Is the king of Narnia always white?

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I spent the last few days going between raging fury and paralysed helplessness. Last Friday, my 7-year-old climbed into my bed as I was nursing his little brother, snuggled up to me and asked in a tearful voice: ‘Why do they think I am stupid? - Who? - My teachers. - Why are you saying this?’ Long story short, as year three of his primary school started, they sorted my brilliant boy into groups significantly below his capacity for Maths, Reading and Spelling.?

He aced his Key Stage 1 SATs a couple of months ago, getting nearly maximum scores, and received a ‘working beyond’ grade for almost all subjects just in July. A boy who devours 400-page books and whole book series, who casually rhymes ‘odes’ to everything he sees when we are out and about on a good day. His vocabulary is that of a child twice his age, and he condescendingly corrects my English. He knows dozens of species of sharks and hundreds of scientific facts far beyond his age. His maths calculations are almost always perfect. I am a proud and partial mama, but the facts are also on my side.?

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So why was he put in weaker groups by his new teachers? ‘I probably look like a troublemaker.’ - ‘Baby, one cannot LOOK like a troublemaker. Not when you are seven years old.’ After looking at all the reasons, we are left with the elephant in the room my clever boy is too innocent to recognise. His white teachers sorted him into the weaker groups because he is not white. I sent him to bed but couldn’t sleep myself.??

He has a rich and complex heritage, but most of the time I just tick the ‘mixed: white and black Caribbean’ box for him. Ironically, I never used to think of myself as white. I grew up in a country where most of us were, so there was no need to examine that side of my identity. My first encounter with black people didn’t happen until I was 28. They were two guys from Chad, studying medicine at one of the South Russia universities and volunteering with the local branch of the Russian Red Cross, helping flood victims. So yes, despite the ever-dominant narrative, the first Africans I met were offering help, not asking for it.?

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But then I moved to Trinidad and Tobago for work and my world changed. I became a white woman. I stood out. My (non-white) manager gave me a talk about building relationships with my team: ‘You are white, and they are not’. So, I was undeniably white unless I was walking by a construction site. Then I was being catcalled in broken Spanish. My dark hair confused some into thinking I was a Latina. It was then that I learned how fluid the notion of race could be and how far beyond one’s looks it went. If I wasn’t talking, I was a Latina. When I opened my mouth, I became white.?

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I came to the Western hemisphere absolutely and annoyingly confident that racism was a thing of the past. Especially in Europe. I never heard Trinidadians laugh as loudly as they did when I announced it to them. But I learned. I realised it when, a year into my life in the Caribbean, I couldn’t finish watching ‘Gone with the Wind’, a film I used to love as a child. It made me too angry.?

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I learned a lot about race over these past 12 years, but it all became truly personal when I had my son. Every time he has a health appointment, I try to be there in hopes my whiteness helps him to get the attention he needs. Every time a school year begins, I am there, marking my territory, talking to teachers, and letting them know we are on top of his schoolwork. But this year I had a baby and dropped the ball. My boy’s feelings were hurt, and his motivation suffered. And I cannot let this happen. Once, when he was four years old, he told me he had chosen me to be his mum before he was born. He said, ‘Other mamas were asking me to choose them, but I chose you because you are the best.’ So I better get my act together.?

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That same year, around the time George Floyd was killed, we started reading 'The Chronicles of Narnia' before bedtime. The good always triumphed over evil there. He loved it so much that we didn’t stop until we read all the books in the series. The following year, I told him that there were films based on these books, so we watched them, too. He liked the films, but one night, as I was tucking him in, he asked me if one had to be white to be a king of Narnia. Of course. My poor boy. They cast white children to play Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, and no king of Narnia looked like my son.?

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The year after, theatres were reopening after Covid, and we went to see 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' in the West End. It was a school night, but I didn’t care. I needed him to see it ASAP. Why? The actors playing the Pevensie children were black. My boy was beaming. Representation matters. Knowing that your heroes can look like you means the world to a young child.?

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We have known it for a while, and schools now celebrate #blackhistorymonth every year. Sadly, these celebrations often miss the mark and might reinforce the stereotypes and othering our children are impacted by. A couple of years ago, my stepson’s school decided to celebrate Black History Month by asking the children to make an ‘African’ mask. They later wore them as they learned an ‘African’ dance. Well, we’ve definitely moved past the blackface, but not far enough if, in the 21st century, in London, we continue to reduce the contribution Black people have made throughout history to tribal dances.?

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Surely, there is nothing nefarious about this. Just biases, stereotypes and ignorance. But they hurt our children and leave scars. I fear the day when my son’s innocence is taken and he, too, learns what that elephant in the room is. One-third of the children in his school don’t speak English as their first language, and the students come from diverse backgrounds. But what does it matter if the staff are all white? To whom the kids like my son just don’t LOOK intelligent enough.

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DEI in the workplace has become popular, and I hope it’s not a fad. But what about DEI at school? I know we are teaching the children the value of diversity, but are we teaching their teachers? Can we finally scrap the tokenistic Black History Month celebrations in schools and actually address the lack of representation among the teaching staff? Can we finally strengthen teachers’ DEI training beyond it being a tick-box exercise? So that I don’t need to show my white face to protect my son? Or will the system keep clipping his wings and failing him and other children who just happen to look a certain way? I am tired of celebrating Black people only after they die. Black lives matter, black talents matter, and so do their dreams.?

#blackhistorymonth #dei #giftedandblack #bhm #deiineducation #diversityandinclusion?