Book extract: Gauging progress in anti-racist practice

We live in a country where the majority of the population has co-existed with diverse cultural ethnicities since World War Two, when immigration fundamentally changed the ecology of Britain's population.

Conceptualising a multicultural Britain should, ideally, have been a part of the process when the call went out to the colonies to come to help rebuild the ‘Motherland’ after the ravages of war.

However, now that we are where we are, conceptualising multiculturalism in contemporary Britain should, ideally, be a process of reflecting on Britain's colonial history and the part it plays in structural racism. Sadly, as a society, we appear to be in a state of persistent denial regarding the reality of racism and somewhat ignorant of how it truly impacts on different ethnic groups. Early years education, although widely viewed as a ‘fluffy’, feel-good space, does not exist in a bubble; it is a smaller-scale version of our ‘messy’ wider society. Unfortunately, our lack of a significant enough understanding of the realities of multiculturalism prevents us from creating a more equitable society; inequality negatively impacts the early years sector.