So it's illegal to teach the idea of white privilege as fact now. I guess that's the same for male privilege, class privilege etc

[chomalungma]

It's got to be hard to discuss racism, sexism, class advantage to pupils and to discuss how that can be overcome without directly teaching about white privilege, male privilege, class privilege as fact.

Maybe they could offer alternative views?

This is the debate on Black History Month - which is a fascinating read

hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2020-10-20/debates/5B0E393E-8778-4973-B318-C17797DFBB22/BlackHistoryMonth

And the Government view

"Lots of pernicious stuff is being pushed, and we stand against that. We do not want teachers to teach their white pupils about white privilege and inherited racial guilt. Let me be clear that any school that teaches those elements of critical race theory as fact, or that promotes partisan political views such as defunding the police without offering a balanced treatment of opposing views, is breaking the law"

So parents can discuss it with their children, but teachers can't discuss it

@noblegiraffe

As a fellow teacher I’m really disappointed in the fact you quote this but not the rest of the data

I wasn’t quoting anything so there wasn’t a ‘rest of the data’ that I left out of my quote. I was making a point which remains valid. Telling white working class kids in, say, Great Yarmouth that they, with their lack of educational and work prospects are privileged because a black kid in London, a place they may never have been to, is more likely to be stop and searched there is completely bloody irrelevant to their lives and experiences. It’s not going to make them suddenly feel better about their shit prospects is it? Or feel differently about race.

They may well say something about the black kid in London being more likely to be a gang member/criminal and that’s why they’re searched. And where’s your conversation about white privilege helping you there? Nowhere. You’re going to have to get onto a proper discussion about root causes of racial inequality instead of banging on about privilege.

I’d actually challenge the racist statement and wouldn’t let it stand. You are happy for the kids to be racist and not challenge it. To me that is what white privilege is, white poor kids aren’t all characterised as lazy, why is it black people are all characterised as criminals and as a teacher you are happy to buy into it? There are ways of teaching white privilege without explicitly saying the words.

The next attack will be on black history month, as if it isn’t horrific that history that paints black people as anything other than animals is restricted to one month a year. The only thing I was taught in history that has a black person in it was the slave trade and from the current curriculum I can see it hasn’t got better.

Class is fluid though but race isn’t.

Race can be - both in what race someone is perceived as can differ and in what the ideas of what someone being that race means.

Class is similar - plenty of people think you can't really change class. The whole 'old money/new money' thing.

There is a perfectly adequate quantity of research papers to support the existence of white privilege.

Quantity, probably. The whole 'publish or perish' set-up has meant there is a lot of research.

That set-up, along with the current funding model and other issues, is terrible for quality research. All areas of research, but particularly the social sciences, are dealing with replication and academic journal crises. The peer reviewed process is falling apart - some of the biggest journals are having to make the biggest retractions - and in psychology, I've read something like 90% of the things we take as 'fact' have never been properly replicated and when done, the majority of 'significant findings' fail.

And even with all that research, I struggle to find anything that says teaching white kids about white privilege does anything positive. Things are more complicated than 'stating a fact, discuss = attitude and social change".

Even if you view individualistic privilege as fact, which even within CRT is still contested, would teaching white privilege that way be worth it if all it does is make white people hate other white people more? If it did nothing to tackle racism, nothing to bring people together? Because as the study I linked before suggests, there is evidence that that is all we'd get. If education/facts by themselves did much for social and behavioural change, we wouldn't have an obesity epidemic.

There is also a glut of research that discusses racism and other forms of oppression through lenses other than individualistic critical race theory. We can discuss social issues at a population and community level, we can discuss history, systems, and diversification of the methods of change. We can do all of that without ignoring that even within some branches of CRT, privilege isn't this fixed thing people have -- if social systems change, then the social (dis)incentives, social openings and barriers, those all change too.

I know Western models of societies love to get individualistic, that our education and media love their born-underdog heroes and born horrible villains. There may be ways to use that to our advantage, but really, to get people involved in structural, systemic change, we have to discuss issues as structural and systemic, we have discuss these as actions perpetuated by systems and that we can change the systems, not something some has or doesn't have.

And, as noblegiraffe said, there are a lot of people on this site so lots of people discussing one thing can just mean those with other opinions don't get involved. It has theoretical merit, but it's practical applications haven't been shown. I've seen individualistic male privilege being taught to kids backfire spectacularly in my own work much like in the white privilege study I referenced earlier. It didn't make anyone nicer, it didn't bring anyone together, it just fed more into this individualistic way of looking at the problem and started to treat each other and themselves as the enemy which I don't think helps anyone.

I dislike using the word 'privilege' when what is really meant is 'not discriminated against.' It's not a 'privilege' to be treated fairly - it is a right. So we shouldn't be focusing on people we assume to have 'privilege' as if it's some kind of benefit or advantage. We should be making sure that everyone has the same rights and opportunities. Legally in this country (the UK) we don't allow racism - it's against the law to discriminate against others based on the colour of their skin. If we institute the idea of 'whiteness' (not easy to define, either) as automatically coming with 'privilege' then we are setting up divisions which make it much harder to understand each other and foster all sorts of resentment. If we stick to teaching about rights and equality then it all becomes much easier. We can teach about how we came to legal solutions such as the Race Relations Act, we can look at the history of how this act came about, and so on. It's important to know about history and it's important for children to learn that their skin colour doesn't mean anything special - you're not a morally better person if you're black, any more than you are automatically going to have a better life if you're white. Children learning that they are equally valuable and deserving of the same rights and opportunities as each other should be the core of the approach.

Teaching children Critical Race Theory - which at heart is the idea that all white people are inherently racist and all black people are victims - is to propagate dangerous and divisive untruths.

I don't think you can change class, you can become richer or poorer but you are what you are and what you come from.
I come from wc roots, doesn't matter how much I pretend to be mc or upper, I'm not, irrespective of my income, or job.

@Devlesko

I don't think you can change class, you can become richer or poorer but you are what you are and what you come from. I come from wc roots, doesn't matter how much I pretend to be mc or upper, I'm not, irrespective of my income, or job.

I don’t know what people did to start this class cycle. Did their ancestors had too many kids? disability? Didn’t fit in for the society so people didn’t give them a time of the day to let them grow?

What about the upper class? What started their cycle? Did their ancestors had business overseas that may or may not enslaved people?

"No one said white privilege is the only form of racism"

@turnitonagain the OP said something very close to that: "You can't have racism without white privilege."

@HBGKC

"No one said white privilege is the only form of racism"

@turnitonagain the OP said something very close to that: "You can't have racism without white privilege."

In the context of Britain that is true.

It took a while for me to understand what was meant by white privilege. Coming from,and working in, an extremely deprived area I used to be quite indignant that the poverty I see in these "white "children in no way constitutes a privileged position.
Thats not what its about though!
The absolute meltdown MN had when black MN was being created taught me a lot!
My understanding is that white privilege is the fundamental advantage you were born with by having white skin. That's it. In a world of bias white skin will be a more positively bias experience in life. Everyone with white skin will benefit from it. Doesn't matter what your social or economic circumstances are.
This is also true of male privelege.
It is not about a man being in terrible circumstances and saying "Where is his male privilege?!" By being born a man he is viewed differently by the world and it will it irrefutably give him an advantage.
An example -
2 very poor boys in same circumstances . The worst socio-economic situation you care to imagine.
One is black and one is white. Now along comes a job opportunity, an encounter with the law, etc..the white person will benefit from conscious or unconscious racial bias.
NO THIS ISN'T ABOUT HOW YOU WOULDN'T DO THAT PERSONALLY.

@Devlesko

I don't think you can change class, you can become richer or poorer but you are what you are and what you come from. I come from wc roots, doesn't matter how much I pretend to be mc or upper, I'm not, irrespective of my income, or job.

I was initially inclined to agree but I am not sure if it's really that simple.

e.g. let's say I grew up in a working class family but did well at school, got a good career, and bring up two kids in a more privileged home and education. My kids would surely have a middle class background by this point. So surely one would consider the whole family middle class...?

@Happylittlethoughts

It took a while for me to understand what was meant by white privilege. Coming from,and working in, an extremely deprived area I used to be quite indignant that the poverty I see in these "white "children in no way constitutes a privileged position. Thats not what its about though! The absolute meltdown MN had when black MN was being created taught me a lot! My understanding is that white privilege is the fundamental advantage you were born with by having white skin. That's it. In a world of bias white skin will be a more positively bias experience in life. Everyone with white skin will benefit from it. Doesn't matter what your social or economic circumstances are. This is also true of male privelege. It is not about a man being in terrible circumstances and saying "Where is his male privilege?!" By being born a man he is viewed differently by the world and it will it irrefutably give him an advantage. An example - 2 very poor boys in same circumstances . The worst socio-economic situation you care to imagine. One is black and one is white. Now along comes a job opportunity, an encounter with the law, etc..the white person will benefit from conscious or unconscious racial bias. NO THIS ISN'T ABOUT HOW YOU WOULDN'T DO THAT PERSONALLY.

This is basically what the CRT and are unable to provide evidence to support it. It assumes because some black people experience racism therefore all black people must experience racism. There are advantages and disadvantages to most individual characteristics but we don't say 'Asian privilege when they get the best results at school, best jobs and highest pay. Even in your example of 2 kids growing up its massively flawed because you've over simplified the statistics. If that black kid was Nigerian then they're likely to do much better than the white kid. Even if they're 2 white kids, depending on their cultural background statistics suggest 1 would be worse off than the other. By saying white vs everyone else the data become so messy as to be almost useless. This means it can be manipulated to support the bullshit that is CRT.

The trouble with structural racism as an idea, it’s close to making racism like background radiation, shrug-worthy. No point in complaining about it almost. And it’s also a bit like those old adverts .. “a million people can’t be wrong.” It’s getting close to saying racism is natural/ Deserved. That’s my problem with Critical Race Theory, structural racism etc,
I don’t think there is anything so consistent about it in reality. It’s only consistent to the industry, which needs a steady flow.

The trouble with structural racism as an idea, it’s close to making racism like background radiation, shrug-worthy. No point in complaining about it almost. And it’s also a bit like those old adverts .. “a million people can’t be wrong.” It’s getting close to saying racism is natural/ Deserved. That’s my problem with Critical Race Theory, structural racism etc,
I don’t think there is anything so consistent about it in reality. It’s only consistent to the industry, which needs a steady flow.

The trouble with structural racism as an idea, it’s close to making racism like background radiation, shrug-worthy. No point in complaining about it almost. And it’s also a bit like those old adverts .. “a million people can’t be wrong.” It’s getting close to saying racism is natural/ Deserved. That’s my problem with Critical Race Theory, structural racism etc,
I don’t think there is anything so consistent about it in reality. It’s only consistent to the industry, which needs a steady flow.

Good. I'm descended from a lot of extremely poor, extremely hard working white people - including a woman who may well have been raped as a domestic servant, and I'm glad the government is pushing back against the idea that we're all somehow descended from a couple of hundred slave owners. They might be, but I'm certainly not.

Nonsense @Happylittlethoughts. You really think the white girls of Rotherham and Rochdale had structural privilege over gangs of asian paedophiles?! Or even over the asian girls who weren't targetted?!

In my experience, whichever group is dominant in an area or in an organisation develops privilege. I spent a long time trying to fit in with the big groups of asian girls in my school - and got called countless racist names as a result. It was never going to happen. Yes they undoubtedly experienced racism themselves, but they were also racist. It's not something exclusive to white people.