Institutionalised whiteness, racial microaggressions and black bodies out of place in Higher Education

How international students of colour become Black: a story of whiteness in English higher education

“…The counter-story between the two composite characters of Jonah and Serg are grounded in actual life experiences (Patton and Catching 2009). For people of colour, students and university staff, the work in having to mark out the persistent race inequality and dealing with microaggressions are emotionally arduous and frustrating (Doharty 2017;Joseph-Salisbury 2019). The investment in notions of meritocracy and colour-blindness by English universities coerces one to remain silent on the issue, or wear a 'white mask'.…”

“…and 'why isn't my professor Black?' (SeeTate and Bagguley 2017;Joseph-Salisbury 2019). I have become aware, firsthand, of this major issue of this so-called 'Black and minority ethnic achievement gap' in higher education degree outcomes (Equality Challenge Unit 2017).…”

A manifesto to decentre theatre and performance studies

“…(Davis 2020) The decolonisation movement in Anglophone academic centres is increasingly adopting the additive approach to fix the problem: altering the curricula by adding a few artists from Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the Middle East, and hiring a handful of Black and Global Majority scholars. While such efforts are well meaning, this approach does not aim at structural change but works within it (Bhopal 2020;Joseph-Salisbury 2019). Following the state-sanctioned murder of George Floyd and the insurgence of Black Lives Matter movement across the globe, the solidarity statements released by Higher Education institutions risk becoming what Sara Ahmed calls 'non-performatives' -'the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse does not produce the effects that it names' (Ahmed 2012, 117, emphasis in original).…”

Investing ourselves: the role of space and place in being a working-class female academic

“…Other significant gendered elements of the academy remain stubbornly and depressingly resistant to change, particularly those associated with the gendered division of labour and disparities in pay and promotion opportunities (Guibourg, 2019;The Res-Sisters, 2017). Likewise, the academy remains not only disproportionality white, with Black, Asian and minority ethnic academics underrepresented overall and especially at senior levels (Bhopal, 2016) but also remain purveyors of institutionalised whiteness through their curriculum and acts of 'racialised microaggression' (Joseph-Salisbury, 2019). In this sense, white, male, middle-class privilege remains normalised and unchecked in the neoliberal university (Bhopal, 2018;Crozier, 2018) where the 'academic walls' built through institutionalised forms of racism, sexism and classism are difficult, at times even impossible, to permeate (Ahmed, 2017).…”