To think it's weird that our school only has pictures of white children on its website?

[BruhWhy]

Just that really. We live in an area that's increasingly ethnically diverse and my own children are mixed.

There is a mix of white, black, Asian and mixed children in every class, in every year.

They just updated their website and have taken lots of new pictures of pupils to put onto it, but they've chosen only white children.

I know it's not massively important in the grand scheme of things but it did make me sit there and think 'oh, this might have been a decision that was made' and it's made me feel a bit funny.

Is it exploitation, or is it saying there's space for you here? If you've got room for 10 kids in a photo, why wouldn't you make one of them black even if they were 3% of the school population not 10%?

How comfortable would you be sending a minority kid to a school with exclusively white publicity photos? Especially if you knew there were non-white students there already? Wouldn't you feel like they were making a point to exclude you?

@DameFanny
It is exploitation of current students in order to attract new students, usually white ones whose parents think their children need “exposure” to minority children like mine for their “moral development”

It’s not really saying anything reassuring at all to me as a minority myself. I see it as exploitation for benefit of mostly white families.

By “it” I mean a school with 1% minority students advertising to give the impression they are more like 25% or 40% minority students. It’s the obvious exaggeration/lying that makes it exploitation. If the pictures reflected reality at the school...one minority face in a hundred...that’s better. That’s the actual truth about the school. I have no objection to that.

We always visited the schools and took a tour during the school day simply because advertisement of any kind cannot be trusted to be an accurate reflection of the reality. So I’ve never sent a child to a school based on advertisements. I don’t know anyone who would either....

Well that's taking the worst-faith reading I guess

Dame fanny it was my quote about tokenism. That was how one of 5 black students in ds school described what the school put on their brochure as 40% of the photos had one of the black students and they were 5 in a population of 1200. It was the black personality the self describing it as tokenism.

He had an excellent point that showing the few black kids doing PE, drama, music, science and English didn't show a diverse school. It didn't show realism. The fact the showed more girls doing science, maths and PE he also felt fixed.

He had a good point that as a black kid he didn't think "I can do all these clubs despite my race" because of the photos. He thought "do the 5 of us really join all the clubs when the other 1195 probably do 1 at most!".

He made an excellent point that he felt he could do anything in the school but in general staff and students didn't make him feel different due to his race. That culture and ethos make for better equality than set up photots on a brochure everyone knows aren't realistic and representative.

I see all of your points @itsgettingwierd, and it must have been frustrating and a bit weird for your son. I do still think it's better to represent inclusion than exclusion - even though it seems clumsily done in that instance

It is weird but I think it's a lack of thought rather than deliberate. It should be a deliberate decision to make sure the pictures represent the diversity of school. Perhaps it was outsourced but still ...

It is important to call it out any discrimination and racism when you hear or see it, it is the only way to resolve things.
No need to contact the PTA we're all responsible for changing things, use your voice loudly even when faced with ignorance.

It’s not patronising, it's not tokenism, it's not guilt - it's saying that there's a place for non-white British children. Why would you think it was anything else?

Because people are so naive.

It seems to pretty much go:

“Oh, we’ve hardly got any ethnic minorities in our school/workforce. This doesn’t look good! What shall we do? Oh, I know....let’s just put loads of photos up of the few we have and pretend we’re diverse. That should do it.”

This approach seems to satisfy 99% of people because most aren’t really seriously worried about equal representation, it’s just part of ‘not being seen as a racist’. Box ticked and move on.

You don't think schools want to be inclusive? You think everyone's pretending? More projection than Leicester Square Odeon

@EightWheelGirl

Most children are white at the school.

So the website is an accurate representation?

Personally, I prefer to know the truth rather than be given an idealised fantasy depiction of a school. But that’s just me.

I can see you think you’re being very clever.

A shame you haven’t been able to comprehend the OP at all.

Re-read. Slowly, if needed.

@EightWheelGirl

It’s not patronising, it's not tokenism, it's not guilt - it's saying that there's a place for non-white British children. Why would you think it was anything else?

Because people are so naive.

It seems to pretty much go:

“Oh, we’ve hardly got any ethnic minorities in our school/workforce. This doesn’t look good! What shall we do? Oh, I know....let’s just put loads of photos up of the few we have and pretend we’re diverse. That should do it.”

This approach seems to satisfy 99% of people because most aren’t really seriously worried about equal representation, it’s just part of ‘not being seen as a racist’. Box ticked and move on.

Cool, why not run through the top five practical anti-racist actions you take regularly - not all of them of course, just the top five - so we can all learn from you?

These threads are always brilliant for racist bingo. We’ve had the deliberately obtuse misreading, now the surprise twist that the person sounding most racist is actually the hidden hero.

Etinoxaurus
It is important. Are they teachers kids? Often schools will push teachers kids forward for photos because their parents are to hand and give permission. Bad optics though.

Careful, this reads as an assumption that all of the teachers are white??

@SydneySquare. It doesn’t.

You think everyone's pretending? More projection than Leicester Square Odeon.

So all the white male millionaire CEOs are twisting themselves up in angst at the lack of POC on their board? It’s definitely not anything to do with looking like an ‘ethical’ company, right?

I’m sure plenty of people have genuine intentions but the research speaks for itself - people with African names not getting as many interviews etc. I could understand showing some representation but the fact it’s often so OTT (as other posters have pointed out) screams of virtue signalling to me.

You don’t see this as much in blue collar environments because they genuinely are quite diverse.

Schools - generally staffed by people who went into it because they care about children - are not companies, too frequently run by people who only care about profit. We're talking about schools.

Corporate representation is a whole other things and yes, usually full of hypocrisy.

@DameFanny

Schools - generally staffed by people who went into it because they care about children - are not companies, too frequently run by people who only care about profit. We're talking about schools.

Corporate representation is a whole other things and yes, usually full of hypocrisy.

I said schools/workplaces in my original post. You just ignored it and focused on the bit that supported your argument.

The thread is about a school. Start a thread about stupid corporate publicity if you want.

Don’t schools also have corporate publicity? What’s a brochure?

Oh fgs it's about signalling inclusion, but you just stay in a nasty little mindset where no one is allowed to do anything to make the world a better place because 'virtue signalling' or some such viciousness signalling bollocks.

But it’s just social pressure like the trans thing. Why don’t we see as much representation of Indian culture as black culture then, given how they outnumber black people two to one in this country?

It’s the MC lecturing and corporate nonsense that gets me. For example, we see so much derision or WC class men on here. Shock horror, a builder asked to use my toilet! Wolf whistling stereotypes etc. But who is the one laying bricks shoulder to shoulder with the first generation polish immigrant? It certainly isn’t the stockbroker.

Maybe my beef isn’t with the schools etc so much. It’s more the privileged people whinging about pc nonsense when they tend to live in ivory towers (pun intended).

But who is the one laying bricks shoulder to shoulder with the first generation polish immigrant? It certainly isn’t the stockbroker. Ivan assure you many many professionals (and stockbrokers!) work side by side with immigrants because SHOCK HORROR not all immigrants are labourers. Try not to be ridiculous

For a school it should be pretty easy maths to work out the % of children from different cultures and ensure that photos used are roughly representing that. It’s not complex and it’s not difficult

Representation is important and the photos should reflect the ethos and values of the school. If the school is diverse and inclusive then why wouldn’t they want to demonstrate that?

@EightWheelGirl

You make a lot of sense but I see you’ve already been called the big R word for doing so

My friend's daughter was asked by Ofsted why her school in rural Somerset did not have ethnic minority groups attending the school.

She replied because they don't live here. Everyone is welcome to come to this school.

It’s terrible and I would raise it ASAP.

Our school has done the opposite and from the website you’d think there were no white kids at this school- when there’s about a 50/50 spilt