‘I would have become wallpaper if racism had its way’: Black female professors, racial battle fatigue, and strategies for surviving higher education

In 2019, AdvanceHE reported that there were just 25 UK Black female full professors in British universities. Black women are less likely to occupy a role at this level than their male and White counterparts. Despite this, Black women remain relatively absent in institutional initiatives to advance gender equality, and there is little commitment amongst UK universities to explicitly address structural inequalities of race as they affect the experiences of academic staff. Black female academics remain under-represented and invisible in UK higher education. This article draws on the first known qualitative study into the career experiences and strategies of twenty of these Black female professors. Specifically, it engages Critical Race Theory and Bourdieu as principal theoretical frameworks to explore how their academic journeys, shaped as they are by an existence at the intersection of race and gender, result in racial battle fatigue, feelings of isolation, and disillusion with the academy. The article demonstrates how, despite these challenges, these women have been agentic in their efforts to navigate higher education. They have developed and continue to deploy sophisticated strategies of analysis, hyper-surveillance, self-care, and resilience in order to carve out a successful career in the academy and remain within it

Pursuing Racial Justice within Higher Education: Is Conflict Inevitable?

In his 2005 inaugural presidential address to the British Educational Research Association (later published in the British Educational Research Journal), Geoff Whitty interrogates the relationship between education research and the way in which it is variably taken up by policymakers and put into practice. He contends that the relationship is one marked by misunderstanding, conflict and the subjective priorities and interests of individual policymakers, hence the question posed in the title of his address: ‘Is conflict inevitable?’ In this chapter, I take up Whitty’s provocations in relation to racial justice and higher education. Specifically, I am interested in the relationship and ensuing tensions between what might be conceptualized as the diversity promise – articulated and enacted by universities via policy documents and equality statements – and the stark realities revealed by the data and empirical research regarding, in this case, the experiences of racially minoritized faculty. Building on previous arguments, I contend that the cultural practices and norms of the institution, not only contribute to racial injustice but actively work against remedying it, leaving ambitions of racial diversity unfulfilled. I demonstrate this in two ways: first, I show how the formal procedures surrounding recruitment and progression and the workload management model work as structuring mechanisms to the disadvantage of racially minoritized faculty. Second, I argue that racial injustice operates beyond these formalized, officially sanctioned sites. Drawing on Peggy McIntosh’s work on privilege I catalogue how the organizational culture of higher education is predicated on a series of normalized assumptions, behaviours and acts that serve to foreground whiteness, white comfort and white privilege as the norm. I contend that just as Whitty questions the presumption that research will automatically inform the direction, formation and enactment of policy – encouraging as he does education researchers to nonetheless maintain their ambitions unfettered solely by policy concerns – so too must this remain the case for racial justice research and those seeking to decolonize the higher education sector

Staying power: the career experiences and strategies of UK Black female Professors

This research is the first known UK study to exclusively focus on the career experiences of Black female Professors and their efforts to reach professorship. The study examines, through one-to-one interviews, the experiences of 20 of the 25 UK Black female Professors

Independent review into the allegation of institutional racism in NUS

In February 2016, NUS commissioned the Runnymede Trust to carry out an independent review to investigate whether the organisation is institutionally racist. This document sets out the findings of that review

Legitimate players? : an ethnographic study of academically successful Black pupils in a London secondary school

The low educational attainment of Black (notably African Caribbean) students has seldom been\ud absent from the achievement debates of at least the last forty years. Yet, despite consensus\ud amongst academics and policy makers that Black pupils do not attain equally in relation to their\ud white peers there has been, to date, no single coherent governmental policy which has\ud successfully closed the gap in achievement. Black pupils have become associated with a\ud language of failure and disadvantage. Research that examines the opposite side of the equation\ud - Black pupils and academic success - is rare. This research adopts an ethnographic approach\ud to explore how staff and successful pupils at an inner-city London secondary school\ud conceptualise academic success and seeks to understand the processes that might lead to the\ud increased educational attainment of Black students.\ud Findings indicate that while pupils perceive academic success to be within the grasp of all, staff\ud regard it as unquestioningly dependant on a range of factors such as gender, individual\ud characteristics, ability, social class, home environment and family background. In addition, the\ud reported display by mainly Black boys of what is defined as "Black street subculture" is\ud reconstituted as a threat to school norms and at odds with the portrayal of the academic profile.\ud Using a Bourdieuian analysis, it is argued that pupils seen to fit the academically successful\ud profile are regarded as having legitimacy within the school context and therefore encouraged to\ud succeed. Black pupils, due to their lack of "appropriate" capital, are not regarded as having\ud legitimacy and are less likely to be encouraged to succeed. Black male pupils in particular are\ud disadvantaged by their positioning by female staff as conspicuous, sexualised objects of threat.\ud It is therefore argued that academic success remains a challenge for Black (male) pupils, even\ud for those originally defined as achieving

Black teachers in London

This report, commissioned by the Mayor of London, follows on from a major piece of research also commissioned by the Mayor through the London Development Agency to examine the educational experiences of black boys in London, 2000-03 (2004). That report considered in great detail the reasons for the continuing underachievement of black boys in schools when compared to their peers. This report seeks to build on that research by seeking the views of black teachers about their contribution in raising achievement for black children, and also to consider what steps are necessary to address the problems of recruiting and retaining a representative teaching workforce for London. This study was commissioned with three main aims. These were to examine: • the factors with the greatest impact on the recruitment, development, progression and retention of black teachers in London • the views of black teachers and parents as to the factors affecting the educational achievement of black pupils • the views of black teachers and parents as to the effect that the presence of black teachers in the classroom has on raising black pupil performance. The intention was also to consider more broadly: • whether black teachers consider themselves as role models, and if so, for whom • if there is anything distinctive about being a black teacher and what this means in practice • black teachers’ relationships with parents • the educational needs of black children and the concerns/priorities of black parents with regard to the education of their children • black parental involvement in the education of their children. In addition to the above, the report provides an update on the numbers and distribution of black teachers in London, with comparative data on the distribution of pupils and the general population. The report also includes a review of relevant literature and policy issues involved in the recruitment, retention and promotion of (black) teachers

“They can’t handle the race agenda”: stakeholders’ reflections on race and education policy, 1993–2013

This paper explores the personal reflections of educators and contributors to policy on the shifting status of race equality in education policy in England between 1993 and 2013. The interview participants included some of the most notable figures active in race equality work in England. Part of the paper’s significance is its focus on the perspectives of actors with longstanding involvement in the field of race equality, who have witnessed changes in policy over time. As “stakeholders” with direct involvement in education policy-making and enactment, the participants tended to focus on three historic policy moments. These were: measures aimed at closing ethnic achievement gaps that began in the early 1990s; the diversity and citizenship agenda that featured in New Labour’s term; and the Macpherson Report (1999) and the subsequent Race Relations (Amendment) Act (2000). Participants’ narratives converged in a largely pessimistic view of 1993–2013 as a period in which race equality policy had gained momentum, touched the policy mainstream – but then failed. By the end of the New Labour administration (1997–2010) and the start of the subsequent Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition government (2010–2015), explicit focus on race equality in education policy had, in the views of the participants, been severely diminished

Educational Policy and the Impact of the Lawrence Inquiry: the View from Another Sector

This chapter provides an overview of progress in implementing the education recommendations of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. Key debates and government responses to each are examined. In closing, consideration is given to whether, by failing to include specific parameters for the successful elimination of racism within education and by failing to include recommendations aimed at teacher trainees, teachers and school governors, Macpherson and his team went far enough to meet their overall aim of seeking to prevent and eliminate racism