Anti Racism - Dixon's Academy Trust
First Powerful People Meeting
8th March 2022 with Cllr Susan Hincliffe, Cllr Abdul Jabar, Zahra Niazi
Student Representatives from Dixon's Academies Trust, Dixon's Allerton, Appleton Academy
Racism Sentences collated from Student Workshops
Issues of racism have increased through the pandemic.
We are not all the same but we all want the same chances. This is about fairness and equity.
We have listened to students in our schools and we have learnt what racism challenges mean:
Racism is individual and institutional discrimination of people over things that they can’t control, such as the colour of their skin, ethnicity or their religious practices. It makes people feel vulnerable, scared and uncomfortable. It is when you are different to others and people are judging you for it.
Racism is unfair, unkind and unneeded. It is cruel and criminal.
Racism is conflict across different cultures. We need to educate people on what is offensive to other cultures. Many people still purposely support racist views to hurt others and discriminate against them.
Racism leads to the lack of self-respect and self-love. This can also lead to the development of severe mental health issues that can affect individuals later in life.
Asks, taken from student workshops
We have two sets of things to ask you. Firstly,
- Every single culture has its own beauty. We want to celebrate culture through music and festivals, through cultural days in schools and festivals outside schools in local communities.
- We want to improve education in schools with student-led workshops, talks about different cultures and social media content.
- We want to work with the Hate Crime Alliance to develop their app for reporting racism to make sure it works for young people.
Now we would like to ask where we go from here:
- Will you identify a named person in your organisation to work with us to develop these?
- Will you meet with us in one months’ time to update us on progress?
Lived Stories of Racism
The story of the racist incident that I would like to share with you is when I was walking to town and I was in traditional clothing I got told to go back home and to go back to where I came from. This deeply upset me and made me feel like I am not accepted. It also made me feel like I didn't belong, like I was made to feel like an outsider. I thought to myself what had I done wrong and was it my fault. Thank You very much for listening to my Story of this Racist incident. <from Hashim at UAK>
Second Powerful People Meeting
4th April 2022 with Alison Lowe, OBE, Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (DMPC) in West Yorkshire
Student representatives from Dixons, Beckfoot, Carlton, BDAT and Exceed Multi Academy Trusts
Students from across Bradford met with Alison Lowe to share their stories of racism and it's impact on them, their peers and families.
Alison listened and shared support and guidance. She committed to taking part in a workshop in June on the Effects of Racism. Students will lead elements of this and invited guests will share their experiences. Action for education will be planned.
Alison, West Yorkshire Police and students will be together for an Anti Racism workshop on June 13th 2022
Attendance at Bradford School CEO meeting 4th March 2022
Amman represented his and other Bradford Schools in a meeting of CEOs from multi academy trusts across the city.
Good afternoon, my name is Amaan, and I am the deputy-head student of Dixons trinity academy.
I will do just a quick recap from our previous successful meetings regarding racism. We all gave our opinions to what racism is and the most popular statement of what racism is that it is a discrimination by an individual or community against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.
Following that we discussed how we can terminate this and put a stop to racism and therefore we all collectively decided to put an idea forward for an advanced educational system in schools and outside of school so the younger generation can learn and adapt the morals and etiquettes of society by understanding how there should be equality between every human individual and pass on this message to their friends, family and people outside of school and speak up for the rights of every individual as there is no doubt that we all are blessed with our personalised characteristics and beautiful talents which makes all of us very unique and special and as a society we should praise each other.
We also came up with a great idea of having a Culture Day every year so we can celebrate diversity and especially from this people will get to learn about other appealing cultures and their remarkable traditions. Indeed this would allow people to communicate how they dress up, their traditional food, music etc and therefore Culture Day would include and involve people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds reminding people of how we should be gentle with one another.
