Blog 3 Race

Fig 1. Heterotopia Concept collage, Bella Fula, UAL FAD student 23-24, investigating traditions and cultures, like African scarification rituals, that reflect belonging. 

We were asked to review and respond to several sources, from videos to academic papers. I found the sources to be very broad, which, to some extent, confused me about how to approach the content for this blog piece.

From all the source material, I was left with the questions: how does all this material help us learn to embed positive change? 

In the paper Racism Shapes Careers Rhiann Garrett explores statistics through intersectionality and CRT. She looks at students who have regularly experienced the impact of white privilege and structure on their career path, finding themselves often overlooked for promotion, asked to undertake extra tasks, and frequently observed by other racialised students. She includes a survey of 22 PhD students, from diverse cultural backgrounds, who recognised that often they might have to ‘give up’ part of themselves to fit within academia, and that one student felt their ‘drive for righteous indignation’ would be eradicated if she were to remain in academia. 

The second paper, Alice Bradbury, explores the significance of how the CRT could construct a framework for education policy analysis by investigating early years bilingual learners and how they are assessed. Identifying significant gaps in support for children in the earliest formative education who do not have English as their first language.

In the video ‘The charity turning UK universities woke’, Dr James Orr, professor in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics at Cambridge University, focuses on the inferred influence that Advance HE has on promoting inclusivity, through its Athena Swan and Race Equality Charters and incentivisation schemes and the need to address the existence of systematic racism in academic institutions. Within the context of the video, Orr uses vox pops of students to respond to whether they feel free speech is restricted in higher education. There are some contradictory answers, but most say they don’t believe their right to free speech is limited. But is he asking the right questions? 

Of the three video sources, considering racism through different educational ages, the 4-minute Channel 4 short, “The School that tried to end Racism”: I found this the most emotive piece.

Fig 2. Above, The school that tried to end racism; snapshot of start line before questions. 

Fig 3. Above, The start line once questions had been asked. 

The video starts with a teacher stating that they will be running a race, but the starting position in this race will be decided by a series of questions that the teachers ask. As the questions are asked, some students move forward. But for others, the divide widens, and the inequality of their position becomes clear. 

The pupils who haven’t been able to progress vocalise the unfairness, and one pupil turns to his friend, stating that ‘none of us are white’.  The teacher then asks if it’s a fair way to start a race. One pupil says he feels alone, another says it’s frustrating that all the white kids are at the front. One (white) pupil recognises that it’s unfair that they’re not all being allowed to start from the same point. Dr Nicola Rollock, Professor of Social Policy and Race at King’s College London, comments in the video:

“People often confuse privilege with being wealthy or being rich, and it isn’t about that; it’s about having to live with the consequences of racism.”

The video was an excerpt of a 3-part documentary that documents a school in South London taking part in a trial on unconscious racial bias. The school was aiming to move away from ‘colour blindness’ as an anti-racism policy.

This is an issue addressed in Reno Eddo-Lodge (2022) ‘Why I’m Not Talking to White People About Race’. She says in a piece she wrote for the Guardian in 2017, 

“This emotional disconnect is the conclusion of living a life oblivious to the fact that their skin colour is the norm and all others deviate from it. At best, white people have been taught not to mention that people of colour are different in case it offends. They truly believe that the experiences of their life as a result of their skin colour can and should be universal. I just can’t engage with the bewilderment and the defensiveness as they tried to grapple with the fact that not everyone experiences the world in the way that they do.”

In Asif Sadiq’s TED Talk, he argues that traditional diversity training is biased, stereotypical, and fails to create the desired inclusive and equitable workplace. He considers that education, not just in a conventional classroom but also experiential learning (has he been reading Bell Hooks?), as a whole needs to be critically examined, as it often lacks diverse perspectives and regularly fails to provide representation for underrepresented groups. Different learning styles and neurodiversity must be taken into account to create effective education that leads to meaningful change, he concludes his talk with this: 

“ For learning to be impactful, it has to be continuous. It’s for all. Not an Us/ them game. We must own the journey. True change goes beyond box-ticking. “

UAL has generated valuable data on diversity demographics within the university. It has solid policies on anti-racism within the university. Critically, there is some level of box-ticking happening. But it does promote Zero tolerance. I carry this through into my own teaching space; there is no room for racism. 

Every year I have a diverse cohort of students from wide cultural backgrounds. In academic year 23-24, I had a young, black male student (from here on in I will refer to him as D). In the early weeks of the course, I could see D was struggling to engage. One colleague complained that he wasn’t doing any work. Why wasn’t he excited to be on the course? My answer was that I wasn’t surprised he might not be enjoying it – how could he? There was no representation for him to be inspired by on the teaching team (We are mostly white tutors). Whilst I couldn’t give D the representation that he desperately needed, I did my best to engage with him and listen to him. I ensured that he had relevant research sources, reflecting the global majority, where he could see there was representation for him.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Bradbury, A., 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), pp.241-260. Read pages 241-247. 

Garrett, R. (2024). Racism shapes careers: career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, pp.1–15. Read pages 2-5 & 7-11. 

Sadiq, A. (2023) Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Learning how to get it right. TEDx [Online}. Youtube. 2 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR4wz1b54hw 

Orr, J. (2022) Revealed: The charity turning UK universities woke. The Telegraph [Online]. Youtube. 5 August. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRM6vOPTjuU

Channel 4. (2020) The School That Tried to End Racism. [Online}. Youtube. 30 June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I3wJ7pJUjg 

Eddo-Lodge, R. (2017) Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race, The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/30/why-im-no-longer-talking-to-white-people-about-race (Accessed: 14 July 2025).