The British Educational system is written by ‘pale, male, stale white people.’

Black History is not just for Black people. Black History is British History. Without Black History, British History is incomplete. And as Britain was a global Empire, Britain's story has global ramifications.

Long have people challenged the government and the Education sector to revise the National Curriculum to encompass Black History into the overall Historical tapestry of Britain. Post George Floyd, the collective voice demanding an inclusive curriculum is louder than ever. 

Celebrities such as Lenny Henry have said that “Black history is part of almost every part of British history,” and that it “needs to be part of the national curriculum – if it isn’t, we get a distorted, inaccurate picture of Britain’s past." Even the Mirror has called on National Teachers Day are ‘calling for the history of Black Britons to be made a mandatory part of the national curriculum.’ 

Despite these calls for a more inclusive fuller picture of British History to be taught in our education systems, black people have learnt not to trust the British government. It was in the 70’s when Bernard Coards pamphlet was published: How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Subnormal in the British School System, in which he exposed how the British Education system actively sabotaged the education of black students.

A new BBC documentary (released June 2021) has revealed how hundreds of black children were wrongly sent to schools for the 'emotionally subnormal' in the 1960s and 70s because of 'rampant racism'. Subnormal: A British Scandal, (available through the previous link until May 2023) explores how students who were incorrectly deemed to have a limited intellectual ability, were sent to ESN (Educationally Sub Normal) schools, which categorised them as having moderate to severe learning disabilities or being 'un-teachable'. 

Black children were labelled 'thick and unintelligent' because they 'couldn't speak the Queen's English', and were prevented from pursuing any further education after leaving the ESN schools. 

As part of celebrating Black History Month, I have been looking at our educators who are on the front line, attacking the issues head on. One such educator is Anthony G Reddie.

Professor Anthony G. Reddie is Director of the Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture at Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford and an Extraordinary Professor of Theological Ethics at the University of South Africa, specialising in black theology.

The first question I asked Professor Reddie was:

“What positive changes for the inclusion of Black History have you seen happen across the education sector post George Floyd?”

“There have been quite a lot actually. I think for me, it’s not so much the changes, it is whether they are substantive, or whether they are more cosmetic. But there have certainly been changes. I think in a number of higher education institutions, like if you take my subject: Theology and Religious Studies, I would say prior to George Floyd, the kind of work that I was doing was very much a distant adjunct. It was the kind of thing a few institutions were interested in but in a piecemeal way. It had very little to do with the mainstream of the discipline, which is essentially, as a colleague of mine defined as, ‘pale, male, stale white people.’" 

"And so for the vast majority theology is the study of God and those who believe in God. If you look at the world and the people who believe in God, it is very varied of course. For example, if you take Christianity."

"Most Christianity takes place in the global south. It takes place away from Europe, and the people involved in the worship of God revealed in Jesus Christ, are people of colour. Consider academica now and it is ‘spot the black person.’ Literally, spot the black person. I would probably say in the last two or so years, what we have seen is an attempt to try and rectify what has largely gone unnoticed and unheeded by white people for the past 500 years. Now there has been this quick, accelerated attempt to play catch up. Which has had two impacts on me. One is comical. And the other is much more serious. First the comical."

"Think about when children are small and they are learning how to speak. They are trying out words but they aren't quite sure how to put a sentence together, and there would be a mixture of proper words that they have heard their parents say, and then words that  they just made up in their heads. That’s because they are just beginning to learn the language. In some respects, that is how some of my white colleagues have been when it comes to talking about race. Particularly when it comes to race in my academic study of Theology and Religious Studies. It’s been a bit like watching a toddler learn how to speak."

"You can almost see them testing out various words. They will say, ‘So Anthony, I was wondering how people…’  and you can see them thinking: ‘I don’t want to say, ‘people like you,’ because that might be racist, I want to say ‘black’ but am unsure if I can say ‘black’ because that might be racist, I know they can’t say ‘coloured,’ but do I say ‘ethnic minorities?’"

"So you’re trying to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t even know the grammar. They don’t even know how to think in a way that takes seriously this phenomena i.e ethnic and cultural difference that has been with them for decades, centuries even. And now suddenly they are trying to learn the language in 18 months/two years, that they have not been interested in previously."

"The other more serious impact has been the way in which suddenly now there is a great need to try and invent shorthand ways to rectify the flaws on the curriculum that again, have been in existence for decades; centuries." 

"The best way that I can characterise that is to borrow an image from Jeremiah Wright who is a leading African American pastor and black theology scholar. He gives this analogy about making a cake."

"You put all your ingredients into a bowl but you forget to put in sugar. You bake the cake. It comes out of the oven. You let it stand to cool. You cut a slice and take a bite, and realise the cake is fresh. There’s no sugar in there. It just doesn’t taste good. You have one of two ways of rectifying it." 

"The proper way is, you should say that this cake is just not edible. Throw it away. Start it again. But this time when you start it you ensure that into the mix, you put all the right ingredients, so that when the cake comes out, it will be a cake that’s fit for purpose. That’s what you should do."

"So when we talk about ‘decolonizing the curriculum’ post George Floyd, what we should be doing is going back to the first principles and saying: This curriculum is not fit for purpose. We need to take it apart and start again. Start again intentionally with the understanding that the voices (let’s say, people of African descent) that have been significantly left out of the way we should think about knowledge, across all subjects, is something that we need to do in order for that curricula to be fit for purpose."

"But they don't do that. It’s too much hard work. Effectively it means that whiteness and white supremacy would have to give up power to do that. So instead, on the cake,  they say, ‘we’ll put lots of marzipan on top; we’ll spread honey on top; we’ll put sprinkles on top; we’ll put skittles and various other sweet things on top: let's stack sweet things on top of the cake in order to make the cake edible. And that is problematic in two ways."

"Firstly, it’s cosmetic. If someone gives you that piece of cake and that person doesn’t want all those things on top, all they have to do is scrape it off and the cake will go back to normal."

"But also, more fundamentally, if you eat the cake, you might get a little bit of sweetness at the top but the rest of it will remain unchanged because it was never created with the right ingredients in the first place." 

"For me, that analogy is the one that we are working with at the moment. Far too often, what we are having are people in a performative sense, doing the equivalent of putting lots of sweet things on top of an existing entity that is fundamentally unjust and not fit for purpose."

‘Fit for purpose.’ The curriculum that stands across our educational board, according to Professor Reddie, isn't fit for purpose. The movement at grassroots levels in schools and institutions is just sweetening on a fresh cake of white supremacy. But black people have a role in shaping our Modern Britain. The power of Black Theology can be used as a vehicle to change and develop consciousness within the educational field and it can be used as a tool to empower and free people. My final question to professor Reddie was as follows: 

"What are your top three recommendations of books that people can read to help educate themselves about understanding how Black Theology can be used as a tool to empower and free a people?" His recommendations are as follows:

1. A Black Theology of Liberation - James. H Cone.
2. White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus - Jacqueline Grant
3. SCM Core textbook in Black theology - Anthony G Reddie

In the next article as part of Black History Month I will interview Professor Corinne Fowler, a research expert at the University of Leicester, and Director of Colonial Countryside: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted. Professor Fowler is an expert in the legacies of colonialism and postcolonialism to literature, heritage, and representations of British history. We will discuss her views on how Britain is still benefiting from its colonial and Empirical history.

Professor Anthony G Reddie’s books can be found here.