Last Tuesday I was involved in a very interesting lecture which was all about an issue surrounds us all, racism. We were taught about horrible stories such as the Emmett Till murder and the lynching of black men and women in America in the 20th century. These horrible racist actions are a thing of the past but it got me wondering how much racism still exists in Britain currently.

After simply searching “racism” into google I was astounded by the amount of news articles I found just from the past few days. But one that caught my eye the most was about an ex-footballer, called Mark Walters, who had recently opened up about the barriers he faced playing football in the 1980’s. He talked about how before a game in Scotland, playing for Rangers, a man publicly was ‘bragging’ in the newspapers about how he had bought fruit to throw at this player. For me, a huge football fan, I find it disgusting that someone would even consider this, never mind think it’s okay to publicly brag about it. But is this just a little insight on how racism was very much accepted Britain in the late 20th century? It may also show how far we have come as a society, in attempting to stomp out racism and try to make it a thing of the past.

I think the world has took huge steps from the lynching of 3,446 African Americans between 1882 and 1968, to the racist abuse received by Mark Walters in the 1980’s, till now. But I think more must be done to prevent any sort of racism happening. I believe that as a student teacher, children should be taught about racism and the affects it has on many people’s life at an earlier age to help prevent racism in schools and in day to day life. There’s no point in waiting for a child to use a racist slur and then addressing it, we as educators must educate children to help prevent them from using these slurs and creating racist attitudes.