The following is an account from a friend with whom I attended secondary school for seven years.
"Going to a white-dominated private school as a Chinese person certainly gave me an interesting school experience especially regarding race and xenophobia. The moment I stepped into those black gates, I was stereotyped as “being good at maths”, simply because I was East Asian when in reality, I was just average. Teachers somehow mixed up the one other Korean kid in my year with me. My GCSE English teacher never bothered to learn my name for the two years she taught me despite the fact that I sat at the front of the classroom, and I was the only East Asian in that class. She handed out my book by process of elimination for two years…
I most certainly heard my fair share of micro aggressions during my 7 years there, from the fabled “dog eater” to the classic “chink”, I pretty much got it all. Not to mention by the end of my school career in Year 13 and the COVID-19 pandemic had reached news in the West, people asked me if I had ever eaten a bat. Students laughed at the Mandarin teacher’s accent when one lunchtime she wanted to see me; yet they never once mocked other modern languages teachers’ accents. During Parent-Teacher conferences, my parents’ accent was ridiculed. For context, my mother (who is ethnically and culturally Chinese) moved from Vietnam to France at 14 and then moved again to the UK in her late 20s, and my father dropped out of school at 14 to earn money for his family in Hong Kong, also moving to the UK in his 20s.
I have a longer list of examples about the racism at this school, but it would simply make this piece too long.
Each time I received some insult or aggression, I felt like my identity was being stabbed. Defending myself in anyway was out of the question; I was called a “snowflake” for being “too sensitive” and “not being able to take a joke.” This snowflake culture breeds white fragility, when people get defensive and try to explain away their racist comments (cue the "I have Asian/Black friends card").
I grew to mistrust the staff, as those who perpetuated these racist remarks never really got sanctioned seriously. A slap on the wrist is not going to stop someone from being bigoted. Education will, and that is something schools don’t give, whether it be in the history curriculum or anti-racism talks from outside speakers. On the surface, the school appears to have a peaceful, inclusive environment, with their classic photoshoots of majority whites and a token brown person, and sweeping shots of the acres of sports fields. It’s only when you actually enrol in the school where you experience the true culture that private schools have built over years and years of ignorance and bigotry."
It is evident that private schools must do more to tackle the cultural issues which result in this kind of appalling behaviour, and much more. It is unacceptable that forty years on from when the likes of Boris Johnson and David Cameron walked the corridors of Eton, the same harmful culture is still the norm in these institutions. Change must start from the top, with government - but that isn't going to happen while it is the very people who were immersed in that culture making those decisions. On that I agree with Richard Beard - public schoolboys like me and Boris Johnson aren't fit to run our country.
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