Negotiating the hidden curriculum of otherness: Black ethnically minoritised young people’s educational experience in predominantly White areas.

This thesis reports on a study of the experiences and perspectives of fourteen Black and Ethnically Minoritised (BEM) young people aged from 14-29 in education provision within predominantly white areas. It is based on interviews that were conducted between June 2015 and September 2016. The study highlights the key tension between the perceived progress made within society concerning racism, protection of whiteness as an ideology (Garner 2010) and the counter-narratives/voices (Delgado 1995) expressed by the participants. With its foundations in critical theory (Horkheimer 1972, Adorno 2005), utilising a bespoke critical bricolage (BCB) methodological approach as a tool to illuminate the endemic hierarchy of race and grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a lens (eg: Yasso 2005, Gillborn 2010, Delgado and Stefancic 2000, Crenshaw 2005), the study postulates that the education system is constructed and shaped at all levels to protect white privilege and forms a super structural element that operates to perpetuate whiteness as an ideology. The study pays close attention to how interest convergence (Bell 1980, Delgado 1999) is entangled within the discourses of progress and how the social reality of the participants is predetermined around the mutually-informed axes of hegemonic whiteness, indirect racism and their negotiation with the dominant structures within society. This has consequences for the iterations of progress in terms of racial equality, as racism has emerged as deep-seated, unmitigated and a constant in the realities of the Black and Ethnically Minoritised young people in predominantly white areas. The research contributes to and advances the study of racism in contemporary education, the experiences of BEM young people and develops the use of critical theory.