Invisible Mass of the Back Row - Claudette Williams

‘Group humilitation replaces individual humiliation’

• reflects collective experience of racism and systematic marginalisation

  • normalised in english schools

• targets whole communities, not just individuals

  • full racial / social groups

• loss of individuality

  • systematic oppression erases personal uniqueness

  • only part of a whole category that is targeted

‘The rebel inside me is alive’

• ‘alive’

  • newfound strength and defiance

• rebel

  • conflict, ready to stand up for herself

  • 'link to ‘stood up in classroom’

• loss of innocence

  • contrast ‘I am petrified - words fail to come out’

  • then ‘a power surges through me’

    • frustration with authority (teachers) reaches breaking point

‘the invisibility of the back row’

• back row

  • socially / institutionally sidelined

  • no attention given

• invisibility

  • isolation despite being physcially present, socially absent

• metaphor for societal marginalisation not just literal classroom setting

• racial groups ‘placed at the back’

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