It has been exactly two years since UK TV station Channel 4 broadcast its documentary The School That Tried to End Racism (read my July 2020 piece for Spiked here). At that moment in June 2020, the political and media focus on the Covid-19 panic pivoted to the Black Lives Matter protests in response to the killing of George Floyd in the United States. Filmed in March 2019, the programme makers could not have imagined the rising tide of wokery that would elevate the status of their documentary and propel it toward a BAFTA and numerous other awards. The School That Tried to End Racism quickly became the template for similar documentaries around the world. To this day, excerpts from the film show up in staff training sessions – in schools, universities, local councils and private corporations – up and down the country. In Brighton and Hove – a flagship for critical race theory in schools – even its councillors received training that included a scene from the film.
The two-part documentary was filmed at Glenthorne High School, a state secondary in Sutton, south London. The films charted the progress of twenty-four 11 and 12 year-olds who had volunteered to participate in an anti-racism training programme. It seems no-one knew – not the school or the parents – that the training was based on the contested principles of critical race theory (CRT).
CTR originated in the United States. It argues that ‘racism’ shouldn’t merely refer to explicit acts of hatred or discrimination, but to what leading exponent of CRT in the UK David Gillborn describes as ‘hidden operations of power’ deeply ingrained within a culture of white privilege. Here, the condition of ‘whiteness’ describes the ‘shared power and dominance of white interests’. Amid this spectre of racial domination, ‘racism’ need not refer to explicit acts of hatred or discrimination: it simply floats in the ether permanently signalling its presence to the oppressed ‘other’. As such, the spectre of this free-floating racism – racism without racists – sets itself up as an indisputable truth. So long as there are white people there will be ever-more work for the CRT trained race experts.
In The School That Tried To End Racism, CRT practitioner Dr Nicola Rollock and social psychologist Professor Rhiannon Turner sat in an adjoining classroom watching live TV monitors showing the various training exercises play out. Before segregating the children into white and non-white ‘affinity groups’, the three-week programme began with a controversial technique called the Implicit-Association Test (IAT) originating decades ago – like CRT – at Harvard University. In this version of the IAT test, the pupils had to make snap decisions based on images or words flashing on a tablet. They tapped different icons to reveal how they associated faces or names with good or bad connotations. The result of the test was that 18 of the 24 pupils, including many non-white pupils, had an apparent preference towards white people. Or at least this was the expert interpretation. ‘While the results might seem shocking…’ said Professor Turner to camera, ‘… it’s what we expect in a majority white country like the UK… We’re exposed from an early age to white people in a position of power.’
An array of exercises then followed most notable of which was a sports track event requiring the children to take up starting positions but only take a step forward if, for example, ‘you have never been asked where you come from’. The race was further hampered for non-white contestants with commands like ‘step back if you have every worried about stop and search’. The race was, of course, designed as a vivid explanation of that key CRT concept ‘white privilege’.
Within days of The School That Tried To End Racism being aired, Don’t Divide Us supporter Howard Sherwood began his forensic take-down of the films. Sherwood demanded Channel 4 explain how it justified subjecting children to pseudo-scientific experiments designed to legitimise a highly contentious political ideology. Sherwood was scathing of Channel 4’s use of IAT, a test that he saw as “crucial to the programme’s take on racism in 11-year-olds”. “It was used as the starting point to establish a level of implicit racial bias in a group who had previously considered themselves to be ‘colour blind’”, explained Sherwood, “[the test] was then repeated at the end of the experiment to show the extent to which racial bias had reduced”. In other words, the ‘before and after’ effect of convinced the children (and thereby viewers) that the various exercises had somehow rinsed-out the racial bias that a systemically racist society inevitably instils.
Suitably re-educated, a black girl is invited to comment: ‘We’ve been living in a place where white people are more superior – we never knew that until the first test – because that has been embedded in us for 10 years.’ In short, the Channel 4 experiment had convinced the children that Britain was a racist country.
At the end of the film, as if schooling the Department for Education itself, Dr Rollock summed up the lesson that must learned: ‘We can’t leave addressing race and racism to chance. These children are going to be running the country, employing people in years to come and we want them to have the skills and the awareness around race and indeed racial justice’.
A central feature of the new, CRT-compliant, anti-racism is the disavowal of the aspiration to be ‘colour blind’. Martin Luther King’s 1963 evocation of a colourblind future is overruled. The School That Tried To End Racism includes a clip of Dr King describing how his children might one day be judged ‘not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character’. But the films narrator takes over. It states ‘….now many experts argue that colourblindness is itself a form of racism.’ To drive the point home, Dr Rollock dismisses the ‘colourblind’ aspiration to see past race. Any child, any parent, anyone taking a colourblind approach must desist. As Rollock explained to camera, the problem with the colourblind approach is that ‘you’re erasing my experience as a woman of colour. You’re erasing my history, you’re erasing the fact that I experience racism’.
Sherwood evisceration of Channel 4’s use of IAT provoked a reaction. In a reply to Sherwood’s complaint, Director of Programmes Ian Katz dismissed his concerns about IAT by arguing that the televised school experiment “makes clear to the viewer that it [IAT] is not universally accepted”. Katz attempts to float this instantly sinking argument by referring to how the narrator introduces IAT with the line “widely accepted as an accurate benchmark of unconscious racial bias” (presumably he thinks ‘widely accepted’ communicated to viewers the truth (which is IAT is, in fact, widely contested and highly controversial). Sherwood cites several examples of controversy over IAT including Jesse Singal, a respected scientific writer who points out that the IAT is “mired in controversy” before listing each one.
Was Channel 4 really expecting critics to believe it was okay to run quack psychological experiments on school children? It seems so. Sherwood has much to say on the ethics of doing this. As he points out, “one white pupil became tearful on more than one occasion, expressing concern that his personal friendships were under threat and another, of mixed heritage, experienced stress, confusion and anger about the way she felt she was being forced to choose whether she was black or white.” Katz’s reply spoke defensively about “psychological support made available throughout the filming period (and beyond)…” Indeed, Channel 4 has guidelines for working with under-18s that include specific measures to protect children. Yet a freedom of information request seeking clarification on the ‘Consulting Psychologist’ mentioned in the programme credits resulted in the school admitting, “There was no independent clinical child psychologist appointed for the duration and aftermath of the C4 project”.
Despite its strength, Howard Sherwood’s critique was brushed aside by Channel 4 and later by Ofcom who appeared to limit its complaints-review to consulting with Channel 4 and, unsurprisingly, echoing the same defensive answers.
Criticism was always going to bounce off The School That Tried To End Racism. It surfaced at a time when the ideas of critical race theory were enjoying a huge boost. Moreover, a key component of CRT is the protective force-field it mounts to deter criticism. Built-in to CRT is a condemnation of those who would dare to challenge. Challengers become useful pop-up examples of the racism-denial we should all expect in a systemically racist society. And they become further proof that the re-training of untutored minds, as exemplified by Channel 4, is exactly what’s needed. It’s no coincidence that Dr Rollock (the prodigy of David Gillborn) led the way in propagating CRT ideas in the UK and in 2015 her expertise was eagerly sought by the civil service.
The School That Tried To End Racism became celebrated in the media as ground-breaking. It went on to win various prestigious awards and inspire re-makes by television networks around the world. It would be impossible to count the number of times clips from the programme are currently included in school lesson plans and staff training. When the British Council’s website for assisting in the teaching of English includes a lesson plan based, approvingly, on The School That Tried To End Racism we get an idea how successful this programme has been. Across these two years since the documentary 2-parter was broadcast its trailblazing role cannot be underestimated.
As Brighton and Hove City Council’s ‘Racial Literacy 101’ teacher training has shown, an army of external providers presume to know what teachers must be taught. So revered is the message these race missionaries bring, local authorities feel under no obligation to tell parents that what amounts to partisan political activists clutching their US-made CRT doctrines now shape children’s thinking on race. If parents ask for teacher and pupil CRT training materials to be revealed in-full they are refused on the grounds that revealing the material breaches the commercial interests and personal privacy of the external provider.
We can thank Channel 4 for one thing at least. As Sherwood speculates, the network was doubtless ‘on the look-out for edgy, ground-breaking content that enhanced their profile as the social justice champions of UK broadcasting’. Enter the brash, ideological zeal of CRT exponent Nichola Rollock and The School That Tried To End Racism, decisive in the mainstreaming of CRT in Britain, offered us a powerful insight into a both a hidden curriculum operating in schools and similar indoctrination programs throughout public life.