In honour of black history month, Lister community school held a debate on a question the students chose – Was Brexit a Racist Vote?

For those of you who don’t know Brexit, is the term used to describe Britain leaving the European Union. This was decided on the 23rd of June 2016, where majority of the UK (51.9%) voted to leave the European Union. The topic has and always will be controversial due to the fact that the voting to remain was so close and people believe we have created for ourselves an ‘Un- United Kingdom’ due to the great differences of opinions among us. People believe that it has also come to show that the majority of Britain is racist since the reason why they wanted to leave the EU is to get rid of the immigrants who are of ethnically diverse backgrounds.

Lister Community School’s Debate department wanted to challenge the idea and decided to debate on it with the new students who recently joined debate club. This would allow them to express their voices on a topic important to us all since it affects us all and use this as practise for real debate mate competitions.

The debate was made up of two sides. The proposition who agreed with the motion – that Brexit was a racist vote- and the opposition who disagreed with the motion.

Debate always starts off with the proposition side. The first speaker Zahira made points such as, “Just after the referendum there has been a 57% increase of reported hate crime incidents”, she later explained that people who had not been a victim of racism had been called out on after the Brexit Vote which led people to think Brexit was racist.

The next speaker was Anwar from the opposition side. He stated, “2/5 people live in old, income houses. That’s twice the rate for white people. These people are not properly educated and therefore, perhaps they weren’t sure what they voted for.”

The second proposition speaker was Naseerah. She said, “Brexit only just proved that most British white citizens want to get rid of immigrants. They use the excuse that they are ’stealing our jobs’ when they actually take up the jobs no one wants for the minimum wage. How many white British citizens have you seen as a janitor? A taxi driver? A dustbin man? Or even a nurse? I am quite sure that many of us here have mostly seen people of different ethnic backgrounds that are immigrants doing those jobs for us.”

The opposition speaker that was next to speak was Yousif. He stated, “Although immigration was a big issue in the campaign, more than 58% agree that it is more important to have access to the European single market than it is to limit migration from the EU (37%).

The third speaker from the proposition side was Mubarak. He believed that people “want a second referendum”, and that people regret voting leave as they were misguided by politicians who were racist.

Rohan was the third opposition speaker. He said that “the majority of people were voting leave as they weren’t thinking about the problems it will cause.”

The last two speakers Sonali (proposition) and Ishaq (opposition) summarised the points made by their team mates.

Mahinul Islam, a former debater in Lister Community School, was the judge of the debate. He described Zahira’s speech as, “well-constructed”, Naseerah’s “strong and powerful”, Mubarak’s “confident” and Sonali’s was “Summarised well”. This is what caused the win of the proposition side. However, he mentioned the opposition’s side’s good points but also mentioned they needed to improve in “confidence” and “expansion of points”.

To conclude the debate, the Head Teacher of Lister Community School, Mr Wilson, reiterated Mahinul’s comments and he pointed out points he enjoyed, such as Naseerah’s point about jobs.

What do you think about Brexit? Was it Racist or not? Comment below what you believe.

Nazeerah Patel – Lister Community School.