Knowledge trickled down to us from the West and we paid respectful homage to every printed word that bore a Western name. When we did not understand something— and there was a lot that did not make sense— we blamed ourselves for our lack of knowledge. Thus a canon made mostly of ahistorical and apolitical Anglo-American texts was presented to me as the epitome of what constitutes literature. It did not educate me in anything and alienated me from my reality.
— Arun Mkherjee, 1994
Mkherjee’s poignant account of enduring a “thoroughly colonial education, both in India [as a young person] and at the University of Toronto [as an adult]” and their subsequent “painful and difficult process of decolonisation” clearly demonstrates how the tendrils of coloniality worked their way through the British Empire into systems and spaces they did not belong. The same monochrome lens through which the world, literature and the Other was seen and understood by Brits and Europeans– which conspicuously superimposed their presumed racial superiority– was coercively laid before the eyes of the colonized through decadent educational institutions. This lens defined what constituted civility, morality, beauty, knowledge and history. Accordingly, it discouraged and delegitimized certain ways of being and knowing whilst exalting and encouraging others. To this day, that remnant lens continues to hold sway over the global imaginary, for better or for worse defining and shaping the status quo.
A couple of weeks ago, towards the end of our senior school assembly for Black History Month, I sought to draw the audience’s attention to the existence of this lens and invited them to reflect upon the ‘glasses’ through which they and others perceive the world. This approach was inspired by the Open Spaces for Dialogue and Enquiry Methodology (OSDE, 2006), which in its preamble states that,
“[a]s our lenses are constructed in specific contexts, we lack the knowledge constructed in other contexts, and, therefore, we need to listen to different perspectives in order to see/imagine beyond the boundaries of our own lenses”
So, by asking students and staff to reflect upon their ‘glasses’, I sought to demonstrate the central purpose of Black History Month. That being: to highlight that history is interpretive; that much of popular history has been written by those who share extremely similar cultural lenses; and thus that those lenses inherently highlight or obscure– attend to or overlook– particular events, sources, stories… histories. In short, Black History Month is all about recognising, relativising and decentering historical and cultural perspectives, including our own (I write as a white, cisgendered, british man). More importantly, it is about validating and celebrating black lives and black culture and developing a greater openness towards diversity more generally.
However, for schools to be properly inclusive and affirming to all of their students, simply marking Black History Month with a cursory assembly is unequivocally inadequate, especially if schools are not extensively culturally diverse. According to hooks (1994), even when they mean to be inclusive, “a spirit of tokenism prevails” when white Western educators who are poorly prepared for confronting themes of cultural diversity “teach in classrooms that are predominantly white”. One risk in such settings is that “if there is one lone person of color in the classroom she or he is objectified by others and forced to assume the role of ‘native informant’” (hooks, 1994: 43). Tokenistic practices thus risk essentializing difference and alienating the student/s they ostensibly intend to empower by encouraging them to exhibit to others and to themselves their own contextual uniqueness, producing or underscoring for them feelings of estrangement.
Tarozzi and Torres (2016: 155) criticize schools that implement “cursory or window dressing changes such as adding […] Black Month to redress inequalities of Black populations to the school calendar”. For them, this ‘safe multiculturalism’ barely addresses the social and political hurdles facing diverse communities. After all, students that may have experienced political exclusion or oppression elsewhere or earlier in life may derive little comfort from social environments that caricaturize or oversimplify their cultures and histories. For, “when they can’t see themselves, or they see a distorted image, they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in society” (Bishop, 1990: 1; in Carnesi, 2018: 99).
Evidently, Mukherjee’s experiences are far from unique. What Western schools and educators often fail to foster in black and minority ethnic students is a sense that they are wanted; that they are valued as equals. However, as things stand, cultural assimilation is the norm. Hence, a properly affirming education for all is not one that promotes a weak multiculturalism through tokenism and gimmickry. Rather, it is one that “communicates to all children that they belong and are valued members of the classroom community” (Kavanagh and McGuirk, 2021: 204) no matter who they are or how they identify. This is not to suggest that we should ignore Black History Month. On the contrary, celebrating Black History Month (and LGBT+ History Month for that matter) is one small yet seemingly necessary step towards a far greater imperative: to develop institutions, curriculums, classroom and staffroom cultures that see and celebrate diversity by virtue of being critically (self-)reflexive; wherein Black History is considered simply history, and the remnant monochrome lenses of our colonial past are finally removed and examined, and perhaps are even replaced with multifocal lenses of vibrant variable hues.
References
Carnesi, S. (2018) ‘A Platform for Voice and Identity: School Library Standards in Support of YA Urban Literature’s Transformative Impacts on Youth’, in School Libraries Worldwide. TEMPS Faculty Publications, pp. 99–117. Available at: https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/stemps_fac_pubs/70/ (Accessed: 22 July 2021).
hooks, b. (1994) Teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.
Kavanagh, A. M. and McGuirk, N. (2021) ‘Beginning conversations about difference, race, ethnicity and racism through ethical education’, in Kavanagh, A. M., Waldron, F., and Mallon, B. (eds) Teaching for social justice and sustainable development across the primary curriculum. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge.
Kymlicka, W. (2010) ‘The rise and fall of multiculturalism? New debates on inclusion and accommodation in diverse societies: The rise and fall of multiculturalism’, International Social Science Journal, 61(199), pp. 97–112. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2451.2010.01750.x.
Mukherjee, A. (1994) Oppositional Aesthetics: Readings from a Hyphenated Space. TSAR Publications
Open Spaces for Dialogue and Enquiry. (2006) ‘Critical Literacy in Global Citizenship Education’. Global Education Derby. Available at: https://decolonialfutures.net/osde/
Tarozzi, M. and Torres, C. A. (2016) ‘From Multiculturalism to Global Citizenship Education’, in Global Citizenship Education and the Crises of Multiculturalism. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. doi: 10.5040/9781474236003.
Megapedagogy 
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