British schools shouldn’t have “segregated history curriculums” such as a “black history” module, the UK’s equalities minister said on Thursday.
Responding to the comment of Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy on the teaching of black history, Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative minister of state at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities, said she is “completely against” the idea.
“The fact is, black is a category that cuts across so many significant ethnic groups. There’s no way that we could have one piece of history module that would go in-depth,” Badenoch said.
Badenoch argued that the government’s proposal of a “model history curriculum,” which she said “explains the story of Britain and all of our places within it,” is what the UK needs to do.
“We cannot have segregated history curriculums for people of different skin color. I’m completely against that, and I don’t support it,” the minister added.
The cross-department policy paper is a response to an independent review on Race and Ethnic Disparities, published in March 2021 by a panel of 10 experts led by Dr. Tony Sewell, that found “very few” of the impediments and disparities that exist were “directly to do with racism,” and listed 24 recommendations that the panel believes would “improve the lives and experiences of individuals and communities across the UK” by building trust between communities and institutions, promoting greater fairness, encouraging agency in individuals, and nurturing social cohesion.
Badenoch said the government’s action plan “considered and responded to” all 24 recommendations, and “in some cases going even further than the report envisaged.”
She also said that the 74 actions set out in the paper are aimed at “building a stronger sense of trust and fairness in our institutions and confidence in British meritocracy; promoting equality of opportunity, encouraging aspiration, and empowering individuals; and encouraging and instilling a sense of belonging to a multi-ethnic UK which celebrates its differences while embracing the values which unites us all.”
The proposals include measures such as improving the adoption rates for ethnic minority children who figure shows are more likely to be in care and less likely to be adopted; enabling better quality “knowledge-rich” learning for young children and ranking university courses by social mobility; supporting community-led rehabilitation and giving young adult offenders a second chance; reinforcing impartiality in the public sector; and stopping the use of “racialised terms such as ‘white privilege’ or imprecise ones like ‘BAME [Black, Asian and minority ethnic]’” as they “have the unintended consequence of pitting groups against each other.”
Labour’s shadow equalities minister Taiwo Owatemi said the Conservative government’s action plan came “woefully late” and rejected the conclusion of the Sewell report, which the plan was based upon.
“Most frustratingly, this strategy unquestionably accepts the Sewell report’s controversial premise that there is no such thing as structural racism in our society. When the Sewell report was published last year, it was met with outrage for its failure to acknowledge that structural racism exists,” she said.
Badenoch responded by saying Owatemi played “a rhetorical trick” in her question and misrepresented the Sewell report.
“It is not true that the commission’s report denied the existence of structural racism. ... In fact, what the commission said is that they did not find institutional racism in the areas they examined,” she said.
Badenoch said it’s “quite wrong” to conflate “racism” and “institutional racism,” as “we see crime[s] in our country every day, yet we do not say that this is an institutionally criminal country.”
Responding to a later question by Conservative MP Jerome Mayhew, Badenoch said that it’s “demoralising” for young ethnic minority children to be taught “everyone in that society is against them” and the rhetoric will cause the children to “give up ... lose aspiration ... and decide not to take up opportunities which they should do.”
