Race blog

I found the Bradbury article (2020) a really interesting read, even though it centers on primary schools rather than universities, so much of Bradbury’s Critical Race Theory framework can be carried across. I found this idea particularly useful:

An acceptance of racism as endemic leads us to reframe the question of ‘Who gains?’ as ‘How do white people gain?’. This re-orientates the focus from proving that white people gain, to examining how they gain; this is a more in-depth question which is more likely to reveal and disrupt racial inequality.

Often in academia, people will liberally agree that of course the institution is racist and that even we the white people in the institution can be racist, but then it stops. The acknowledgement is enough, like going to a confessional to divest yourself of evil thoughts without actually changing your behaviour. But acknowledging our racism is only the very beginning of building an anti-racist teaching practice. Bradbury’s reframing of the question as “what do white people gain?” feels both confronting and useful as a way to talk about the UAL attainment gap between white and BAME students. It switches the focus from being a problem with the data (or the students) and makes it our problem as white educators/managers in the institution. So how do white people gain from the attainment gap? It reinforces the white supremacist belief that white people are inherently superior, more intelligent and harder working – and this in turn justifies investing less into non-white students who are seen as giving less return. Obviously this is flawed (and racist) logic: it is evident that having english as a second language, having to have an job alongside one’s studies, needing to spend vast amounts of time and energy negotiating visas or being alienated by an “outrageously white”¹ and western centered institution is going to affect students’ ability to pour themselves fully into the degree and thus affect their final results. As Bradbury states:

“Low results ‘prove’ that a particular intake is more challenging, even when teachers do not trust the scores.”

Despite understanding all the challenges students might be facing, the data creates this lower expectations of BAME students (a ridiculously broad aggregate of everyone not white used in the UAL data) which can have the knock on effect of these students having less rigorous tutorials, less opportunities extended to them and less access to UAL networks of employers. Rhianna Garrett argues this has the arguably even worse impact of shrinking both staff and students imaginations of what is possible:

“The potency of imaginations can be parallel with the imagination of race itself. As Fanon (1952) articulates, race itself is an imagination of colonial minds to maintain Western authority. Geographies of the globe are formed through banal projected imaginations, constructing the West as the enlightened superior to the inferior East and South (Nayak 2011). If imaginations have the potential to transform our political, social and cultural understandings of the globe and communities within it, they also have the ability to transform career trajectories in academia.”

In my teaching, I see Garrett’s dynamic most often in evidence when students have english as a second language and struggle to explain their ideas to me in tutorials, which in turn reduces the amount of useful feedback I am able to give them. During assessments, when students are asked to reflect on their experiments and research, the level of reflection is often at a more basic level than their peers who are speaking in their native language, and this can affect their grade. The intersection of race, nationality, language skills, disabilities such as dyslexia, can affect a student’s grade despite me being well aware of the added challenge the student is facing.

I am dedicated to developing a truly anti-racist pedagogy, as far as is possible within the UAL context, to mitigate this pattern. Here are some things I want to bring into my teaching practice moving forward:

• Asking myself “how I benefit as a white educator” from racist policies and practices? AND how do I challenge these?
• Taking students’ schedules into account, and being as flexible as possible to them, rather than labelling them as “not bothered” when they miss tutorials and seminars.
• Continuing to read and research outside of the western canon of art and theory, and put in work to become more familiar with the contexts and ideas of students whose cultures I am less familiar with.
• At the same time acknowledge honestly the gaps in my knowledge with students and be open to being corrected/contradicted. Explicitly invite a non hierarchical exchange of knowledge in my teaching.

References:

Alice Bradbury (2020) A critical race theory framework for education policy analysis: the case of bilingual learners and assessment policy in England, Race Ethnicity and Education, 23:2, 241-260, DOI: 10.1080/13613324.2019.1599338

1. 
   From
   Rhianna Garrett (11 Feb 2024): Racism shapes careers: career trajectories
   and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education, Globalisation,
   Societies and Education, DOI: 10.1080/14767724.2024.2307886:
   
   “Inaya and Maira, who both described themselves as ‘visibly Muslim’, had negative experiences with predominantly white spaces and it intersected with their careers. Inaya described her spaces as ‘outrageously white’ and felt ‘on the margins of the school’ because of it. Maira described a similar space despite coming from a London-based institution and diversegeographical location ‘the second I walked in, it’s just full of white people, and I am just thinking to myself, what have I gotten myself into? When I tried to speak to other students, who were mainly white, no one wanted to interact with me’.” ↩︎