Our children are currently being given reading material, as part of their English GCSE which can include books using racist language, such as John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”. As a woman of colour I remember how awkward it felt when my peers and I studied this book and the word N**ger was openly used.

Years down the line, my son was traumatised by the book when a teacher insisted that, as the only person of colour in his class, he had to read the N word out to the rest of the class when it came up in the reading material, despite him not wanting to. Then recently, during Black Lives Matter protests, I heard a young girl on the news talking about how the same book had negatively affected her.

Why are the same books, using language we are not to supposed to use, being forced upon our children, when we are trying to reduce the use of racist language in our society? How inclusive is it to use this material, with our multicultural society? Making each generation go through having to hear the N word being used in school and having it be called education?

We ask that this book, and others that include the use of racist language be removed from the GCSE reading list, which can be found here: https://schoolreadinglist.co.uk/tag/gcse/

We do not believe that it is right to force having to endure the use of racist language, in schools, upon young people and children of colour. If the use of racist language is not allowed, then racist language in books should not be forced upon people either. Furthermore, if it was wrong for the BBC to broadcast the N word recently, then how can it be right to force it to be used by children in classrooms across the country?