Training of anti-racist role models

On July 6 and 7, 2023, we held training sessions for young Roma and Muslim men and women, all with their own experiences of suffering racism in the school environment and who have completed or are currently enrolled in post-compulsory studies. These young people will act as anti-racist role models in the workshops that are organized with junior high school (ESO) students and teachers during the 2023-2024 academic year.

The role models shared their experiences and the educators and members of the REACT team, Pedro and Ainhoa, talked about the history and present of antigypsyism and Islamophobia, structural and institutional racism, and how "racism without people" is possible.

The second day of the training began with a short evaluation of the first day. The role models commented that they had been impacted by seeing that they shared many experiences of derogatory treatment, stereotypes, and lack of academic support, regardless of whether they were Roma or Muslims, and to understand how subtle and profound racism is.

Afterward, a role-play was carried out that differentiated between students in terms of the expectations about their academic performance based on their ethnic origin. Then, we proceeded to the conclusive part of the training: preparing the role models to integrate their own experiences into the workshops with ESO students. Among other things, they commented on how essential it is to build narratives and activities that transmit racism as an issue that affects everyone, majorities and minorities, whites, and non-whites, and to engage in activities that build bridges of communication and mutual identification between students and teachers of diverse origins, including the Catalan/Spanish native-origin majority.