Othering difference: framing identities and representation in black children's schooling in the British context

Abstract

This paper, based on research in five British schools, focuses on the experience of black young people in the British education system. It is set within the contexts of both persistent underperformance and overrepresentation in school exclusion of these children. The concept of intersectionality informs the study in terms of disaggregating the children primarily by divisions of race, class and gender. Issues of whiteness further informs the context of the interactions between children and teachers. The interactions between and the views of teachers and black children are seen as deeply implicated in the unequal learning outcomes still prevailing in British schools.

Keywords:

• black children
• schooling
• education
• teachers
• intersectionality
• whiteness
• identities
• stereotyping

Notes

1. In this paper the term ‘black’ includes students of African and /or Caribbean heritage. In light of the literature on black identities (see hooks 1981; Hall 1997) the notion of ‘black’ in this paper refers to political, social and cultural ways of being and seeing for members of the ‘black’ communities in the UK.

2. ‘Damn facety’ is a Jamaican patois term meaning ‘insolent’.