Resisting the Tide: Building Anti-Racist Classrooms

In March 2025, our Director Shanah delivered a workshop in Brussels as part of the 3rd Anti-Racism and Diversity Week (ARDW), a flagship event led by the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), the Anti-Racism and Diversity Intergroup (ARDI), and the European Commission.

Our session, Building Anti-Racist Classrooms, brought together civil society organisations, community participants, and educational advocates to interrogate the role of education in this struggle. Our workshop explored the structural components of anti-racist classroom ecosystems, highlighted the barriers educators face, and reaffirmed classrooms as critical sites of anti-racist and decolonial justice.

The urgency for anti-racist work in schools in clear. In Spain, 66% of adolescents report having witnessed or experienced discrimination—nearly 70% of these incidents happened in school. Ethnicity (23.83%) and appearance (22.51%) were the most cited factors. Meanwhile, hijab bans via internal protocols are on the rise, and 80% of students have heard slurs based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Education is not neutral. It can reproduce inequality—or disrupt it. Our work is grounded in the belief that it must do the latter.