Although I am identified as BAME, I am aware of the privilege in my positionality, having been brought up in a euro-centric, middle class environment. I have personal experience of ‘othering’ but also acknowledge that my background means I have internalised the whiteness that is the dominant culture in which I am situated. So from this perspective, I have found the Shades of Noir resources incredibly useful to my practice. It is an accessible body of authoritative information around a sensitive and challenging subject, which both provokes and educates. The collection of current terminology, diverse reading lists and case studies around inclusivity play an important part in empowering me with the tools to articulate my thoughts and experiences. Especially within an academic setting, by giving the subject matter a language through which one can express these ideas, it imparts a legitimacy which is helping me to build more confidence in becoming anti-racist. It is something I would signpost to students whenever possible, as it would begin to free them, as it has me, to engage in conversations around inclusivity by reducing the fear of saying the ‘wrong thing’.
This fear, the perception that conversations around inclusivity can be difficult and therefore to be avoided and critically, that if they are not a minority themselves, it does not involve them, comes across very starkly in the interview White Academia: Does this affect you? (Peekaboo We See You: Whiteness, 2018). A senior academic who is white, appears very tentative when attempting to answer questions about how they are supporting diversity and social justice. They ask ‘Can I say Black?‘ and admit that they ‘don’t feel comfortable talking about race’. They also did not attend university meetings about attainment and inclusion. Richards’ acute, yet non-judgemental interrogation of this academics’ behaviours encouraged them to confront their own complicity in perpetuating the status quo. It highlighted the importance of being active in building an understanding of the ‘other’ in order to enact change. (It’s going to take more than a few token lunches!) It is also an archetypal example of how the idea of ‘unconscious bias’ functions as an excuse to do nothing about racism, which Kwahli describes with evident frustration in Witness: Unconscious Bias, pointing out that it is necessary to be conscious of these biases, otherwise they are being passed on to yet another generation of students.
Bringing us to Hahn Tapper’s A Pedagogy of Social Justice Education, which examines an educational approach which is actively addressing inclusivity, underpinned by Frierean Critical Pedagogy. It introduced me to Social Identity Theory (SIT) and helped me to disentangle the ways in which people’s multi-facetted positionalities manifest in different situations, determined by one’s identity in relation to varying social contexts. One of their findings regarding their exploration of SIT in conflict resolution revealed a worsening in relations between identity groups when utilised in a specific way. This highlighted the complexity of social interaction and the need to contextualise the intersectional issues at play, and was a cautionary example of the consequences for harm to occur as a result of well intentioned intervention. Ultimately, these attempts to understand the entanglement of personal and group identities was a hopeful reminder of the positive developments in education that can inform my own practice, and that in acknowledging ‘the power dynamics that exist in relation to‘ the students that I teach, I can be an agent for change.
PS. I did read Finnigan and Richards’ paper on Retention and Attainment in HE with interest as, because of it’s references specifically to Art and Design, it relates directly to my practice. I am incorporating a lot of the thoughts inspired by this paper into my artefact research instead of this blog.
Bibliography
Richards, A. (2018) ‘White Academia: Does this affect you?’, Shades of Noir, Peekaboo We See You: Whiteness, pg 27-31.
University and College Union (2016) Witness: Unconscious Bias. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6XDUGPoaFw (Accessed: 20 June 2023)
Hahn Tapper, A. (2013) ‘A Pedagogy of Social Justice Education: Social Identity Theory, Intersectionality, and Empowerment’, Conflict Resolution Quarterly, Vol. 20(4), pp.411-445.
Hey @esoong thanks for your comments on my blog. Glacial is a good descriptor!
I think your comments around fear here are really useful in starting a conversation that looks to tackle that fear. So often fear (in this context) is born from not wanting to publicly (or privately) fail in their job or for their students… how do we stop a fear of failing in this context? Usually it would start through education to demystify… so what is missing… in my opinion for UAL, its educators being educated and asked to enact change as we are here on the PgCert. If white educators are left to their own devices in an environment of whiteness to enact change without a real comprehension of the problem (change like the 1 a year PRA form thingy) the outcomes will only reflect a whiteness in their approach to this… actually the kind of equity and justice that is sought requires much more introspection with context to the super structures of whiteness around us and a really clear spelling out of the metrics of inequality that UAL currently perpetuate. AEM intervention doesn’t do this effectively (in my experience) and its really only dealing with ‘optics’ that have turned bad for UAL… its not currently dealing with the real underbelly of unknowing and (to some degree) uncaring (because the status quo is comfortable for the dominant voice) that occupies the faculty and management offices here at UAL.
Hi E-Sinn thanks again for your thoughtful comments on my blog. This unit and the Shades of Noir resources have helped to put me on a path to coming to terms with whiteness, and I can see that this will be continuous, it feels as though the penny has dropped at different times. I agree that it will be really helpful for students to know of these resources for contextualising our intersectional identities during workshops and referred to via our own resources, to empower them to have confidence to have these conversations. I can certainly recognise the tentativeness of the senior academic in fear of saying the wrong thing too – though it is telling that he had not attended meetings on attainment and inclusion. An example of a provocative and authoritative text I found was in A Note from Linda Stupart at the beginning of the journal, and I was interested in the decision for it to precede this one directly in the journal. They provide prompts for white people to take anti-racist action in life generally, then follows the academic that had not sought to engage in thinking or talking about race even in their professional role of power. I liked your description of how Richards’ approached the interview ‘ acute, yet non-judgemental’, that seemed to invite discomfort in complicity. Hopefully, the willingness of the academic to become vulnerable for the interview and the discomfort that ensued, over lunch perhaps, was the starting point of their journey towards anti-racism. There are more questions about why some white people are not willing to become vulnerable and look closer, and why people placed in positions of knowledge exchange and power choose not to participate in discussions of race.
Very. thoughtful response E-sinn. Always so interesting to read your posts. As a white woman I can relate to this feeling of inadequacy or fear of saying the wrong thing. It’s a discomfort I’ve been trying to sit with, challenge and work through. In the first unit, Matt referenced Donna Harraway’s ‘Staying with the trouble’ and it really stayed with me. I suppose as individuals we tend to run away from things that make us feel uncomfortable or fearful but in her book Harraway discusses how staying with, and tackling problems gives us the opportunity to address and resolve them. This can apply to many aspects of life and she also discusses it in relation to the environmental crisis but I do think it can be relevant in relation to this feeling of fear or guilt white people have when talking about race. Fear and guilt can lead to inaction which is ultimately futile and may even perpetrate inequalities. The Aisha Richards interview with one of her students we had to reflect on a few sessions ago presents this feeling as being routed in white guilt and I do think that as an institution UAL should be doing more to educate and facilitate these important conversations. The inclusivity training we are required to do as staff doesn’t quite hit the mark and feels almost tokenistic in comparison to this unit for instant.
Haraway, D. J. (2016) Staying with the Trouble. Duke University Press
Richards, A. (2020) Expanding the Conversation. Interview with Anonymous. Interviewed by Aisha Richards for Inclusive Practice – Alchemy – Transformation in Social Justice Teaching, (2020), 147-150. [Online] Available at: https://shadesofnoir.org.uk/journals/inclusive-practice/