Greetings,
Not being a historian, and not being a teacher, I thought it might be a little unfair to write down the first thought that came to my mind when I saw this posting, but I will anyway.
I regularly attend lectures at Liverpool University's Centre for the Study for International Slavery, hosted by they University's History Department and the International Slavery Museum. I have remarked privately to the lecturers there on more than one
occasion that it is interesting that there are no Black lecturers in their department, especially teaching African History. I am also trying to remember (and still failing) any of the guest lecturers being Black, but then I haven't attended all the lectures.
The irony of the situation is obvious to all, I am sure.
On the other hand, I have just come back from attending march and rally organised by the NUT in support of their strike action today. For quite a while, it looked to me as if, at the rally itself, held in a Liverpool hotel, I was the only Black person.
I later noticed another whom I know, and like me, he isn't a teacher, but a long-time local activist. I know that he understands that whatever rights that teachers, other workers enjoy today and seek to protect, were won by others who went before, and that
this kind of history is one of the many things that the powers-that-be wish to keep young people ignorant of. And that of course goes for Black History.
I guess this raises a number of issues. Yes, institutional racism is undeniable. Yes, the race of a teacher matters to a certain extent, especially when one bears in mind the attitudes embodied in the interest in and dissemination of what constitutes "history".
Yes, the age-old argument or excuse that one hears all the time: "we just don't get the applications from Black people" may have little or no validity. I am pretty sure that isn't true, but what does it say to an interested outsider to the profession like
me when one goes to a teachers' trade union rally and sees not one Black teacher there??
I would like to think that this was not replicated at rallies in other cities, but to me it says, "Liverpool, we have a problem"
Tayo