Wales’ Labour-run government has announced its aim to take action to turn Wales into an equitable anti-racist nation through mandatory anti-racism training and lessons for school children and all public bodies.
On Tuesday, the Welsh government announced its Anti-racist Wales Action Plan to “eradicate” racism from the NHS, hospitals, schools, and more in the country.
Anti-racism Is Marxist Ideology
In the introduction to the plan (pdf), the nationalist-Marxist militant organisation the Black Panthers was quoted: “If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.” It added that it was inspired by George Floyd to take action.Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, died after a Minneapolis police officer held his knee against Floyd’s neck and back for approximately nine-and-a-half minutes as Floyd laid handcuffed and face-down on the pavement while another officer restrained his lower body and a third officer knelt on Floyd’s back.
Floyd’s death prompted mass demonstrations in many countries as protestors called for racial justice.
Anti-racism is one teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT), which is a Marxist ideology. It defines class struggle between “oppressors” (white people) and the “oppressed” (everybody else), as was done with Marxism’s reduction of human history to a struggle between the “bourgeoisie” and the “proletariat.”
Prof. Emmanuel Ogbonna of Cardiff Business School said in the introduction of the plan that racism is “constantly mutating.”
“Racism is constantly mutating. If we fail to eradicate it, it will continue through generations,” he said. “It becomes a perverse inheritance that expresses itself in different mutations, and that blights the lives of future generations in different ways.
“Many years ago, racism was overt, with many ethnic minority people told directly that they were not wanted. Today, racism has morphed into subtle everyday behaviours but is no less pernicious in its impacts. We want to eradicate racism and we believe that adopting an anti-racist approach is the key to this.”
Wales will also become the first in the UK to make it mandatory to teach black, Asian, and minority ethnic histories and experiences in the new Curriculum for Wales. This is being rolled out to primary schools from September 2022.
It added that “while this work is for the benefit of all children, there is an intersectionality with the experiences and outcomes of children and young people from ethnic minority backgrounds.”
Other measures include anti-racist culture and practices to be embedded in every further education institution and adult learning provider in Wales. A performance goal linked to anti-racism for leaders and reverse mentoring and anti-racism training will also be introduced.
The NHS will also require anti-racist leadership at all levels by direction. All NHS Boards, Trusts, and Special Authorities will need to report demonstrable progress in driving anti-racism at all levels.
‘The Most Important Thing Is Their Skin Colour’
Dr. Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, head of education strategy for Don’t Divide Us, an organisation set up to take a stand against the UK’s “divisive obsession with people’s racial identity,” told The Epoch Times that Wales’s critical race theory led policies is “detrimental to minorities and also contemptuous of the majority,” that the Welsh government is using a “minoritarian elitist argument that is really delegitimizing the majority opinion.”“The subtext of anti-racist training is that unless you have this training, you will be a racist. That’s a horrible message to be sending out to people you are supposed to represent,” she said.
For children, the Anti-racist Wales Action Plan claimed that “developing negative stereotypes about ethnic minority people can start as early as age four.” It added that “even those who think they are non‑racist can have ingrained stereotypes which may, if combined with a position of power, result in negative behaviour towards ethnic minority people.”
What could be more divisive than telling children how different they are? They are going to be told that the most important thing is their skin colour?” said Cuthbert.
She also questioned the “superficial” educational aspect of teaching Asian, black, and minority history, which she claimed would be a “performative tactic.”
“Are they going to be teaching the history of Asia ie of Japan, China, or Uzbekistan? Each of these nations has a distinct history and they just lump it under Asian, similar to black. Have they done any work or thought to the enterprise that is going to be needed for each of these histories? Will it be Ibram X., Kendi, or DiAngelo’s take on Post Colonialism or is it going to be serious work?” said Cuthbert.
“Babies are taught to be racist or antiracist—there’s no neutrality,” the Boston University professor wrote in his childrens’ book “Antiracist Baby.”
Cuthbert notes that in introducing the plan, the Welsh government highlights an infamous quote attributed to the Black Panther Party, a political organisation that advocated armed struggle: “if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. ”
Cuthbert said, “Kendi’s idea is part of this reductive, binary thinking that says, ‘If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem’ and that is replicated everywhere—that unless you are actively anti-racist then you are part of the problem. The idea is the same,” she said.
“What we will be doing to a generation is teaching them to be very cynical and or very painfully self-conscious and that their relationships with each other will be quite fraught,” she said.
‘Lazy Narratives’
In an article in January in The Equiano Project, Ben Sears, a former local government policy officer and teacher who lives in South Wales, said that when “governments and policy-makers” see the world in terms of concepts like CRT and white privilege, “we are fed simplistic, lazy narratives about the causes of problems, and in turn, are offered simplistic, lazy solutions.”“Attempts to deconstruct institutions runs through every level in Wales,” Sears told The Epoch Times.
“What was clear was there wasn’t any challenge to all this. There still isn’t—because of the fear factor, for fear of being called a racist,” he added.
“You only have to look at the U.S. for that. You are trying to eradicate something which is as much about human nature as it is about anything. The way it is framed will create more division rather than less, exacerbating the problems that it claims to resolve,” said Sears.
As of publication, the Welsh government has not replied to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
