In this chapter, I bring together previous discussions and suggest ways forward to engage with a social justice and inclusive agenda for change in which the voices and lives of black and minority groups can be represented. I specifically focus on how change can be implemented in the UK education system where white privilege should be addressed and challenged. I argue that in a neoliberal context, policy making has contributed to maintaining the status quo in which a post-racial society remains a myth, and covert and overt forms of racism and exclusion continue to operate at all levels in society; in short, white identities are privileged and remain protected at all times.

In this book I have focussed on specific areas that demonstrate how whiteness and white privilege operates. Each of the chapters outlines the position of black and minority ethnic groups and examines evidence to show how they remain disadvantaged in societies where whiteness and white privilege predominate. In Chapter Two I explored how those from black and minority ethnic groups remain disadvantaged in different areas of life, both in the UK and the US. Despite differences between these two countries, whiteness operates as a form of privilege and in current discourse has been used as a rhetoric to reinforce the identity of whiteness as superior. Examples include the recent vote by the British people to leave the EU, fuelled by a reinforcement of ‘British’ identity and the threat of an invasion of immigrants on British shores. The leave result was followed by a significant rise in the numbers of racist and hate crimes being reported to the police and other anti-racism organisations. Brexit was an ‘us versus them’ battle in which white privilege was used to separate those who belonged and those who did not, and racism was used as a vehicle to promote this.

In the US, there has been an increase in the numbers of black men being shot by police officers and the numbers continue to rise. The fragility of race relations has further been reinforced by the recent election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the United States. Trump used and continues to use his privilege, wealth and white identity to attack minority groups.