Let me set the scene. I'm standing in front of a room full of school staff. Teachers, TAs, a few senior leaders. Lovely people. Genuinely well-meaning. And I've just asked them: *"How do you approach conversations about race with your students?"* There's a pause. Then, like clockwork — and I mean *every single time* — someone smiles, sits up a little straighter and says the words: **"Well, we treat everyone the same here."** And I smile back. Because I know they mean it. I also know it's the educational equivalent of saying "I don't see colour" — well-intentioned, but quietly doing a lot of harm. Here's the thing. I've been in rooms like this more times than I can count. And before I was running anti-racism and racial literacy sessions through YOUbuntu, I was a dance teacher — specialising in dances of Black origin. HipHop, Street dance, Locking, Popping Caribbean & African Traditional dance, you name it. And without fail, every single class I taught somehow turned into an accidental Black history lesson. My students would ask: *"Where does this come from?"* And suddenly we'd be talking about colonialism, cultural exchange, the African diaspora, the resilience threaded through every rhythm. I didn't plan it. It just happened. Because you cannot separate the culture from the history, and you cannot separate the history from the people living it right now. That's how I ended up here. Doing this work. Because those conversations mattered — and most people weren't having them. --- So. Racial Literacy. What Is It? Racial literacy is simply the ability to recognise, understand and talk about race and racism in an honest, informed and compassionate way. That's it. No political agenda. No blame. No guilt trip. Just… understanding. It means being able to: - Notice when race might be a factor in a situation - Recognise stereotypes and bias — including your own - Have a conversation about race without the wheels immediately coming off - Listen to someone's lived experience without getting defensive - Understand that the same comment can land very differently depending on who it's said to And crucially — this is not just for people from ethnically diverse backgrounds. This is for **everyone**. Including — especially — the predominantly white workforce staffing most of our schools. --- Back to "We Treat Everyone the Same" I want to revisit this, because it's important and I genuinely do not want to throw anyone under the bus for saying it. When teachers say this, they're usually telling me something real: *I care about every child. I try to be fair. I don't want anyone to feel singled out.* That's beautiful. That's what we want. But here's where it gets complicated. Treating everyone the same assumes everyone is experiencing school in the same way. And they're not. There's the child who has never once seen their culture reflected positively in the curriculum. The student whose name gets mispronounced every single day but who's too exhausted to correct anyone for the hundredth time. The young person who gets followed around the school corridors with slightly more suspicion than their peers — not because of anything they've done, but because of how they look. These children are in your classrooms. And they are not experiencing school the same way as the child sitting next to them. Treating them *identically* in that context doesn't solve the problem. It just means the problem is invisible — to you. --- "It's Just Banter." No. Sit Down. One of the things I talk about a lot in my sessions is microaggressions — and I always brace myself slightly when I introduce the word, because I can see some people's eyes glaze over like I've started speaking Latin. So let's keep it simple. Microaggressions are the small, everyday comments or behaviours that communicate — usually unintentionally — something dismissive or othering about a person's identity. They're the paper cuts of racism. Any single one, in isolation, might seem harmless. The accumulation of them, over years, is not. Things like: - *"Where are you really from?"* (Because apparently your answer of "Birmingham" wasn't convincing enough.) - *"You're so articulate!"* (Genuinely — what did you expect?) - *"Can I touch your hair?"* (The answer is no. It is always no.) - The automatic assumption that the Black boy who spoke up in class was being aggressive, not passionate. None of these are shouted slurs. None of them would necessarily end up in a formal incident report. But they are experienced — repeatedly, quietly, cumulatively — by students in schools across the country. Every day. And when a child tries to name it and an adult says *"they didn't mean it like that"* or *"you're being too sensitive"* — that's not pastoral care. That's abandonment. --- Why Schools? Why Now? Here's something that doesn't get said enough: the majority of the most formative — and most damaging — experiences people have with racism happen during their school years. This is not an accident. School is where children spend most of their time outside of their homes. It's where they form their understanding of identity, where they figure out where they fit, where they first encounter the world as a social place with rules and hierarchies and in-groups and out-groups. And most schools are staffed — at the classroom level — predominantly by white people. Again, not a criticism. A fact. And an important one, because it means that for many of the children experiencing racism in schools, the adults in charge may have very little personal frame of reference for what that experience is like. That's not a character flaw. That's a gap. And gaps can be filled. This is why I do what I do through YOUbuntu. My sessions aren't about making anyone feel guilty for their privilege or their background. They're about creating a space — a genuinely safe one — where people can ask the questions they're embarrassed to ask. Where they can say "I don't understand why that's offensive" and actually get an answer, rather than a look. Because the awkward question asked in a safe room is infinitely better than the harmful assumption made in a classroom. --- "But What If I Get It Wrong?" You will. Genuinely, you will get it wrong at some point. So will I. So does everyone. The goal is not perfection. The goal is not to deliver a flawless performance of Enlightened Non-Racist Human Being. The goal is to keep learning, to stay open, and to care enough to do better when you do get it wrong. The teachers who make the biggest difference to racially minoritised students are rarely the ones who have all the right answers. They're the ones who don't shut down when a student raises something difficult. The ones who say "I'm not sure, but let's think about this together." The ones who take the conversation seriously even when it's uncomfortable. That willingness — that refusal to let discomfort become an excuse for inaction — is racial literacy in practice. --- What This Actually Looks Like in Schools A racially literate school isn't necessarily one that has the perfect curriculum or the right diversity statistics. It's one where: A child can report a racist incident and actually be believed. And perhaps not simply be told to ‘just get along’ with the child who said something racially hurtful. A teacher can ask a question they don't know the answer to without feeling judged. A student sees themselves — genuinely sees themselves — in what they're learning. Difference is talked about openly, curiously and with warmth. These things don't happen because of one training day or one Black History Month assembly. They happen because the whole culture of a school shifts. Because the adults in that building decide, collectively, that every child's experience — every child's dignity — is worth taking seriously. --- Final Thought I got into this work through dancing. Through rhythm and movement and the stories held in bodies. And what I've learned — in dance halls and school halls alike — is that you cannot understand a person's culture without understanding their history. And you cannot understand their history without being willing to look at the uncomfortable parts. Racial literacy asks us to look. Not to look away. It asks us to sit with discomfort long enough to come out the other side with something more valuable: understanding. Empathy. And the ability to be, genuinely, there for every child in your care. Because a teacher who only sees some of their students clearly isn't fully doing the job. And every child — every single one — deserves to be fully seen. --- *Helena Boyce is the founder of YOUbuntu CIC, delivering anti-racism and racial literacy programmes in schools and organisations. To find out more or book a session, visit www.youbuntu.uk, or email hello@youbuntu.uk.