Introduction

Abstract

In order to understand racism’s multifarious nature it can be instructive to reflect on one’s earliest experiences of racism, even though they may not have been perceived as racist at the time, and to relate such experiences to theoretical developments in understanding racism (e.g. Cole, When I Became Aware of Racism—Professor Mike Cole, 2016a). In the book to which this book is a sequel, Critical Race Theory and Education: A Marxist Response (Cole 2009, 2nd edition, 2016b), I begin with a recollection of some early personal experiences of racist Britain, starting with some childhood recollections in Bristol, UK, in the 1950s, and end with some brief comments on the lives of the African Caribbean children at a primary school in west London, where I taught in the 1970s. Here I will recall further racist experiences from the 1970s up to the present.