Racism

Time:             40-45 minutes

Materials:     Pens, paper, statements for discussion

Ask participants to consider the following statements – or make up your own – for a few minutes on their own and then divide into small groups to discuss them.  Ask each group to think about if they agree or disagree with the statements and why.  Have they ever heard anyone saying these things?  How do they feel about it?  Then ask them to feed their conclusions back to the main group.

Statements:

All blacks and Irish are stupid.

They don’t eat ‘proper’ food.

Everyone knows you can’t trust Travellers and Gypsies – they are always fighting and stealing.

If we sent them all home we would not have any unemployment.

Indians/Pakistanis own all the corner shops and charge too much.

When they are in this country they should adopt our culture and language and forget about their own.

It’s always blacks who do the mugging and sell drugs.

Gypsies steal babies.

Black people are lazy.

Why should they have the same rights as us when we were born here?

Ask the groups to explain the reasons for their conclusions.

Further questions to provoke discussion might include:
 

• Did any of the students decide who was meant by ‘they’ in the statements?
• Do the students think they have enough information about various ethnic, religious, and cultural minorities to decide what they are like?
• Is it fair to lump people together under labels like ‘they’ and ‘all blacks’ or ‘all Irish’?
• What do the students think about the statements if they substitute other groups, for example, ‘all people with red hair are stupid’ or ‘skinny people take all the best council houses’?

Reproduced with kind permission from Kidscape

Updated: 13 October 2003