To consider reporting this as racist?

[puttynomo]

I'm a trainee teacher and just started in my second placement. Induction day training was about unconscious bias relating to a student survey in which pupils had reported various acts of racism in the school.

We were in random assigned teams and my team had about 7 people in, one other new guy (black). The task was to discuss a number of scenarios relating to race such as mixing up the only ethnic minority students names or a pupil reporting racism from a staff member, we were meant to discuss what we'd do in these scenarios, but basically immediately these two older women (one in particular) and a man immediately started on the defensive minimising it all, saying stuff like

'I get white kids mixed up all the time or kids that are ginger, I'm not racist, some kids have a certain look like Irish kids and I get them mixed up it's not racism' then they mocked being accused of racism when they said some of the black kids behaviour was atrocious and they deserved to be removed (one of pupil complaints was unfair targeting).

This carried on and nobody else including me could get a word in. The black guy was inbetween them and said nothing. Then the worst comment of all said by this one particular woman who'd been speaking about black pupils with complete derision the whole time she said

'What if it's just a cultural thing that black people are so aggressive, the way they speak' further justifying her removing them etc. I was actually shocked and at this point it was back to the main speaker. I had no chance to speak to the other guy but later found out it was his first day as well. My mentor was next to me and said nothing.

I felt so uncomfortable and shocked about this and it's still really bothering me. I saw the black guy in the staff room today he sat on his own and didn't speak to anyone I meant to try and speak to him but didn't get a chance.

What's the best course of action here? Was it racism? Should I speak to him and say anything? Should I report it? It's difficult as I've only just met everyone and my mentor and I don't know who those other people were. AIBU to think that this should be reported so this staff member can be spoken to? I'm shocked she is confident enough to say these things and then teaching children.

Who'd have thought in this day and age you'd be promoting segregation, like that has worked well in the past. Thought you bigots were a thing of the past.

And the HAS to be some more training-they can't just leave it like this.

Is it something that OFSTED would be interested in?

I agree. I'm also surprised that the exercise didn't include each group reporting back to the main facilitator about their discussions.

So it was a tickbox activity led by non expert staff who failed to moderate or facilitate the groups?

Your problem in this scenario would be the school leadership.

Yep - I would not feel safe having my kids taught by her.

What a mind blowingly stupid comment.

As if having different groups for a particular training session is akin to state sponsored violent oppression of minorities.

If you think it is racism then it is, simple. Report, whistleblow, whatever but make sure this person doesn't get away with it again.

Exactly ,this sort of shit show has been a result of schools introducing highly inappropriate / badly led and designed training based on critical race theory . There was a very interesting recent episode on the “Anti social” programme in R4 about something similar.I memorably once attended training led by a SW that resulted in our head of nursing being reported by the SW. Organisations have to be incredibly careful of how they choose to deliver certain training topics, there are a lot of people who may have thought in their heads that are not pc but you’re not going to be able to suddenly reprogramme their thought processes.

Off the topic a bit, but I am not sure that mispronunciation of names is racist unless deliberate or said with a mocking tone. Very few people can pronounce my (foreign) surname, to the extent that I often consider changing the spelling to something akin to what it should sound like!
My first name is a Biblical/traditional one, but only Europeans seem to be able to pronounce it. Call centres outside of Europe cannot get their tongues around it, even when politely corrected, but that's fine; everyone's "tongue" is trained to recognise and pronounce certain sounds.

I’ve thought some more about this. It sounds so utterly bonkers (not saying I don’t believe you OP) that - is there any chance this woman is part of the exercise? As in a plant ?

If she was a plant, then surely her remarks would have been picked up on and resolved in some way. Not just left to fester and now her colleagues think she's a racist.

I think far more likely is that this was basically clumsy wording, trying to get across the idea that different cultures do have different conventions about how emotions are expressed and about conflict resolution. Whether that general concept is relevant or appropriate to the situation at hand, I can't say. But it seems OP has interpreted as her saying "these kids are innately more aggressive" when what she might have been trying to say is "maybe I perceive them as more aggressive because of a cultural difference". Remember, we can't take the OP as a perfect transcript or rendition, even if it has been related in good faith.

Quite shocking that the head or deputy head didn't challenge it at the time.

Either way she shouldn't be teaching.

If she believes she can group people together as aggressive or non aggressive based on their looks or background, she is being racist and shouldn't be teaching any children, black, brown or white.

I would love to hear her explanation on which aggressive behaviour she finds to be exclusively expressed by black students.

What is black culture?

This isn’t meant to be a derail. The OPs post is utterly depressing.
50 years ago I was 21 and on my second Teaching Practice in a small high school, with some Asian pupils. I had taught a lesson just before dinner time. At the end of the lesson the class teacher came in and started opening all the windows. She said “You have to have all the windows open over dinner time. It’s these P—-s; they smell.”
I was shocked to the core and speechless. I just didn’t know what to do. No one to tell, no training. The casual racist remarks in the staff room was equally bad.
What I did was to be extra nice and attentive to those so-called P—- children - which was probably horribly racist, too.
Reading the OP’s post makes me want to weep.

They won't know about it if the OP doesn't report it.

So have you now spoken to him about his feelings/experience and reported it up the line?

Perhaps you’re in the wrong job. Teaching doesn’t seem to be about teaching these days, it’s cluttered up with so many other social issues that (I suspect) actual teaching is being sidelined.

The school should absolutely have a policy in place to deal with reports of racism - as they should with bullying, behaviour issues etc. But as soon as you talk about ‘training’ it suggests a group of adults messing about and, potentially, sparking this sort of pointless conflict.

The best course of action is educate yourself on what racism actually is. This isn't.

Maybe you can answer my question on what is black culture?

Others may disagree but I personally wouldn't think someone saying 'I've noticed that first generation [country where population is majority black] immigrants seem to use forms of speech that can come across as aggressive. Maybe we should think about whether there's a cultural point there that we are taking to indicate aggression when it's not meant'

That's not the same as saying maybe 'black culture' is to use aggressive speech forms. Because the concept that there is an inherent culture that you have that is defined by the colour of your skin is racist.

Im a white teacher- the comment about mixing kids names up- I don’t think is racist- I do it all the time to everyone, also there was a study out about this, about Japanese people finding it hard to differentiate between white faces- might just be inside us that one. the comment about black children being aggressive yes- I’d follow that up, just be careful about potential black lash as they will know it’s someone who sat at that table.

You didn’t say anything either though, so I wouldn’t make assumptions on your mentor- they might be surprised you didn’t challenge it, they might have already raised it wilt SLT, some staff members can be quite dominating and influential, I know some in my school like that, I wouldn’t feel confident to say anything to their face as everyone would back them in the room but I have complained about them to SLT without it linking back to me

I spoke to my lead mentor about it yesterday and today she passed on my written account to the deputy head and headteacher who is going to investigate and follow up with me.

I had a chance to speak to the black colleague in question at lunch today, had no chance to bring up the training as other people were around but it's even worse as I found out they are on a gap year and only a year out of being in school themselves, and this was their first experience in a professional school setting 😞 we had a nice chat but I didn't see him again to bring it up, I'm assuming the head or deputy head will speak to him and maybe tomorrow if I get a chance I'll tell him that I reported it.

When I next see my mentor I will have to tell them as well which may be an awkward conversation as they apparently had no issue with it but I'm glad I reported it anyway.