NEU Feature - Make anti-racism the water you swim in

I was featured in NEU’s Educate March-April 2026 magazine.

Level of bias from a very young age

Early years consultant Dr Shaddai Tembo, a specialist in anti-racist practice, believes early years is the perfect time to begin supporting children in understanding belonging, identity and issues of fairness and justice. He references the famous doll test, a series of experiments conducted in the 1940s by African-American psychologists Drs Kenneth and Mamie Clark. Children aged three to seven were given the choice of a Black or white doll. Almost all the children, irrespective of race, chose the white doll and attributed more positive characteristics to it: it was “nice” and “pretty”, while the Black doll was “ugly” and “bad”. Shaddai says: “It points to an implicit or pre-conscious level of bias that children develop from a young age, as a result of the broader societal context,” adding that the idea that educators shouldn’t be talking about race in early years conveniently ignores or overlooks the extent to which we are all part of a system in which racism affects our daily lives.