Teaching white privilege: making schools less racist or more divided?

Monday 29 November 2021

Join the Academy of Ideas Education Forum for this panel discussion.

 

How should we view the teaching of ‘white privilege’? Is it a helpful tool in combating racial inequality or a divisive idea that sows mistrust?

The concept originated in American academia in the 1980s, but entered British schools last year in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd.

White privilege asserts that white people are automatically advantaged by their skin colour, because they do not have to endure lives beset by racialised systemic discrimination. The fact that black people are more likely to be paid less, sectioned under mental-health rules, or stopped and searched by police is cited as evidence of white privilege at work by advocates of the theory.

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