Notes on: Sewell, T. (2010).
Masterclass in victimhood. Prospect.
September 22.
ttps://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/essays/54494/master-class-in-victimhood
Dave Harris
[Scathingly summarised by Gilborn and
Vieler-Porter as evidence of Sewell's
dangerousness)
He visited a city primary school in London to help
out a former student. He 'immediately spotted her
problem pupils, who were play fighting at the back
of the room'. He divided the class into five
groups and set them the task to draw a '"wonderful
African mask"', but with very uneven resources: a
group of well behaved Black girls had lots of
resources, but these were reduced for the other
tables, ending with the bad boys' table who
were given very minimal resources, but were
encouraged to trade (no-one wanted to trade).
The bad boys protested and said that he was
racist. They were unable to trade. They said the
White teachers were always picking on them and
that the school was prejudiced. There were thought
of as gangsters. Teachers were rude. He ignored
the complaints and offered an inducement to
complete the task. They got down to work. The
competition was judged and they were the winners.
He asked what they had learned — they felt bad but
they were determined to beat everyone else against
the odds. He told them he disliked their whingeing
but was proud because they'd got focused and used
their talent.
The first generation of Caribbean Black immigrants
arrived in a society that was not prepared and
were 'burned out in a racist schooling system' as
Coard described: there was seen as intellectually
inferior 'on the basis of linguistic difference,
cultural attitudes' and belief.
African Caribbean boys are still at the bottom of
the league and they get there during the course of
their education. They are also more likely to be
excluded from school, in some areas three times
more likely. However, although the level of
underachievement has remained the same 'the
reasons behind it have changed'.
Diane Abbott claimed that teachers are failing
Black boys, seeing them as gangsters. Gillborn and
Mirza have detected indirect discrimination…
Because schools want to protect their position in
league tables which leads to allocation of Black
children to the lower tiers in GCSE.
[Then the irritating sentences]. 'My challenge to
these claims is that times have changed. What we
now see in schools is children undermined by poor
parenting, peer group pressure and an inability to
be responsible for their own behaviour. They are
not subjects of institutional racism'. They did
not do homework or pay attention and were
disrespectful to children. Instead they need to be
challenged 'we have given them the discourse of
the victim – a sense that the world is against
them and they cannot succeed'.
Gillborn and Abbott say that White teachers have
low expectations but he has 'never been convinced
by this'. However school leaders have low
expectations because they 'do not want to be seen
as racist and… position Black boys as victims'.
Government initiatives are equally flawed — one
took 20 Black role models as inspiration, but for
Sewell 'this is desperate and patronising. Why
can't Black boys be inspired by anyone around who
is positive, including White teachers?'
The bad boys in the class 'had a default reaction
— all their experience was seen through the lens
of racism'. They could only understand themselves
as a victim. They can only succeed if they
felt they could control their world and this is
what he was teaching them — 'not to accept their
lot but to move on from being a victim'.
Young Black boys feel the world is against them
but they cannot find the source of the trouble.
'We have a generation of all the language and
discourse of the race relations industry but no
devil to fight'. Much of the evidence of
institutional racism is flimsy. In one study,
teacher assessments were examined and
revealed uinderscoring for Black and White
working class children, but overscoring for Indian
and Chinese children. This proves little, and was
not matched by results in the real SAT scores. The
results actually for White working class boys in
some tests like reading age are worse.
He tried to work with African Caribbean boys to
help them succeed and break with a victim
mentality. He set up a charity to run 'summer
schools, internships, and other interventions' to
aspire to professions in the sciences. He chose
children carefully, from schools with 'poor
background, little history of sending students to
university'. They attended summer camps at elite
universities. The results were 'fantastic' in
terms of A-level grades and going to universities.
They visited Jamaica for a summer science camp.
The consequence was to make them feel '"raceless"'
since most of the population looked like them and
they felt they were judged on the content of their
character. None of the people they met 'once
mentioned race '. They returned with greater
confidence in their own abilities.
They avoided any talks on 'Black identity, Black
history or mentoring with Black role models'.
There is a similar program in New York which began
by offering poor children 'shorter holidays a
longer school day. There, school results went
through the roof'.
His charity gave the boys 'resilience to move away
from a negative peer pressure in some of their
communities. They loved being intelligent and
joining a group with the same values. It took us
four years to shield them from those who want them
to wallow in self-pity'.
|
|