Working towards anti-racist practice in the early years

Anti-racist practice is not about what we say it is about what we do. It involves all of us – not just people racialised as white in positions of authority deciding what is best for everybody else. Black and people of the Global Majority (Campbell-Stephens, R., 2021) have a range of perspectives, lived experiences and underpinning knowledge that is essential and needs to be heard and acted upon if we want any anti-racist work to be impactful, effective and sustained.

For 16 years, up until March 2020, I worked as a Nursery Manager in a setting that was predominantly Black in terms of the children and families who attended. During my time there, I always understood that part of my responsibility as a manager who shared the racial and cultural identity markers of many of the children and families was not only to support experiences that were culturally matched to the children, but also to acknowledge that although these experiences wouldn’t necessarily be universal to the very few white children who attended, this would in no way put them at a disadvantage of losing their own sense of cultural and racial identity. I embedded a culture of belonging for all because I recognised that all of those children’s experiences would now become enriched and diversified and that a lens of normalcy would be used, as opposed to a lens of 'other'.

My work as an early years anti-racist trainer and consultant is centrally focussed on the 4E’s of Anti-Racist Practice framework that I created because I saw how the sector was grappling to understand anti-racist practice and that there was a keenness in wanting to know more:

I am often asked by white early years educators how to get it right without causing offence and becoming embarrassed by their potential errors. This focus on centring the feelings of white people in this work is part of the problem. My response is simply to accept that the potential of making a mistake and allowing yourself to be corrected without defensiveness, tears or deflection is the key – after all, as early years educators we don’t discourage children from making mistakes when they are learning new concepts. We encourage them to keep trying until they achieve what they have set out to do.

Ensuring that anti-racist practice in the early years is not a quick fix is essential. It cannot be solved by just buying diverse resources. I encouraged my teams to listen carefully to the children and their experiences of the world based on how they see it. That may be their Saturday trip to the barbers or their weekend with Gong Gong and not correcting them by saying 'it’s Grandad, not Gong Gong'. Here, you place the child as the expert of their own linguistic and cultural identity. Use this to extend your own learning opportunities by using a resource such as Sennah Yee’s book, My Day with Gong Gong to read with all of the children, while simultaneously ensuring that the child who told you about their day with Gong Gong feels valued.

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