Weathering the white gaze and inventing post-colonial higher education
With Dr Deanne Bell
Working in banking and playing tennis for Jamaica were early steps in Deanne’s professional life that could probably not predict the research that she is doing now. Her re-entry into academic life came about through master’s courses. Her sporting life and psychology background articulated her initial academic interest in performance psychology.
She experienced a watershed moment when she encountered Frantz Fanon's seminal text, Black Skin, White Masks. Discovering and analysing this text meant opening the hidden literature of black scholars and intellectuals. This experience seems significant in the direction she started to pursue for her research.
Deanne knows that being a black woman academic in a UK institution puts her in a limited pool of scholars. A recent report by the Women’s Higher Education Network indicates that in 2023, there were only 66 Black Women Professors in the UK out of 23,515 Professors (31% women). It can be hard to feel you belong when you remain one of the rare black woman academic scholar.
Believing that you can progress your academic career to the next level can feel challenging when, by researching racism and coloniality, the opportunities to access research funding remain limited. Accessing research funding is one of the thresholds on the promotion academic career ladder. The limited chance of accessing research funding and the position of her work within the REF structures could make her progression even more challenging. However, this is not stopping her from doing work that she cares deeply about, and that has immense importance in challenging institutions.
Deanne has been involved in several projects with Nottingham Trent University and the Wellcome trust to challenge the structures and framework that maintain a colonial past. This type of “gladiatorial” work is exhausting as it means battling on, and continuously having to justify the ongoing impact of our colonial past on institutional structures. The impact is not residual, it is at the core of how institutions function, educate, research, recruit and promote.
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:
What do you see in your own institution that remains of a colonial past which continues to shape ways of working, policies, assessments etc. and is likely to impact researchers/ academics from minority backgrounds?
If you have “white privilege”, how do you use your own voice to challenge practices and policies in your institution or even in your research group?
Can you break out of the silence and not be a bystander when you see/hear racism or behaviours/ comments anchored in our colonial past?
Some reflections to ponder based on my discussion with Deanne
It’s not the job of black women to single-handedly reshape higher education towards a post-colonial future
Deanne, like many black academics in the UK, will have experienced the goodwill of white folks, asking her- what can we do to help, what small thing can we do- in their tentative steps of acknowledging that our colonial past is still shaping our higher education institutions. There is a tiredness in this type of micro-bite attempt and a frustration that real change is not what some of these good intentions are seeking to create.
Deanne calls upon us to educate ourselves in radical theory. For example, she points us in the direction of scholars such as Sarah Ahmed (e.g., On Being Included-Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life). One of my previous interviewees on the Podcast, Dr Muna Abdi, who created a consultancy leading institutions in their anti-racist work, has also valuable resources on her website here to help us educate ourselves.
Deanne expresses her concern that some of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion training or Implicit Bias training provisions are just there to patch things up, and are not intending to create transformational change. She describes some of these initiatives as only intended to “stabilise the system”. When she hears people talk about trying to create small changes, it feels cruel to her, like a tease, as it indicates that people are not prepared to shake the system towards something really new.
o Reflecting on instances where you may have observed racist or “colonial” behaviours that position some students/ colleagues with less power, what did you say at the time? What would you say next time you come across something similar so that you do not remain a bystander but a contributor to radical system change?
o If you are from a minority background, you will need to be mindful of the energy drain that culture change work represents and may sometimes reject opportunities to contribute to this work- remember it is not just your job- it is everyone’s responsibility.
o Each time you get involved in a university/ research activity or committee, can you make sure everyone takes a pause when decisions are made, and always ask the questions: what are the power at play in our decision? Who is this likely to advantage or disadvantage? What would be a radical alternative that could shift us away from our “colonial” mindset?
Sharing your imagination of me as a Professor
Deanne’s way of being in the research environment and her “voice” as a black woman from Jamaica have been impacted, as she experienced being told to be different—whether she was asked to use a more moderate tone or be less animated than she would naturally be. These experiences of micro-aggressions are repeated in many subtle or more direct forms. They weigh heavily on the body and on the mind. They collude to make you feel you do not belong to the space. Keeping going is made to feel harder.
Deanne wants us to challenge our perceptions about being a leader and leadership. Her desire to engage in horizontal and non-hierarchical relationships has built a resistance for her to call herself a “leader”. For me, it means that she is taking control of her own definition of leadership, not letting old leadership frameworks define who she is becoming as an academic and how she wants to relate to others.
The word imagination felt like a powerful word in our conversation:
“I don't have many people in my life who share their imagination of me going the next step. So I don't have many people saying, well, you know, you could become a professor. I don't have many people. I can think of one person here in the UK who is an extraordinary human being.”
Deanne’s experience that some academic colleagues do not see her as a potential Professor is telling. To project ourselves into an academic future, the collective imagination of how others see us in belonging to the space shapes how we can inhabit the space. If you feel that others cannot even imagine you as a Professor, this will surely shape how you see yourself in the academic tribe.
If others do not imagine you in certain roles, then it will take a huge amount of drive to imagine yourself in that next career stage. Our imagination is fuelled by what we experience, see and feel. How will you contribute to the collective imagination of individuals from minority backgrounds holding senior leadership roles in universities? Well, you start by supporting their visibility. Visibility is a powerful tool to contribute to our collective imagination.
o Can you rethink your approach to inviting speakers to your events and symposia?
o Can you directly encourage your talented younger colleagues from minority background to apply for positions, funding, leadership opportunities etc.?
o Can you remind yourself that if you belong to a minority, others may not see you in the next more senior role, but whether they see you or not, should not stop you from imagining yourself in that next role. You need to ask yourself whether this next step is something that you want, and then do the hard work needed to be skilled and competitive to apply.
What do we mean by structures that maintain a colonial past?
In an article in Times Higher Education, authors Mahdis Azarmandi and Sara Tolbert address the challenge of using the term “decolonising”, which has been circulating in academic circles, particularly in relation to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion action plans. Some of you may have heard the expression decolonising the curriculum without really understanding what is meant and what has been done about it. Examples here (1, 2, 3 and 4)
For these authors, the term “decolonising” is problematic and not something they want to continue using. Instead, they are interested in focusing on “work to unsettle the settler colonial university” and they share their preference in using terms such as “anticolonial and feminist praxis”. Their article contains many valuable links to reading, which many of us need to engage with. Their description for this praxis is as follows: “to engage in anticolonial, feminist practice, we must address the systems that produce violence and exploitation, not just in the scholarly aspect of our work but also within our own institutional and material conditions such as housing, jobs and access to health.”
I am still a learner on these issues. The conversation with Deanne is challenging me to explore my limited knowledge in this field and the need to challenge my thinking continuously. This week, I am reading these articles (1 and 2). What are you reading about this? Share with me!
“very early on, mentors made a point to say to me how important it is to speak in moderate tones. And that’s code to say, be wary of turning up in a way that gets you read as an angry black woman. So, of course that has implications because the toll of us not communicating in affective ways gets carried and in my mind is imploded. I mean, the body carries that, that weight”
