‘There's a war against our children’: black educational underachievement revisited

Abstract

This paper focuses on the educational experiences of a group of African Caribbean and mixed ‘race’ young people from the perspectives of their parents. The discussion is set within a national context where children of African Caribbean origin are one of the lowest achieving minority ethnic groups in the UK and are disproportionately one of the highest ethnic groups of children excluded from school. The parents recount a pattern of cumulative negative experiences which for many of the children results in academic underachievement and becoming demotivated to learn, by a system that they feel has rejected them, or imposed exclusion. The story is hardly new but it provides important further evidence that schools need to tackle head‐on factors such as low teacher expectations and negative stereotyping of young black people and their contribution to black underachievement. I dread to see my children grow. I know not their fate. Where the white girl has one temptation, mine will have many. Where the white boy has every opportunity and protection, mine will have few opportunities and no protection. It does not matter how good or wise my children may be, they are colored. When I have said that, all is said … (Lerner, 1972, p. 158, cited in Hill‐Collins, 2000, p. 196) I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. (Martin Luther King, Jr, 28 August 1963, cited in Ladson‐Billings, 1994, p. 30)