Black history must be made mandatory in England to counter hatred and help prevent racist riots, a leading campaigner says.
Lavinya Stennett, who founded the Black Curriculum, warned of the real risks of black history and a diverse curriculum being relegated to just one month, or only being implemented in schools with diverse students and in metropolitan areas.
She pointed to the riots that broke out in England and Northern Ireland in the summer as the consequences of failures to ensure that diverse teaching is widespread and available to all.
Why would, should, we privilege the history of under 4% of the population? Why shouldn;t there be twice as much time for Asian history? And given what they really mean by “black” – caribbean – why not more time for Polish history given the ethnic backgrounds of the population?
Yes, I know, we’re not supposed to make these points. But to repeat – why this privilege being demanded for black history?
Does ‘Black Curriculum’ supply course materials or teacher training sessions?
“Black history must be made mandatory in England to counter hatred and help prevent racist riots”
I would have thought that the more we get this nonsense forced upon us, the more hate-filled and riot-prone we become.
“why not more time for Polish history given the ethnic backgrounds of the population?”
What, and have the brighter kids making the etymological links between “Slav” and “slave”?
Seeeing as how the curriculum struggles with the concept of ‘black’ at the moment ( Septimius Severus, really ?) I think any more than a month might be a bit tricky.
Is it not already then? Sure bloody feels like it, and not for just one month…
My school in the ’80s had very diverse teaching. We had maths, english, biology, physics, geography, history, chemistry, art, woodwork, technology, economics, metalwork, cooking, technical drawing, motor mechanics, french, german, spanish, latin, …..
I think a little education about the slaver nations around the Bight of Benin could be quite interesting.
The word “campaigner” should be replaced by “grifter”.
How about teaching Africans and Asians that white people are human beings and aren’t here to be raped, robbed, beaten or murdered by them for their entertainment?
I think it’s based on World War One artillery tactics – ‘softening them up’ – the messaging needs to be constant and unrelenting from
Almost cradle to grave so when these grifters persuade morons like Starmer to start passing legislation which mandates seizing White people’s property as ‘compensation’ they’re too
Demoralised to object.
Certainly Reform
U.K. should be all over this saying this campaigner will lose any public money her ‘campaign group’ is in possession of and its members will see their pensions rescinded under the ‘Serious Organised Crime Act’ – to
Me they are inciting both civil disorder and racial hatred.
Why not study black history? I just did after reading this post. It’s a relatively small part of history so shouldn’t take that long. The most interesting things I learnt were, there were two Martin Luther Kings, and also Dianne Abbot appears in a list of “40 Famous Black People Who Changed the World”.
But our state broadcaster attempts to present its programmes with presenters who reflect the ethnic mix of Britain. According to BBC Verify, it’s 99.9% black, 0.09% Celt and 0.01% White Anglo Saxon. So your figures are not only wildly inaccurate Tim, but racist as well…
Fine, teach black history. Teach all of it. Teach about crime rates in countries with large black populations and who is responsible. Teach about the roots of slavery in black Africa. Teach about what has happened in countries like South Africa and Zimbabwe under black rule. Teach it all
@Simon Neale
I would have thought that the more we get this nonsense forced upon us, the more hate-filled and riot-prone we become.
This is exactly what they want. Divide and rule. It’s as old as the hills.
Even more fascinatingly
She points to the gulf between what students are learning in Wales, which made black history lessons mandatory in Welsh schools, compared with students in England.
She has been working with the Welsh organisation Diversity and Anti-Racist Professional Learning (DARPL) for the past three years. “It’s been amazing because there’s a lot of appetite,” she said, adding that there was buy-in from teachers because “not only is it mandatory, there’s a culture of reward … It is top-down approved”.
“Whereas in England, what we try to do is still very much bottom up.”
I hope Maro Itoje and other Black England Rugby players have long enough careers to see this ‘trail blazer’s’ Legacy bear fruit in the Six nations…
What an insufferable piece of garbage. And you and I are paying for her in perpetuity.
I hadn’t been paying attention, so I first encountered Black History Month nearly 20 years ago when my half-Japanese daughter went to her North London primary school. I got on quite well with the Head, and noting that there were no black kids in my daughter’s class and few in the school but several yellow and brown ones, asked her when we might expect to see Yellow and Brown History Months, too?
All I received in return was a shit-eating grin.
Some history would be a start.
Not knowing the mistakes of the past we are doomed to repeat them.
But black history is fascinating. The brutality, opression, misogyny, slaving, ritual sacrifice, mass murders and so on… and that’s all before Africans started interacting with Europe and raiding it for slaves.
“Why not Polish history.”
Nothing wrong with it, but nobody’s trying to create a Polish identity within the UK. After a generation or two, three at a stretch it’ll be mixed to the extent it becomes an a dullish conversation about great granny with someone at a party.
The aim with capitalised BHM is to create a separate identity that endures and can be leveraged for political influence i.e. group advantage. It’s not the history but the politics that is smuggled in with it that makes it a bad influence.
Surely the summer riots in England and Northern Ireland were driven by failure of the far-right population to understand that Welshmen sometimes go postal?
Tbf it doesn’t take long to teach black history, it’s the irl equivalent of starting a game of Civilization and never building or inventing anything.
Steve
Are you saying the Marvel ‘Black Panther’ movies are a work of fiction? 🙂
VP,
Am I the only one who thought the Black Panther movie was utterly insulting to Africans. It supposed that the most successful and developed African nation owed its success to a magical stone falling from the sky. Not exactly empowering.
VP – I did think it was a bit unrealistic to have a young black guy use his superpowers to *prevent* crimes.
Sneezer – they lapped that shit up. One of the more depressing things about the modern world is finding out how many billions of dollars the dumbest fucking movies make.
Avatar 2 – the unnecessary dumb sequel to the previous unnecessary dumb blue kitty CGI shitefest – made something like 40 billion pounds. I don’t even know anybody who has seen Avatar 2.
Steve,
“Avatar 2 – the unnecessary dumb sequel to the previous unnecessary dumb blue kitty CGI shitefest – made something like 40 billion pounds. I don’t even know anybody who has seen Avatar 2.”
I saw it. The interesting thing is that it’s quite a conservative story. In a previous era, this would have been a story about a Dad who took his kids away from a town where there was crime, ran away to the next town, family struggle to fit in, and eventually the bad guys catch up with him and he realises he couldn’t keep running and had to fight. With blue people and some pretty amazing underwater CG.
I think it’s one of the reasons it was so popular. It told the sort of story that average Joes like. Not superpowered girlboss, or how men are bad.
WB – I saw the first one, and felt stupider afterwards.
“Unobtanium” – fuck off.
It was like watching an extended demo for a new graphics card.
“under 4% of the population?”
I recently spent a night in hospital, and watched far more TV than I normally do – without the benefit of being able to pre-record programmes and skip the adverts. On the basis of this “research” the 4% figure is at least 20 times too low.
@Steve
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/sep/21/indigenous-australians-most-ancient-civilisation-on-earth-dna-study-confirms (this is 8 years old)
I’m afraid “civilization” is just another one of those words from which has had all meaning wrung from it.
By this definition, the oldest “civilization” is probably bacteria!
The emphasis on black history is an American import, where race = black vs. white, and nothing else comes in.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/sep/21/indigenous-australians-most-ancient-civilisation-on-earth-dna-study-confirms (this is 8 years old)
Even more ancient now, isn’t it?
@ bis
The article says that the “Indigenous Australians” arrived there 50k years ago and a few paragraphs later talks about cave paintings etc from 100k years ago, which rather contradicts the claim that they are the oldest civilisation, and then mentions the Khoe San who have been in place a lot longer than the “Indigernous Australians”.
The Grauniad journalists are innumerate