In the past fortnight, since the murder of George Floyd, there have been many discussions about race, discrimination, education, and the urgent need for re-education. This shocking injustice, emblematic of countless others, has given me pause to examine my own prejudices and to do something about the huge gaps in my education on race.

If you’re a white person – even more so if you’re white, British and your close circle of loved ones are also white – it might be convenient to think that racism is an American problem; to quietly believe that the UK used to have swathes of swaggering racist culture, but all of that’s been sorted out now. We’re okay.

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Celebrating diversity

I think I’ve been guilty of that myopic optimism, to an extent. Certainly about the culture at work. I’ve constructed a narrative, rooted exclusively in my own experience, that the FE sector proactively celebrates diversity. Most of us have equality and diversity training coming out of our ears, we celebrate Black History Month, we are aware of the Equality Act’s nine protected characteristics, and we are expected to bung in the problematically named "Fundamental British Values" whenever possible.

Racism exists in FE. Of course, it does. Some students are racist. It’s part of our job to educate them out of ignorance and make it crystal clear that racism is a zero-tolerance issue. I’ve encountered loads of racist students and really struggled to balance the professional response of "that’s not acceptable, so let's challenge your views and explore why you feel like this", with my instinctive response of "get out of my classroom". I worry that (in the context of racist views expressed rather than abuse towards someone specific) exclusion would constitute giving up on education and potentially changing minds. I don’t know. It’s really difficult.

But the problem is bigger. Sadly, shamefully, I believe institutional racism also exists in FE. It would seem that my perception of the sector as a proud advocate of diversity is informed by more than my own experience, but by my naivety, my assumptions and by my privilege – something I thought I was attuned to.

Racism is a sensitive subject to tackle. Like many people, I’m nervous about discussing race publicly in case I get the language slightly wrong, or in case I'm unintentionally ignorant of my privilege. But I thought that it would be irresponsible not to talk about race as a subject for our weekly UKFEchat Twitter discussion, last week.

In response to my tweets in advance of the chat, a few people got in touch privately. One person, a person of colour, shared their recent experience of a number of racist incidents at their place of work. I should say that this person is not an anonymous name from social media, they are a trusted and well-respected colleague in the sector and I am familiar with the context in which they practice.

After being called "a dirty ass n****r” by a student, this colleague was told by their manager that SLT didn't want to pursue a disciplinary, for fear of repercussions from the community that the student was part of. However, the same student had already been given a disciplinary – for telling another lecturer to "fuck off".

Having spoken to other staff at the same organisation, who had also experienced racial abuse from students with often a similar lack of support from management, this colleague decided that they’d had enough. But the local authority said they had no  colleges – so nothing happened. And the union lead was new in post and only just coping during huge disruption that was happening at the organisation at that point – so nothing happened. 

The colleague told me that they hadn’t encountered such racism since the 1980s and the organisation “made me almost ashamed of myself”. With concern that the senior leadership team could potentially make their work life even harder if they continued to rail against their racist abuse, that colleague has since left their job. They felt vulnerable and exhausted by the fight, but to stay would "be complicit". They described the institutional racism at that large FE organisation as "endemic".

I was equally stunned to hear this story. How much more of this is going on and being suffocated within silos? Decisions were being made by people in positions of power who: have either misunderstood the significance of the situation; were trying to protect their own jobs by quashing potential problems; or are just racists?

We’ve got to keep having open, challenging, difficult conversations about race. Equality and diversity must be a palpable mission, moving tick-box training sessions to a more meaningful dialogue, deeper level of reflection and perhaps a re-evaluation of where racism exists at individual, interpersonal, institutional and structural levels.

And those conversations will probably be uncomfortable and clumsy and confused – I know the ones I pipe up in will be. But, at this point in history, white people choosing not to engage is a display, perhaps even an abuse, of privilege.