The status of race and racism in policy : an analysis of project interviews

At the June 2015 Advisory Board meeting for the SES Race, Racism and Education study the project team identified several themes recurring in project interviews. These included: • The landscape of race (whether talking about race is now seen as ‘racist’; policy and the ‘white working class’) • The significance of the Lawrence case (stakeholders v policymakers) • The extent to which current political figures understand race/racism critically? • Did policy ever really take racism seriously? • Hindsight, memory and reconstructing the past Subsequently, individual team members have taken the lead in developing analysis of the interview data and exploring emerging themes. The particular focus of this working paper is on interviewees’ perceptions of the shifting status of race and racism within education and within the wider public space, c.1993-2013. It encompasses discussion of the significance of the Lawrence murder case; the extent to which politicians and policy makers understand race and racism critically; and the availability of a public language for discussing race. The period 1993-2013 saw the murder of Stephen Lawrence; the Macpherson Inquiry; the Race Relations (Amendment) Act (2000); London/ City Challenge; the growth of ethnic performance data; and debates on the black/ white gap in UK schools. In form, it comprises a type of oral history, using of interview data to reconstruct multiple viewpoints of a historical period. By shifting the focus of inquiry to foreground ‘hidden’ narratives, this approach enables accounts that might otherwise be trivialised as complaints or as anecdotes to stand as legitimate historical narratives