To be black means to suffer from discrimination, V&A tells its staff

BEING black means suffering discrimination and white skin signifies power, experts reassessing history at the Victoria and Albert Museum have told curators.

Staff, who will all be trained to address unconscious racial biases, are being advised about differences between ethnicities, according to documents seen by The Sunday Telegraph.

The 19th century institution houses artistic treasures from around the world and throughout history, and its curators are working to remove colonial influences and ensure written information at the museum “reflects our values and attitudes”.

Employees writing educational material have been told black people are those “who experience structural and institutional discrimination because of their skin colour”, the documents, obtained under a freedom of information request, say.

Being white, meanwhile, has “connotations of power, sophistication and progress”, and a glossary of racial terms provided to curators finds “whiteness” to be “dominant”. Civilisation, the document cautions, “can still carry racist overtones”.

The same museum staff provided with the V&A guide on racial terminology for drafting captions and educational material will also all be given unconscious bias training to address hidden prejudices and “micro inequities”. Tristram Hunt, the museum’s director, recently announced the creation of a dedicated Anti-Racism Task Force to ensure diversity in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests, and advised staff on changes in an internal memo.

Mr Hunt told employees: “While this will reflect on the murder of George Floyd and the brutality of the past few weeks, it’s also crucially about the fault lines it exposes and how we respond.”

The museum board also assured staff they were “accelerating our work on inclusion and diversity”. A catalogue of LGBTQ terms has been issued to ensure all writing at the institution uses the correct terminology.

A spokesman said: “We are undertaking a number of practical steps to improve diversity in its widest sense, across all parts of the organisation.”

Asked if former Labour MP Mr Hunt had undergone unconscious bias training, the museum confirmed that the courses would be rolled out for all staff.

The institution said staff had pushed for work being done on best practice, training, relabelling and terminology.