Child and Family Social Work 2002, 7, pp 161–175 © 2002 Blackwell Science Ltd INTRODUCTION The experience of minority ethnic people in almost entirely white areas is a relatively under-researched aspect of ethnicity in the UK. As Charlotte Williams observes: Much of the available literature has targeted urban areas with sizeable ethnic minority populations. Relatively little attention has been paid to the effects of rurality, isolation and dispersal, either in respect of the experiences of the minority population or the attitudes of the dominant majority. (Williams 1999, p. 270) There are, of course, significant practical difficulties in establishing contact with representatives from minorities in such areas. Obstacles to research cannot, however, account fully for the paucity of academic inquiry. Despite the publicity surrounding the murder of Stephen Lawrence in a white neighbourhood, the fallacy that racism is not a major problem in largely white areas is an enduring one. As Pugh (2001) observes, people make the mistake of thinking racism arises only in the presence of ethnic diversity, whereas in fact it is ‘a form of discrimination in Britain that is predominately constructed and enacted by the “white” majority’ (p. 42) and it is in rural Britain, of course, that the white majority is most secure in its hegemony. There is a small body of literature within the world of race equality politics that has focused on ‘rural racism’. This was initiated by Jay’s (1992) report about the southwest of England, which was memo- rably entitled Keep Them in Birmingham. Just as an account of largely white areas, which concludes ‘there’s no problem here’, is naïvely optimistic, some of the ‘rural racism’ research seems to mention only negative experiences. This is true of Jay’s (1992) report. He interviewed 18 black people, of whom he quotes only a handful, each quotation illustrating a bad experience. Titles of publications such as ‘Keep them in Birmingham’ (Jay 1992) and ‘We shoot them in Newark!’ (Craig et al. 1999), which take the most 161 Responding to the experiences of minority ethnic children in virtually all-white communities Jonathan Scourfield*, Jonathan Evans*, Wahida Shah† and Huw Beynon‡ *Lecturers, Cardiff University School of Social Sciences, †Manager, Cardiff ABCD Project, and ‡Professor of Sociology and Director, Cardiff University School of Social Sciences, Cardiff, UK Correspondence: Dr Jonathan Scourfield, Cardiff University School of Social Sciences, The Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3WT, UK E-mail: scourfield@cf.ac.uk Keywords: children, mainly white communities, racism Accepted for publication: March 2002 ABSTRACT This paper aims to contribute to the relatively small body of litera- ture on the minority ethnic experience in almost entirely white com- munities, by reporting the findings of qualitative research into the experiences of minority ethnic children living in the South Wales valleys. Twenty-eight interviews were conducted with children and their parents/carers. Interviews with children also included sentence completion and card-sorting tasks. The paper focuses on the views expressed about quality of life, sense of community, leisure activities, experience of racism and dealings with institutions. The children and adults revealed a complex picture, which challenges both optimistic accounts of ‘traditional’ communities and also the negativity of pres- sure group reports on racism in similar areas. There is considerable variety of experience, mediated by class and gender. Whilst racism is in many respects an ever-present reality for these children, many of them find creative ways of responding to their situation. Several also spoke of their lives in the valleys in generally very positive terms. The paper concludes by reflecting on the potential implications of the research for policy and practice.