As a Black woman growing up in Sussex, I presumed, like many of my White peers, that Black people had made no contribution to society other than becoming slaves or bumping up the deprivation figures. There was nothing in my school-books to tell me otherwise.
Twenty years later it seems that little has changed. Last year I talked to students of Black and south Asian ancestry about their school experiences.
If schools are meeting their legal duty to promote race equality, these young people did not know about it. They spoke of unresolved racial bullying, of staff "mistaking" them for the school's one other Black student, of having to internalise racist comments as "jokes". And Black History Month? Most did not realise it existed.
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