This article provides an overview of over two decades of anti racism policy and practice in Britain, the USA and Canada, and its ineffectiveness in providing equitable education for African Caribbean and other students of minority races. Contributing to this failure are such factors as a serious lack of accountability infrastructure for policy implementation, white teachers’ perspectives on race and meritocracy, and their contestation of anti racism on pedagogical and ideological grounds.

One of the biggest challenges for teacher education in Western societies is to prepare practitioners for the growing diversity within their schools. Massive global migrations over the past decades have given schools and classrooms the “United Nations'' look: students from various racial, ethnic, cultural, language, and religious backgrounds often share the same learning environment.