Racist stereotyping by teachers of African-Caribbean boys is a root cause of so many of them being excluded from school, Dr Tony Sewell, of Kingston University, told the conference.
In a study of an ethnically-mixed boys’ comprehensive with a high rate of black exclusions, he found many teachers failed to recognise the diversity of young black male sub-culture, seeing instead young blacks as macho, sexist, homophobic and antagonistic to authority.
Many did not look critically at their own classroom management, but instead over-reacted to perceived problems, assuming their cause lay outside the classroom - in black youth culture (as they saw it) or in the high number of one-parent families.
