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.