highlight and challenge polite exclusion. They risk being regarded as oversensitive, exaggerating, as themselves being intolerant or seeing racism where none exists, or as disrupting in-group solidarity and ruining the ‘good atmosphere’ (Van Dijk 1992). The lack of forums in which such matters can be safely discussed or reported is a failure of schools to help students learn about various ways to respond (Caplan and Ford 2014). Thus, the students are reluctant to express their feelings and experiences.

This means that there is no need for the school to actively engage with issues of equality, since the school staff can remain ignorant of the problems and safe in their assumptions that everyone is equal and that all students are open and tolerant.

‘I don’t think it’s that bad, really’

There is a clear discrepancy between the school staff’s description and the students’ description of the same classroom environment. No staff members mention the segregation or social exclusion during interviews. They admit, however, that they have noticed it when I, a researcher who has followed the class for months, ask about the so-called Swedish students keeping to themselves and not integrating with students with a migration background. One of the teachers, John, says that he has noticed the segregation and takes part of the blame, only to later smooth over the issue:

I wonder if it’s my fault. Usually, I actively switch the students around, I always do it in first grade with all my students. I force them to switch places every week, so they get to sit next to someone new every week. I do it with all my first graders, switch them around.

And it works great, it’s very necessary with first graders, they’re very nervous and if someone else decides where they should sit, they don’t have to do it themselves.

Now that I’m older, I’ve become complacent and don’t do it as much in second grade and third grade, but maybe if I had done it in this class, and dismantled the constellations that appeared in an active way through switching them around, then maybe they would have gotten to know each other, or more classmates, faster. Yes, next time I’ll do that. But for now, it’s all right.

John

Despite John’s acknowledgement of the problem, he does not seem to see the segregation as a big issue, stating that next time it will be different, referring to a future class with other students. When I ask him why he thinks there is segregation in the class, he states that the students commonly referred to as ‘the Swedes’ attended the same class previously. Like Axel, he holds a false view that the Swedish students knew each other before. ‘They knew each other rather well’, he states and adds that ‘I usually don’t think about it’. He takes partial responsibility for the social structures and for assuming that the older students should take care of themselves, integrating and socializing on their own accord:

- You think that when they get to second grade, third grade, they’re able to take care of themselves, but maybe not.

- But it isn’t anything you’ve considered?

- No, not that, because it would have been different, it’s like an explanation. I don’t think it’s that bad, really, and it’s hard to do anything now, when you should have started with it right at the beginning. But I’ve made a mental note to myself that next time I’ve got a second grade class, I’ll start with the old and switch them around myself instead of letting them sit wherever they want. It’s not a hard thing to do.

John

The situation, according to John, is not ‘that bad, really’, and he states that there is no point in doing anything now. On the other hand, he seems to have an idea about how things could be improved and he makes a mental note for the next time.

Initially, the school staff were eager to highlight that the segregation was based on grounds other than ethnicity, a fact that can be linked to the lack of skill, due to lack of systemic support, possessed by teachers on how to engage in racial discourse in the classroom (Vass 2016). It is easy to assume that a problem does not exist, or to allow it to slip down the priority list, when one does not know how to handle it (Miller 2021). Despite occupying powerful positions of authority, the teachers’ silence place them in positions of powerlessness, revealing an inability to purposefully contribute to, or productively lead, race talk in the classroom (Vass 2016). When segregation is obvious and school staff do not intervene, they are sanctioning that segregation (Dovemark 2013).

When the segregation in the class was evident, teachers tended to see the marginalized students as excluding themselves, when in fact they were being pushed out and set apart (cf. Crozier and Davies 2008). The emphasis is therefore on the minority students’ ability and willingness to change and become more ‘White’, in order to assimilate, blend in, and stop being different. This is what hooks (1992) refers to as a deep emotional investment in sameness, which of course brings no guarantee of acceptance.

Discussion

It may lie close at hand to dismiss polite exclusion as not being ‘real’ oppression. Gamson (1995, 17) reminds us, however, that it is real enough to those who must deal with it, and that it deserves to be taken seriously in its own right. Racist processes do not have to begin with racist intentions, as they become racist through their effects (cf. Gillborn 2005). Gillborn claims that one of the key points about Whiteness as a performatively constituted identity is that those who are implicated in Whiteness rarely even realize its existence – let alone their own role in its repeated iteration and resignification. This applies to the school staff in this study as they fail to notice the social exclusion experienced by the students. The school staff idealized the class and compared it to other classes, describing them as worse in terms of acceptance, tolerance, and inclusion. The current class is described as equal, entirely accepting and immediately including newly arrived students. In highlighting school staffs’ failure to notice prevalent social exclusion, this article contributes to the general discourse on exclusion by showing how social exclusion takes place in a high-performing Swedish school.

During the formal interviews, school staff conceded however that segregation does occur, but they explained it away as unfortunate circumstances, including that the Swedish students knew each other previously, that they attended the same school, that they live in the same area and commute together to school. However, these explanations were denied by the Swedish students themselves. When confronted with the question of the segregation in class, the school staff describes it as ‘not that bad’ concluding that ‘for now it’s all right’ and that ‘it’s hard to do anything now’. Some teachers put the blame for the segregation on the excluded students.

A central principle of Critical Race Theory is the recognition of racism in shaping the everyday lives of all people, particularly for people of colour. A basic insight is that racism is normal, not aberrant, in society and that it is an ingrained feature of society that looks ordinary and natural (Lynn and Parker 2006). Applying Critical Race Theory in the classroom engenders discomfort and pain, with the goal to unsettle highly charged histories that the majority dismiss with narratives of colour-blindness, meritocracy or postracialism (Ledesma and Calderón 2015). One of the critiques against Critical Race Theory is that the focus on race eclipses other aspects of difference that serve to marginalize and oppress minority groups (DeCuir and Dixson 2004).

A recently published report state however that school is one of the main setting where students in Sweden experience racism and that school staff either ignore, excuse, or fail to notice this (Rosenlundh, Lundström, and Vogel 2021). The current article provides an indication to how school staffs’ colour-blind approach may explain their failure to act against oppressions experienced by minority students.

Bhopal (2020) urges us to address racial inequality in education by discussing and confronting racism as well as White privilege, having a diverse representative professoriate and introducing a decolonized curriculum, differentiating from ‘a discourse of denial’. This means that school staff must face their White privileges, as well as inequalities and injustices, to ensure their awareness of their own prejudices, in order to enact positive change.

This can be compared to the normative aspects of Whiteness that are evidenced in the colour-blind approach used by teachers in this study, meaning that a colour-blind approach in itself is insufficient to overcome race-based sociological problems. Attempts to tackle social exclusion must acknowledge contextual complexities – there is no one-size-fits-all solution. It is therefore crucial for staff to learn to notice and talk about social identity categories, instead of seeing student merely as individuals (Miller 2021).

Gillborn (2006) concludes that racism is complex, contradictory and fast-changing. Antiracism must therefore be equally dynamic. Here Critical Race Theory can be one avenue of approach, offering important sensitizing insights and conceptual tools. The challenge of Critical Race Theory is to place racism at the forefront of academic analysis in educational studies, as well as calling for ‘scholarly work to be engaged in the process of rejection and deconstructing the current patterns of exclusion and oppression’ (Gillborn 2006, 27). However, a limitation of Critical Race Theory is that it identifies problems without offering solutions. It is a method of increasing visibility and facilitating analysis rather than enabling researchers and educators to build active responses to the problems they encounter. Neither does it offer concrete tools to overcoming the inherent mental resistance of teachers and educators who idealise diversity and consider themselves as anti-racist, to realizing that they are in fact contributing to structural racism. Racial consciousness development cannot be taught in a superficial way, reducing racial awareness to simplistic dos and don’ts. It requires a deep level of analyses, self-reflection, and understanding of historical as well as current realities (Lynn and Parker 2006). At the same time, the increased visibility Critical Race Theory enables is a requirement for creating solutions – if the problem is not made visible and acknowledged, no impetus for change will manifest.

The schools staffs in this study, do talk about diversity as enriching for the school as well as for individual students. At the same time, they claim that they do not see their students’ group affiliations and that they only see students as individuals. This privilege of Whiteness allows staff to avoid the need to see their own responsibility for, and implicit acceptance of, the social exclusion experienced by students. The staffs’ colour-blindness may lead to the failure to notice social exclusion and oppression of certain groups as it is difficult to see categorical differences in treatment if one denies the existence of social identity categories. This in turn leads to a failure to act, allowing status quo. These processes may help us understand social exclusion, not only in a school setting, but also in the workplace and other institutions in society (cf. Marcus 1998).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working life and Welfare under Grant No. 2015-00302.