The race-tinted lens – ‘critical race theory’ is our council’s latest folly

Is Brighton dripping in racism? There seem to be two parallel realities. The first offers a snapshot of a vibrant, diverse population approaching 300,000 of us (and that’s before we add the countless visitors who come here on holiday or to work). Characterising this reality as gripped by “racism” – as our council does – is palpably untrue.

Racism hasn’t vanished of course, but many readers would agree that our city, like 21st century Britain at large, is a place where it’s precisely the rarity of racist violence and abuse, of ethnic tension and discrimination toward non-white people that makes the instances that do occur so profoundly shocking.

But hold on: the second snapshot of reality renders the first an illusion. Viewed through the lens of race-tinted spectacles, the instances of racism that do occur appear as the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

Like our council, those who apply this lens define “racism” far more broadly. It is, they say, “not just the product of individual bias or prejudice, but something embedded in our systems”.

For many, this sounds reasonable until the council comes clean and explains what it really means. “White privilege” is, the council says, embedded in a system serving as the survival strategy for “white supremacy”, indeed “constructed”, as Councillor Amy Heley puts it, “to make life harder if you’re black”.

Only the “race conscious” can see this – it is their foundation myth, their article of faith. Like ghost-hunters, they scan reality and presume an abundance of conduct and disparity data is equivalent to “evidence” of the thing they already believe to be true. Welcome to the quackery of critical race theory.

Doubtless, there is room for improvement in our schools’ history curriculum. Certainly, twenty-something Councillor Heley educated her council colleagues about the systemic white supremacy ruling over us “for 500 years”.

However, for my money, if younger councillors were to reflect on the history of the past 50 years it would be a good start. Indeed, if “lived experience” is now a council buzz phrase then surely discouraging myopic versions of history and lending an ear to those whose lives arc half a century is essential?

I can only speak for myself of course: born in the 1960s, I was racially abused at a rural, mostly “white” 1970s comprehensive (I don’t see myself as “BAME” but with dark skin I was the nearest thing anyone had to a Pakistani).

Later, as an adult living in 1980s London, it was all too obvious what racism meant back then – and who the targeted communities were. In his Observer column, Kenan Malik described these times as “vicious and visceral to a degree almost unthinkable now”.

In housing, employment and all sorts of organisations and services, racism operated as a social force. Discrimination against black and Asian Londoners was normal. Frequently egged along by politicians, magistrates and the police, it was as though everyday racism enjoyed a steady green “go” light (it discreetly signalled to racists that they had permission to proceed with a certain confidence).

Forty years on, with nearly twenty years living in Brighton, I know that the country, like our city, has undergone a profound set of changes. This is worth celebrating because our city captures the essence of how the era of ethnic diversity has driven change and caused the vast bulk of British racism to ebb away.

The fastest growing ethnic minority in Brighton and many other cities is the group categorised as “mixed race”. The number of children with one white and one non-white parent is exponentially rising.

The governing elite’s cynical use of racism as a divide and rule tool collapsed across the 1990s. The swing to a top-down “official” anti-racism, which launched the subjective maxim “a racist incident is any incident perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person”, also came with a paradox: as racism declined, racial “etiquette” started to ramp up.

A new industry of salaried anti-racist officials saw it as vital to disavow talk of decline. I should know because, in 2006, delivering anti-racist education into schools became my job. My role was to film the life of schools. Playgrounds of children demonstrated a picture of multi-ethnic harmony that could’ve taught the adult world a thing or two.

When, in interviews, black and Asian kids told me they had no problems I was told to look harder. Apparently, the children, the staff and the parents were all “in denial”. I filmed workshops where anti-racism trainers explained to 10-year-olds that “race” really, really matters. Black and Asian kids were told to report anything that they felt might be the racism of their white friends.

And so I quit, and I wrote books and articles about ham-fisted schools “anti-racism” policies that would do well to observe the principle first do no harm before they are imposed on children.

Last summer Brighton and Hove was declared to be “an anti-racist” city by its “anti-racist council”. The idea that this council (of all councils) could be anything other than agonisingly anti-racism is perplexing. But of course this well-intended declaration was the panicky reaction of an all-white Labour administration who were desperate not to be caught on the back foot.

To be publicly viewed as unresponsive to Black Lives Matter terrified them. Some might dare to speculate whether, just weeks before accusations of Labour anti-Semitism came to light, Labour leaders hoped for a distraction. By declaring that immediate anti-racism action would be launched, were they hoping to avert the storm that blew in a month later?

Councillor Carmen Appich said: “This is about recognising who does and doesn’t have privilege and how those with privilege can use their power and influence to enable silenced or ignored voices to be heard.

“We can empathise with our BME residents and work with them to make things better and challenge ourselves. Therefore, they must have a voice in decisions that affect their lives, and this should be a direct voice as well as through representation and consultation.”

But did they launch a consultation? No – they didn’t – or ever since.

Recent converts to something called Critical Race Theory (CRT), the council views Brighton (like UK society itself) as locked in to a system of “white privilege”. In short, our council – now a post-anti-semitism scandal Green administration – continue to regard its white inhabitants as complicit.

If pressed, its race experts will say that the city’s almost 60,000 “BAME” residents are complicit too unless they adopt the stance of CRT. As such, the council declaration heralds a manifesto for the immediate actions proposed by CRT.

For critical race theorists, “whiteness” and the racial domination of all white identified people lies at the heart of all social relations. Largely invisible, the everyday racism in our relationships and in our unconscious minds (also internalised by “unaware” non-white people) can be detected with the help of race experts. These range from best-selling author Robin Di’Angelo to the expertise of whoever HR might employ to train staff.

Challenge CRT on its evidence and you become its evidence. Within the council, 3,400 members of staff have thus far received mandatory CRT-based training. Wise employees will take the training and keep their mouths shut (for those who just can’t, joining the Free Speech Union would be wise). Two voluntary sessions have been run for elected members who I gather were required to view, approvingly, a Youtube presentation by Robin DiAngelo.

So let me return to the two parallel realities. I wholeheartedly endorse the first characterisation of our city and I have no doubt that the majority of residents – “BME” or otherwise – will do too. The council rejects this and resolutely stick to their “reality”.

At Hove Town Hall last week, I presented a detailed critique of their shoddy “research” justifying their actions (well-intended though they may be). It’s not difficult to see how this happened. Amid the fervour of events in Minneapolis in May 2020 and a 10,000-strong BLM protest in Brighton a few weeks later, our council was eager to be seen to be taking bold, immediate actions.

This rush to action set in motion policy commitments that included the “Anti-Racist Schools Strategy”, which in November began rolling out a training to school governors, heads and equalities leads in order to provide – in the council’s words – “an understanding of structural/institutional racism, white privilege and a critical race theory approach”.

I would never argue for a blanket ban on CRT in schools. Like any religious or political doctrine students benefit from comparing and contrasting different ideas. Schools operate a neutral sphere and CRT – rather like Creationism – should never be taught as fact.

To the Children, Young People and Skills (CYPS) Committee meeting, on Monday 14 June, I said: “As with your or my personal choice of political or religious creed, we’re free to embrace CRT. As councillors, you are free to be true believers in this or any ideology you like. But as a council committee, the way you have chosen to impose a CRT approach on our schools is illiberal and undemocratic.”

I asked why the CYPS chair felt it appropriate (or indeed lawful) to offer a training to schools that promotes the CRT outlook. Had the council consulted the people of this city, the question of how racialising and divisive this strategy is (or is not) could have been properly evaluated.

The committee chair Hannah Clare’s reply did at least make the adoption of CRT explicit: “Critical race theory is our lens for developing our understanding of the complexities of racism and not an ideology. There is nothing in our strategy that aims to engender guilt or victimhood.”

But shouldn’t we have been told this before it went ahead?

Interpreted through CRTs ideological lens, unsurprisingly the world is transformed into a vortex of racial slights. A notorious Sunday Times feature from 2010 titled England’s Green and Prejudiced Land vilified nearby Lewes as awash with anti-black racism. Professor David Gillborn had schooled the author David James Smith in CRT (Smith had recently moved his family from London to Lewes).

Gillborn explained to Smith that all those unintentional, seemingly innocuous “little incidents” are in fact “microaggressions”. It quickly dawned on the author that his mixed-race children were under a sustained daily attack.

“Depressingly, Gillborn told me that our son was walking around with a bull’s eye on his chest,” wrote Smith, who suddenly realised that even teachers commenting on his daughter’s Afro hairstyle is deeply problematic (“being treated like you are some creature of exotic plumage”).

Smith’s quick-fire racial literacy training had offered him the lens through which to see the micro-racism he and his family had been missing. His trips to the school to make complaints and the all-round education of his children in race hypersensitivity had begun.

The decade from 2010 has seen the triumph of impact over intent and a medicalisation of “offence” into trauma. Talk of microaggression is commonplace here in Brighton. At an anti-racism training for council staff last year, “Afro hair” provided the classroom example of microaggressions that must be confronted and reported with zero-tolerance.

Another example alerted staff to respond should they hear a co-worker being rude about the “different” food a person from a different ethnicity was eating: to be “anti-racist” is to call out the behaviour.

And so when Councillor Clare speaks of the racism that pupils and parents “tell us happens in schools”, are we allowed to hear a bit more about this? She is “hopeful” the council five year-plan of CRT anti-racism training will “make a difference”. But who, apart from a close-knit ring of CRT-supporting activists advising the council, has any faith that their actions will not cause harm?

Should the “BAME” individuals and groups comprising the council’s new Community Advisory Group (CAG) be made to carry the burden of approving a schools CRT approach on behalf of all 60,000 BAME residents? Do CAG even agree with CRT among themselves? Were they told about the “CRT lens”?

The group that I support – Don’t Divide Us – has just set up its own petition. Please consider signing it.

Adrian Hart is a local activist and author of Leave Those Kids Alone: How Official Hate-Speech Regulation Interferes in School Life (2011) and That’s Racist! How the regulation of speech and thought divides us all (2014). He blogs at adrianhart.com.