Learning points:
Reflect on: Consider a situation where you would speak to a new colleague about racism. What feelings, thoughts, and emotions arise? How would the feelings be different depending on whether the person was white or a person of colour?
Racial literacy involves training aimed at growing our ability to move through racial discomfort, so we can have productive conversations and address racism. Unfortunately, fear of using the wrong language, embarrassing ourselves, being isolated, being labelled racist or ‘difficult’, can be paralysing and hinder our anti-racist activism.
We must recognise that white people cannot know what it is like to experience racism as this is intrinsically tied to historical oppression, and systemic inequality. White privilege means you and others like you are not systemically and have not been historically discriminated against on the basis of your race – but this does not mean that you have never struggled or faced inequality, just that your race is not the reason for this.
In order to move through discomfort and become more confident talking about racism, it will be important to self-reflect on our own racial identity and practice talking about this. Programmes such as ‘Building Racial Literacy’, that arose from the Scottish Government’s Anti-racism in Education Programme, which the EIS are a part of, have taken hundreds of education practitioners through a robust process of reflecting on their own racial identity, practicing talking about racism, and considering practical steps to take anti-racist action.