When I started playing for my local border side the musicians were expected to wear blackface, even though the dancers wore black and white. I wasn't happy with that, and felt extremely uncomfortable doing so.
It may have taken more faffing around to do black and white brushwork, rather than a quick wipe over with a black sponge, but I felt a lot more comfortable about doing it. At the time I thought to myself "How would I attempt to justify this if i cam face-to-face with a black guy in the pub afterwards and he asked me why I blacked up?". I couldn't, in all honesty, not mention the connection with minstrelsy among the other connotations of blacking up.
There you go, Eric the Orange, you can now empathise with me, a white man who was not happy about putting on a black face.

Whats wrong with that? Seems sensible. I'd probably want to do the same. But you're taking action about something because of how you feel not how you think somebody else might feel.

Let me explain why I think it's an important point. On my mother's side I'm part of a community which has experienced some terrible racism directed against it in the past and still has a tough time today, though it's not based on skin colour. What often happens is that some well meaning soul takes some action on our behalf though most of us usually are not bothered about the issue concerned and are quite able to speak for ourselves when we are. What then happens is that this is fuel for the racists who say that we get privileged treatment. Its used as justification for more attacks even though we never asked for that treatment.

My personal experience is that minority communities just want to get on with their lives and be treated the same as everybody else. They don't want people taking action on their behalf based upon what they *think* the community needs they just want people to listen when they say what they need.

In the case of the school if people had expressed concerns then thats one thing but otherwise the school is just taking a decision based on the colour of some of their pupils skin which however well intentioned and unintentional is still just another form of racism in that it's treating people differently based on race.