Asif Sadiq, Chief Diversity Officer at Warner Bros. Discovery, argues that despite billions of dollars spent globally on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training, the outcomes often fall short. Why? Because the teaching itself is too often built on biased assumptions and static stereotypes. Sadiq reminds us that diversity isn’t a box to tick or a half-day programme. It is a continuous, lifelong process of reflection and action.
This is especially relevant in education, where interventions intended to raise awareness can sometimes provoke discomfort or even backlash. In The School That Tried to End Racism, a social experiment is staged during a mock sports day. Children are told to take steps forward or backward depending on the advantages or disadvantages they have experienced. The exercise is designed to show how white privilege creates invisible head starts. While watching this powerful scene, I scrolled through the YouTube comments beneath the video. What I found was telling, and frankly, quite depressing:
“What I see in the video: Kids who used to get along and not care about race, have now been divided and started to resent each other. Great job, teachers!”
“The psychological damage being done to these children is sickening and unforgivable.”
“Parents really ought to pay closer attention to what their kids are taught.”
These kinds of comments reveal just how deep the discomfort around race can go. They point to a broader challenge in education. Not just what happens inside the classroom, but how those experiences are interpreted, and sometimes weaponised, outside it. This is something we’ve considered in the context of social media. But another, often-overlooked site of tension is the year-long group chats that students run informally across cohorts. These spaces are usually helpful for sharing information or supporting each other. But they can also become sites of exclusion, bullying or even racialised abuse. And unlike the classroom, they’re rarely subject to moderation or scrutiny.
Within the formal learning environment, the persistence of racial bias can also be subtle but deeply embedded. I’ve seen first-hand the stereotypes that are often imposed on Chinese students by members of staff. Assumptions about passivity, obedience, or academic dishonesty. Time and time again, these stereotypes have been quietly but clearly disproved through students’ creativity, leadership, and critical insight. But the fact that they need to be disproved at all is telling.
Social Role Theory (Eagly, 1987) helps us understand how such stereotypes persist. It argues that people internalise and assign roles based on perceived group characteristics. Roles that are often rooted in long histories of inequality and cultural messaging. When applied to race, this theory highlights how both staff and students unconsciously act out or enforce racialised expectations, even in progressive or creative institutions.
Sara Ahmed (2012) writes that to be a person of colour in a predominantly white institution is to be a “killjoy”. Someone who disrupts the happy narrative of inclusion simply by naming the problem. Her work reminds us that discomfort is not only inevitable in anti-racist work. It is often a sign that the work is actually happening. Avoiding discomfort doesn’t create harmony. It sustains silence.
Race is present in the classroom whether we talk about it or not. Like religion, it lives in the assumptions we carry, the interactions we have, and the systems we uphold. Choosing not to address it doesn’t make it go away. It just makes it harder to name, and harder to change. As educators, we must be willing to listen, to be uncomfortable, and to recognise that anti-racist practice is not a one-off event but an ongoing commitment. And just like our students, we must keep learning too.
Bibliography
Ahmed, S. (2012) On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
BBC (2020) The School That Tried to End Racism. [Online video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR4wz1b54hw (Accessed: 3 Jul. 2025).
Sadiq, A. (2022) Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Learning how to get it right. [Online video] Royal Russell School and Warner Bros. Discovery. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR4wz1b54hw&t=2s (Accessed: 3 Jul. 2025)wbd.com+7youtube.com+7youtube.com+7.
Eagly, A.H. (1987) Sex Differences in Social Behavior: A Social-role Interpretation. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.