Bullying and racism among Asian schoolchildren in Britain

Previous research on school bullying has largely neglected the issue of racism, and where it has been studied, the methods used have been unconvincing. The result is that little is known about bullying among ethnic minority children in British schools. This paper describes a questionnaire survey of 243 Hindu, Indian Muslim and Pakistani children attending temples and mosques in the Preston and Bolton area of Lancashire, asking about their experiences of school bullying, who bullied them and in what way. Results show that bullying was widespread (57 per cent of boys and 43 per cent of girls had been bullied that school term), and that all three ethnic groups suffered equally. However, bullying was at least as likely to be by other Asian children of a different ethnic group as it was by white children, and it was likely to relate to some religious or cultural difference such as the animal forms of some Hindu Gods, the clothing worn by Indian Muslims or the language spoken by Pakistanis. Bullying between members of the same ethnic group was comparatively rare, although a number of Hindu children reported insults relating to the caste system. It is concluded that, although it is difficult to generalize from such an unrepresentative sample, bullying among ethnic minority children is clearly a rich and complex problem that merits further study.