The author, formerly a head teacher in Sheffield and adviser to the education authority, exposes the fact that around a quarter of all recently arrived Slovak Roma children are now excluded from Sheffield schools. He places this form of blatant discrimination in the context of former racist institutional responses such as the labelling of West Indian children as educationally sub-normal and their forced withdrawal from mainstream education in the 1960s and 1970s. Only the solidarity shown by the Yemeni community to the Roma children, victims of xeno-racism and bullying, provides hope.
CoardBernard, How the West Indian Child is made Educationally Sub-normal in the British School System (London: New Beacon Books, 1971).
2.
Caribbean Times, 8March1985.
3.
Ukaidi Community Link Project, Suspensions and the Black Child, Nottingham 1984.
4.
For information on conditions for Roma in Slovakia, which forced such movement to the UK, see WaringoKarin, ‘Slovakia’s bankruptcy’, IRR News, 13March2004, and KundnaniArun, ‘Protests against separation call for Roma children’, IRR News, 2June2004, and for recent comparable conditions in the Czech Republic see ČernušákováBarbora, ‘Roma: the invisible workforce of Ostrava’, Race & Class58, no. 4 (April2017).
5.
FeketeLiz, A Suitable Enemy: racism, migration and Islamophobia in Europe (London: Pluto Press, 2009).
6.
See BurnettJon, ‘Racial violence and the Brexit state’, Race & Class58, no. 4 (April2017).
