When making your organisation’s performative anti-racist statements on your website, and putting #BLM virtue signalling on your social media, did you also have a check to see which celebrity educators you should drop, white or not, that actively uphold “anti anti-racist” agendas?

Leading education organisations are lacking depth in their supposed commitment to anti-racism. Too many are still in bed with people who not only behave in ways that are racist, but that actively push against anti-racism work and seek to undermine those doing the work.

Do your due diligence and be demanding of those who represent you - whether as speakers on your webinars, members of advisory groups or authors of books you recommend. Check people’s social media and see how they treat other people, especially BAME colleagues

Don’t be lazy or tokenistic when choosing “diversity” on these panels and groups. Whiteness is not about skin colour. It’s about the systemic and structural - we have all been socialised into it and have internalised its workings. Anyone can uphold a white supremacist agenda

Watch also for your organisation’s intention vs action towards anti-racism. Hold yourselves accountable for statements made publicly vs what happens in your own corridors. Too many have now begun to shut down anti-racism work as not a priority or too costly to implement.

We’re hearing reports of Black members of staff being made to feel they are too combative, too loud, or confrontational as they try to do the work in their organisations to keep anti-racism central to school improvement at every level.

Black members of staff that are now assumed as diversity and inclusion experts by their employers, and tasked to lead this anti-racism work by virtue of the colour of their skin, who have no white allies on board, no budgets or decision-making power - this in itself is violence.

Anti-racism is not a moment, a single statement or a symbol. It’s a complex journey of learning and unlearning. It requires action, reflection, stamina, discomfort and vigilance. We need some courageous conversations with & by our education organisations that are failing here