Name: Is talking common sense about race taboo?
Start: 2024-11-18T18:00:00+00:00
End: 2024-11-18T19:30:00+00:00
Location: Vinson Centre for the Public Understanding of Economics and Entrepreneurship

Is talking common sense about race taboo?

Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, the director of Don't Divide Us, is the speaker at this Free Speech Seminar at the University of Buckingham
About this Event

Our speaker at this Free Speech Seminar is Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, the director of Don't Divide Us.

Don't Divide Us argues that politics today is dominated by racialisation - dividing people by their skin colour rather than focussing on the things we have in common despite having a different epidermis. We are all human beings...

Don't Divide Us believe

We should treat everyone as an individual worthy of respect regardless of race, religion or the colour of their skin

We call this colourblind anti-racism – it is based on freedom and tolerance – and we believe it is the best way to counter prejudice where it does exist

Today’s so-called anti-racism sees group identity before it sees a person and risks reinforcing prejudice by dividing us into a world of victims and oppressors

Britain is a successful multi-cultural society with a positive story to tell about race relations

We won’t benefit from importing divisive political ideas from the US that don’t reflect our history and which undermine our shared values today

Find out more on the Don't Divide Us website.

About Alka

Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert is an educator, academic, author and campaigner who believes passionately in the essential importance of impartiality both in education and as a prerequisite for the civilised conversations necessary for democracy to flourish. Alka comes to the directorship of Don’t Divide Us following two years as its founder lead on education, a campaign which she felt impelled to join as a counter to the fractious and one-sided discussions about race relations in the UK which have dominated since 2020.

Alka began her career teaching English Literature in inner city London and went on to become a member of the Ofsted Advisory Panel on English. Until recently she was still practising on the front line as an English teacher with the Civitas Education Charity supplementary schools project. She is a prolific author of specialist texts on education, including What Should Schools Teach? Disciplines, Subjects and the Pursuit of Truth (IoE UCL Press, 2017).

Photo Design: MCC Budapest