The headmistress at a top boarding school has “unreservedly apologised” for using the word “negro” in an assembly as a wave of protests by black pupils against “white privilege” sweeps across schools at the end of Black History Month.
Samantha Price, 46, headmistress at Benenden, the Kent girls’ boarding school where Princess Anne was a pupil, was explaining to pupils the origins of the month in 1926. At the time it was, according to Wikipedia, called “Negro History Week” in America, she said.
Some of the senior girls protested about her use of the word, fearing that other pupils would think they were also entitled to use a word some find as offensive as the n-word.
Price said that “by using this word in this context I was attempting to show how far language around black people has come since then”.
She added: “However, in hindsight I recognise that it was not necessary to use the specific word and I accept that by using this word at all I have caused offence to some pupils. Clearly, this was never my intention and I unreservedly apologise for that error.”
Price also raised the question in assembly of whether Black History Month was needed in the 21st century since “black history should be fully immersed in UK culture by now”. She stressed she did not hold that view but that it was “an important debate to have”.
At Nonsuch, a girls’ grammar school in Surrey, hundreds of children held a recent demonstration to protest against its handling of an alleged racist incident. A pupil is understood to have made allegedly derogatory remarks on Snapchat at the time of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis in May, which sparked the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests.
The teenagers held placards with slogans such as “Tolerating racism is racism” and the raised fist salute associated with the BLM movement. The school later issued a statement to the local newspaper saying it had disciplined the pupil whose original post had caused offence. Nonsuch could not be reached for comment.
At Wimbledon High School, a private girls’ day school in southwest London, pupils raised objections after the school did not start Black History Month on October 1. The headmistress, Fionnuala Kennedy, said the school had held events later in the month and was doing a range of relevant activities throughout the year.
She said she had told pupils that the school was reconsidering renaming the sports hall, which is named after Sir James Drax, a plantation owner in Barbados linked to the slave trade.
London Fields Primary School in Hackney renamed its classes after BAME people, and put images of the inspirational figures on its website. The project was well received, with the musically gifted Kanneh-Mason family performing at the school and the designer Ozwald Boateng inviting classes to his workshop.
But the school was shocked to receive a demand from a photographic agency for £1,700 to use the images. AFP, via an agency acting on its behalf, has cut the demand to £500 but said “copyright infringement is a huge problem, especially with the added dimension of the internet. It is standard practice for AFP, like other media, to defend it, especially for pictures.”
The protests at some of the country’s top schools highlight how they are fast becoming the latest battleground in the race wars. Earlier this year, hundreds of black alumni spoke out about the allegedly racist abuse they suffered at the hands of teachers and colleagues at other fee-paying schools. One pupil said he had been called a “negro amigo”, and others described having bananas left outside lockers. Many wrote to their old schools detailing their experiences, demanding changes to the curriculum and calling for teachers to be given bias training.
Exam boards have started to discuss bringing more BAME authors and texts into English literature syllabuses as well as making topics, such as migration, mandatory in history. The Runnymede Trust race equality think tank is also working with Penguin, the publisher, on a project to increase racial diversity in literature in schools.
Runnymede’s director, Halima Begum, said she would like to see works by Bernardine Evaristo such as Blonde Roots replace texts such as William Golding’s Lord of the Flies at GCSE.
Last week the equalities minister Kemi Badenoch infuriated many when she said in the House of Commons that teaching that white privilege is a fact was unlawful.
Lavinya Stennett, chief executive of the Black Curriculum, a social enterprise working to teach and support the teaching of black history all year round, said: “Change needs to happen soon. Progress is not happening fast enough. There is a huge movement [in favour of this] from pupils in secondary schools.”
