Student thoughts on Racism in Schools

George Floyd's murder and subsequent protests are reverberating around the world.  The question that is being asked of schools is does the education you offer challenge or perpetuate systemic racism, and systemic inequality? 

We're thinking hard about this question. For me, prompted by this challenging Open letter to international schools, I'm trying to distinguish between dealing with incidents of racism, and the broader structural system that gives rise to them.  I'm proud of our alum who are coming back to us to suggest things that they think could, with the benefit of hindsight, be improved.  But I wanted to use this post to give one of our black students, Zach Nezianya space to share some thoughts and experiences.

Zach writes:

When we want to talk about racism, many of us fall silent because we understand that it is a sensitive topic and we fear possibly offending those of different ethnicities. But as an esteemed illustrator, Jessica Durrant put it, “there are really only two ways of looking at things in life; with either fear or with hope”. Therefore, is it possible that by fearing the possibility of offending the other person, we lose the opportunity to learn from them?

As a British Nigerian adolescent, I have faced my fair share of stereotypes and discrimination. I have been called all sorts of names, been told of my limitations due to my skin colour and have always had to be extra cautious in the classroom since it was highly likely that the teacher would remember the only black child in the room when reporting to the school authorities. However, instead of becoming insecure about who I am, these situations have led me to ask the single most important question for human behaviour: Why? It would probably be easy for me to simply claim that they are racist human beings, but that would imply that they are naturally constructed that way, which would also immediately disregard the circumstances in which these people have been raised. In psychology, the study of human behaviour, there is an ongoing debate known as “Nature vs Nurture” which seeks to determine whether our biological or social influences form the basis for who we are.

Putting this into perspective, for most of my classmates, especially here in Singapore, I was the first black person they had ever physically encountered, and so their only prior engagement with people of my skin tone or my culture had been via media gatekeepers such as television, movies, music and social media. As a result, they had many preconceived assumptions on how I will behave and react to certain situations. Now, this doesn’t excuse their behaviour, but how do you expect, for example, a Russian or a Singaporean child to behave when they see a black person in real life for the first time, after previously only seeing black people portrayed as gangsters and violent criminals in Hollywood movies?

This example of prejudice is just a minute fraction of what we as individuals do each and every day. According to Tajfel’s Social Identity Theory, people subconsciously categorise society into “in-groups” and “out-groups”, based on both major and minor individual differences. As expected, we tend to have biases in favour of our in-group and biases against the out-group. It is these biases, that are then the premise on which stereotypes are founded, which compounded with emotion and irrational thinking, leads to acts of discrimination, such as racism. We naturally prefer people we consider similar to us, but shouldn’t we consider all people to be similar to us? Perhaps it is as easy as expanding our in-group in order to defeat racism, to not just include people that look and sound like us, but to include everyone.

This continuous cycle of prejudice needs to stop. Is it fair to judge a whole group of people on the actions of just a few? No, but that mindset has founded the stereotypes against black people, Asian people, white people, politicians, and now even police officers. The fight against racism is not a physical battle, but rather an internal one. Each person must look within themselves and examine the biases that they each have; is there a difference between internalising discrimination and demonstrating it?

As a growing person, who often questions the decisions and events unfolding around me, my father has repeatedly told me, “You need to listen more than you speak. Everything on your face is two, but you have one mouth. You have two eyes, two nostrils, and two ears.” This moment that we are all facing requires us to be silent and really reflect on who we are at our core. This is not the time for us to point fingers at each other or to create a “black vs white” war, but rather an opportunity for people of all backgrounds to come together and truly listen to what each other is saying and how each community is feeling. Remember God loves all people, and so we too should strive to love all people as well.  May God bless you all.

There is clearly work for us to do, as individuals, as institutions and as a society. With assumptions and values being shaped, as Zach says, by society in us from a very young age, we need to act urgently while doing so in way that leads to more than passing response, but long-term deep changes.  Watch this space, as our thinking develops.