Challenging Youth Racism: Project Report 1 Challenging Youth Racism: Project report 2019 Contents Contents Executive Summary 4 Part One 6 Introduction 6 Background of Project 6 Prior education interventions 8 Types of Delivery 11 Community Events and Engagement 13 Part Two - Key findings 14 Methodology 14 Typology of young people 15 Quantitative Findings 17 Experiences of racism 22 What is racism 24 Use of language- Black 27 Use of language - Asian 30 Use of language - Dual Heritage 32 Use of language - White 33 Islamophobia 35 Immigration 40 Prejudice and stereotyping 43 Roma Gypsy Travellers 44 Judaism 47 Buddhism, Sikhism, Hinduism, Christianity 49 Far right 51 History of racism 54 Culture 55 Challenging Racism 57 Social Influences 62 Media Influences 65 Part Three - Discussion of Key Themes 68 Part Four - Summary and Conclusion 78 Summary 78 Conclusion 87 Bibliography 89 Appendices 92 Appendix 1 – Workshop Questionnaire 92 Appendix 2 – Pre-Workshop Questionnaire 94 Appendix 3 – Peer Mentoring Questionnaire: Before 95 Appendix 4 – Peer Mentoring Questionnaire: After 98 Appendix 5 - Full Range of Participants’ Reported Ethnicities 102 Appendix 6 – Full Day Carousel Questionnaire: Before 103 Appendix 7 – Full Day Carousel Questionnaire: After 104 Appendix 8 – Racism Awareness Programme Module List 105 2 Meet the ‘Challenging Youth Racism’ team: From left to right: David Temple, Kelly McClay, Sara Bloomfield and Alex Carter David Temple Kelly McClay Sara Bloomfield Alex Carter Research Associate Senior Practitioner Project Worker Research Assistant Teesside University Humankind Humankind Teesside University Authors: Dr David Temple, Teesside University Professor Nigel Copsey, Teesside University Dr Alex Carter, Teesside University 3 Challenging Youth Racism: Project report 2019 Executive Summary ‘Challenging Youth Racism’ (CYR) is a Big Lottery funded project delivered by HumanKind (two project workers) in partnership with Teesside University (two researchers). The project was developed in response to concerns around high levels of prejudice and discrimination and disproportionate levels of racially and religiously motivated hate crime within North East England, an area with a large White British population. CYR has delivered anti- racism interventions to over 7,500 young people (aged 11-19) across the region since July 2016. The bulk of our interventions are our awareness raising workshops and our Racism Awareness Project (RAP) which are run in a variety of educational and community-based settings. The report will highlight the effectiveness of CYR interventions delivered to young people against its stated objectives, to: increase acceptance of others, increase awareness on the impact of racism, and to encourage young people to challenge/report racism. The CYR project has been particularly effective in meeting its objectives, as can be seen in some key figures based on young people’s responses… Workshops > 85% of young people maintained or increased their acceptance of people of a different religion, nationality and/or skin colour. > 91% of young people maintained or increased their understanding of how racist behaviour impacts people > 83% of young people maintained or increased their willingness to challenge or report people responsible for racist behaviour 4 Racism Awareness Programme (RAP) > 73% of young people maintained or increased their willingness to challenge or report people responsible for racist behaviour Workshops and RAP > 81% of young people from 14 different ‘BAME’ groups displayed increased confidence to engage in shared cultural activities and enjoy public spaces. The aim of this report is to provide additional context to these figures. It will do so by highlighting some key qualitative findings. Some notable findings include… > Experiences of young BAME populations highlight the extent to which they or people they know (friends, family) have been racially abused. They have been targeted across the region, both in schools and in the community in various places, on the street, in town centres, in schools. > The lack of adequate responses has a wider impact in terms of willingness of young people to report racism to official sources, such as the police and schools. This is also likely to contribute to the continuing issue of underreporting. This is an aspect in which our Racism Awareness Programme (RAP) has become vital to encourage young people to report. > Young people have displayed a range of views related to racism, ranging from hostility, to ambivalence, to acceptance and willingness to challenge. > Young people may not have heard of the term ‘Islamophobia’, but are aware of its significance once understood. Indeed anti-Muslim sentiment was prevalent in young people’s discussions around, and conceptions of, racism. This was also often linked to strongly held anti-Muslim sentiment normalised within families and communities surrounding young people. > Young people often displayed a thinly veiled dislike around immigration. Often young people make automatic associations that an immigrant is something bad. For example, a belief that they are illegal and shouldn’t be here. Or that immigrants are taking something from them, such as jobs, housing, and benefits. > The majority of young people are unaware of the ‘far right’. Once understood, most displayed an apathy or dislike towards such groups. A minority of young people displayed support for far-right groups and figures. > This highlights the necessity of anti-racism interventions that address these associations directly, and provide a ‘safe space’ for fears and anxieties to be discussed. These can be unpicked successfully through counter- narratives that focus on knowledge and emotive based responses. These are particularly effective when views are based on ignorance rather than hostility. > CYR interventions have provided: valuable counter-narratives to ‘hostile’ and ‘critical’ groups; helped ‘mixture’ groups to recognise the seriousness of racism; and helped ‘acceptable bystanders’ become ‘challenging upstanders’. The timing of the project has been particularly crucial. A number of high profile events have taken place which have compounded and enhanced such feelings and beliefs. This has included: ‘Brexit’, the terror attacks in London and Manchester in 2017. Indeed, there has been a significant increase in hate crimes in the region since the project began. In the same period, the North East has had a disproportionately high number of far-right mobilisations. These have each clearly influenced the views and beliefs of young people to be presented within this report. These themes feature heavily throughout this report which will identify young people’s knowledge and thought on various themes related to racism. This will highlight the variety and range of thoughts, experiences and attitudes related to racism amongst young people. 5 Challenging Youth Racism: Project report 2019 Part One Introduction ‘Challenging Youth Racism’ is a National Lottery Community fund project delivered by Humankind (formerly DISC) in partnership with Teesside University. Throughout, there have been two full-time project workers (Humankind), and one full-time researcher (Teesside University). A part-time researcher has also been employed on the project since August 2018 (Teesside University). The Challenging Youth Racism (CYR) team provide anti-racism interventions to young people (aged 11-19) across North East England. Our main remit is to: increase acceptance of others, increase awareness on the impact of racism, and to encourage young people to challenge/report racism. We do this predominantly through awareness raising workshops, and our Racism Awareness Programme (RAP). In our one-day RAP session we train young people to: educate others, report racism, challenge racist behaviour and to provide support for those affected by racism. We have delivered over 350 workshops to over 7,000 young people and have trained over 150 RAP ambassadors since the project began in July 2016. The success of the project has also been recognised when it was nominated for the North East Equality Awards in 2017 and 2018. The aim of this report is to provide an account of the work of the project so far. This will detail work of the project from July 2016-April 2019. Though it should be noted that the project is ongoing and interventions will continue through until June 2019, the initial end-date of the project. The report will initially outline the work of the project, which will include: the range of interventions delivered to young people, the ethos underpinning this work, where these interventions have been delivered and who to, the range of partners that have helped to support and influence the project, and the methods used to evaluate the project (Part One). With these points in place, the reports main focus is to shine a spotlight on young people’s knowledge, views and experiences of racism and topics related to racism. As noted, the project has been delivered to a large number of young people in the region, and we are keen to highlight not only their perspectives (based on a range of sources including comments during sessions, answers during activities and from questionnaires), but importantly what works and what doesn’t with regards to ‘challenging youth racism’ (Part Two). This will include a further discussion of key themes to provide additional context to these findings, and to explain why certain approaches are or are not successful (Part Three). The key findings are then summarised