Race & Ethnicity: Privilege, Power & the Sociology of Dominance.
TASK 1 – Session 2 Review
Focus on UAL data is productive. Practical steps to build upon would be useful
TASK 2 – Faith in Intersectionality
Social Justice/ Buddhism/ Queerness from Higher Power: Religion, Faith, Spirituality & Belief pp. 34-36 https://shadesofnoir.org.uk/journals/higher-power-religion-faith-spirituality-belief/
An introduction and reflection on Radiacal Dharma by Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams, Lama Hod Ownes with Jasmine Syedullah PhD.
Buddhism in relation to liberation and queerness.
“It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography and refrain of the Black Lives Matter
Notes & Reflections
How does this relate to your understanding of faith/ religion in the context of inclusiveness?
racism and privilege prevent our collective awakening, urge a compassionate response to the systemic, state-sanctioned violence and oppression that has persisted against black people since the slave era
Radical Dharma demonstrates how social transformation and personal, spiritual liberation must be articulated and inextricably linked.
how teachings that transcend color, class, and caste are hindered by discrimination and the dynamics of power, shame, and ignorance
beyond a demand for the equality and inclusion of diverse populations to advancing a new dharma that deconstructs rather than amplifies systems of suffering and prepares us to weigh the shortcomings not only of our own minds but also of our communities
rests on radical honesty, a common ground where we can drop our need for perfection and propriety and speak as souls
society where profit rules, people’s value is determined by the color of their skin, and many voices—including queer voices— are silenced, Radical Dharma recasts the concepts of engaged spirituality, social transformation, inclusiveness, and healing.’
criticisms of Lama Rod’s, with which I agree, is that many sanghas have become severely compromised by capitalism and need to provide a consumer oriented Buddhism. The result is too heavy a focus on selling classes and not offending sangha members which dilutes the authenticity of Buddhist practice. On the other hand, you need money to run a sangha, so where is the balance? Reminding me of the Christian megachurches that require and/or ask for donations but are also a business in itself.
How does this impact your practice?
The tiptoeing around race and other forms of difference as if in fear of waking a sleeping lion is one of the most subtly toxic attributes of whiteness in our culture right now.” – Jasmine Syedullah
“Race is the ultimate delusion in that it both does and does not exist in reality.” Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams sensei identifies the problem and highlights the conflicting viewpoints
Lama Rod, describes radical Dharma, within this context as having the bravery to have dharma talks and meditation practices that will focus on topics that make participants feel uncomfortable and learn how to deal with their suffering.
“Love is the wish for myself and others to be happy. Love transcends our need to control the recipient of love. I love not because I need something in return. I love not because I want to be loved back, but because I see and understand love as being an expression of the spaciousness I experience when I am challenging my egoic fixation by thinking about the welfare of others. I go where I am loved. I go where I am allowed to express love. In loving, I have no expectations.”-Lama Rod Owens
Spirituality / faith / religion can be a way of practicing freedom, and community and it can also mean taking agency over a practice(s). Faith doesn’t come into my practice in my work with students, I facilitate what they want to do, and is not focusing so much on their concepts, but more on their physical process, so it doesn’t come into it at all. Even if they are making deeply religious work, which can sometimes happen, I am usually only commenting on the very visual references and aesthetics.
TASK 3 – Whiteliness and Institutional Racism.
Notes & Reflections
Whiteness is a location of structural advantage, of race privilege. Second, it is a ‘standpoint,’ a place from which White people look at ourselves, at others, and at society. Third, ‘Whiteness’ refers to a set of cultural practices that are usually unmarked and unnamed. (Frankenburg, 1993, p.1, Diangelo, 2018, pp 101)
Unconscious bias happens by our brains making incredibly quick judgements and assessments of people and situations without us realising. Our biases are influenced by our background, cultural environment and personal experiences. We may not even be aware of these views and opinions, or be aware of their full impact and implications (Equality Challenge Unit, 2017)
This presentation speaks against this point of view by arguing that bias is not unconscious but instead is linked to Charles Mills’ (1997) ‘Racial Contract’ and its ‘epistemologies of ignorance’. These epistemologies of ignorance emerge from what the ECU’s calls ‘our background, cultural environment and personal experience.’ As such asserting that racism stems from ‘unconscious bias’ diminishes white supremacy and maintains white innocence as a will to forget institutional racism. In equality and diversity training ‘unconscious bias’ has become a technology of institutional surveillance; it has become a simulation attempting to move beyond a racialized reality to where ‘we all know better’ because we have been trained to participate in a ‘post-racial’ (Goldberg, 2015) hyper-reality. I therefore argue that it is through decolonizing ‘unconscious bias’, ‘white fragility’ and ‘self-forgiveness’ that we can begin to see hidden institutional whiteliness at the base of such bias.
Her paper – Tate and Page (2018) eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/id/eprint/4621/1/WhitelinessandInstitutionalRacismAM-TATE.pdf
Fed up of unconscious bias to cover up the erasure of egregious and containing institutional racism in my and other institutions
University funding its own watchdog that looks at its diversity and inclusion policies and gives them advice, one of the pieces of advice has been unconscious bias. If we deal with unconscious bias, everything will be alright. We should send people on unconscious bias training.
Bias is very conscious and linked to Charles Mills racial contract and it’s epistemologies of ignorance….these emerge from our background, our cultural environment and personal experience…we can’t keep saying that unconscious bias stems from just that you know because what it does then it makes us not think about white supremacy at all and maintains white innocence and white fragility.
Further thoughts – UCL department of Eugenics theguardian.com/education/2018/jan/10/ucl-to-investigate-secret-eugenics-conference-held-on-campus – The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty (Indigenous Americas) Paperback – 15 May 2015 by Aileen Moreton-Robinson (Author)
“white supremacy” I do not mean to allude only to the self-conscious racism of white supremacist hate groups. I refer instead to a political, economic, and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non- white subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings.’ (Ansley 1997: 592, Gillborn 2005)
jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctt155jmpf
White Fragility. ‘White fragility, a concept that came out of my on-going experience leading discussions on race, racism, white privilege and white supremacy with primarily white audiences. It became clear over time that white people have extremely low thresholds for enduring any discomfort associated with challenges to our racial worldviews. We can manage the first round of challenge by ending the discussion through platitudes – usually something that starts with “People just need to…” or “Race doesn’t really have any meaning to me” or “Everybody’s racist”– but scratch any further on that surface and we fall apart.’ (Diangelo, 2018, pp 101)
Irish becoming white – amazon.co.uk/Whiteness-Introduction-Steve-Garner/dp/0415403642
Whiteness: An Introduction Paperback – Illustrated, 9 Aug. 2007 by Steve Garner routledge.com/Whiteness-An-Introduction/Garner/p/book/9780415403641
How does this relate to your understanding of whiteness and white fragility? Department is mandated to do the UAL unconscious bias training module
What steps do you feel you can take to implement change? Western knowledge bias in education
Cooper and Thesen’s chapter IN Cooper, B., & Morrell, R. (Eds.). (2014). Africa-centred knowledges: Crossing fields and worlds. Boydell & Brewer Ltd.
TASK 4 – Critical Race Theory
What Is Critical Race Theory?
CRT uses storytelling and counter-storytelling to give voice to the traditionally marginalised in society whose truth is often interpreted through a white lens.
CRT scholars consider whiteness the normative position against which all other experiences are judged.
‘We appreciate its meaning is from the position of the oppressed because it does not come with the will to distort that which defines meaning from the oppressor’
(Leonardo, 2013:600)
Why Was It Created?
“A new powerful ideology has emerged to defend the contemporary racial order: the ideology of color-blind racism” (Bonilla-Silva, 2014:73)
To question societal structures and policies that reinforce inequities for people of colour whilst privileging opportunities and maintaining the status quo for white people. This can be seen in the form of colour-blind approaches that sees consistent underachievement of some minority students in the compulsory and post compulsory education system a high percentage of black prisoners in the prison system.
A Guardian report (Ramesh, 2010), found black offenders were 44% more likely than white offenders to be sentenced to prison for driving offences, 38% more likely to be imprisoned for public disorder or possession of a weapon and 27% more likely for drugs possession. Overall black prisoners account for the largest number of minority ethnic prisoners (49%).
Flexibility Of CRT.
‘Intersectionality means the examination of race, sex, class, national origin, and sexual orientation, and how their combination plays out in various settings.’ Delgado et al (2001)
Intersectionality within CRT points to the multidimensional of oppressions and acknowledges that race alone does not always account for disempowerment.
How Can This Be Applied?
“This systemic reality works against building a diverse and inclusive higher education environment because it supports the embedded hierarchical racist paradigms that currently exist in our society. Diversity tends to be more visible within divisions of students affairs, although the power of the institution tends to be centralized within academic affairs where there is less representation of women and people of color”. Patton et al (2007)
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/soul-nation-art-age-black-power
Most of our academic resources on philosophies and theories around race are based on North American studies and experiences which can differ quite a bit from British society and won’t address issues relevant to the UK origin of diversity, culture and other minorities and whitenesses. Far-fetched to say is a way of looking to other cultures thought the lenses of a colonial high ground and not focus on the issues on our doorstep? Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race’ really helpful in learning more about racism in the UK. Akala’s book Natives as well. David Gillborn, Heidi Mirza, Nicola Rollock and Shirley Ann Tate are all UK based. Linking to the flexibility of CRT, DisCrit (Disability Critical Race Studies) – like CRT in general it takes an intersectional approach and is well worth a read is this is relevant to your artefacts. libsearch.arts.ac.uk/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=1486680&query_desc=kw%2Cwrdl%3A%20discrit
TASK 4B – White Privilege
UK university academics offered ‘white privilege’ lessons
Notes & Reflections
Universities across the UK are offering seminars discussing ‘people of colour’ being ‘systemically discriminated against’. seminars about how to discuss the effect of “white privilege” on black and minority ethnic groups in their higher education classes.
seminars examine topics such as identifying “whiteness” in society and higher education, while looking at how universities can create a “culturally responsive curriculum and teaching practices”.
https://studentsunionucl.org/whats-on/general/why-is-my-curriculum-white
session in October last year at The University of Bristol, with the Black and Minority Ethnic Staff Advisory Group, which was called Walking on the White Side of the Street. “white privilege as a structural phenomenon that impacts upon housing, education, health, and employment such that People of Colour are systemically discriminated against”, according to the event’s description.
Monculturalism is normalised in the curriculum that people don’t even notice it
There are some, black and disabled academics who have all contributed but they’re not in the general discourse because the majority of academia with a few exceptions is based on status and how often somebody is referenced of course historically institutions even forward thinking as UCL perpetuate the ideas of certain people that have been there for the longest must have the strongest claim academic privilege
Ethnocentric curriculum
UK’s leading race equality think tanks, RunnyMede Trust, revealed in 2015 only 85 of 15,905 professors in the country’s academia were black. only 15 black academics in the British university system were working in senior management roles.
2016 UPP report said black students were 1.5 times more likely to drop out of higher education than white and Asian students in the UK. 10.3 per cent of black students dropped out of university.
University and College Union study also claimed high levels of discrimination in colleges and universities following a report in 2016.
A survey of more 631 black union members working in the higher education system revealed 90 per cent of black staff members reported facing barriers to promotion.
In 2014, a campaign titled Why is My Curriculum White started at the University College of London attempted to highlight the lack of diversity in the UK education system.
TASK 5 – Critical Race Theory.
introduction of Critical Race Theory Chapter 1 sections: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5441df7ee4b02f59465d2869/t/5d8e9fdec6720c0557cf55fa/1569628126531/DELGADO++Critical+Race+Theory.pdf
Some men see things as they are and say, why;
I dream things that never were and say, why not.—Robert F. Kennedy
In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way.—Justice Harry Blackmun
movement considers many of the same issues that conven- tional civil rights and ethnic studies discourses take up, but places them in a broader perspective that includes econom- ics, history, context, group- and self-interest, and even feel- ings and the unconscious. Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the lib- eral order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, En- lightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitu- tional law.
Although CRT began as a movement in the law, it has rapidly spread beyond that discipline. Today, many in the field of education consider themselves critical race theorists who use CRT’s ideas to understand issues of school disci- pline and hierarchy, tracking, controversies over curriculum and history, and IQ and achievement testing.
‘Critical Race Theory. What Is Critical Race Theory, does anybody know? Critical Race Theory is a slogan invented by the right wing and the person who invented it Christopher Rufo has been very open and frank, he says we just use this as a way to refer to everything we hate. If you want to know what Critical Race Theory actually is, it’s a small academic discipline, which suggests, which investigates systematic elements of racism in American education. They certainly exist, its never reached the schools. The schools wouldn’t even know what it is. This is invented by the right wing exactly as Rufo stated, to everything we hate and want to destroy, like teaching American history, teaching gender issues, we hate that so we’ll call it Critical Race Theory. It’s a small academic discipline that no one every hear of until it was picked up primarily by Rufo and expanded by the Republican echo chamber to be some major attack’.
TASK 6 – Case Study
Sticks And Stones. Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones p.105 https://outlook.office.com/mail/inbox/id/AAQkADMwNjRlMjhhLWQyNzktNGQxYi1iNTg1LWM0MDRkMjAwYTNkNgAQAPP/A/rFIjlIjw0h9+lpyow=
- What do you take from the piece?
Actions appear to be conscious – Lecturer should not loose their job but require staff training – Not a safe place for black students. And the student still has to attend class with this tutor. Fear of reprisal from complaining
- What advice would you have provided the student?
Care, support by collecting evidence – Let students know they have been heard – Letting them know they can leave the room and can report the event, sooner the better – Advise students to make a formal complaint – Ask for their money back for the module. Public exposure? see instagram.com/ualtruth
What policy may respond to this case study?
Complaints policy, Equality act, UAL Anti-racism action plan
Disciplinary code for students: arts.ac.uk/study-at-ual/course-regulations/student-rights-and-responsibilities/disciplinary-code-for-students
What pledges would we propose to change my pedagogical approach?
For each reading list, include one abstract/text written in a language other than English.
Working with colleagues to develop resources to support International students to know how disability support works, and that it’s available to them.
Check my resources are diverse and equal time spent on diverse resources.
Don’t shy away from difficult conversations about racism, ‘call out’ racism and provide firmer sanctions for using racist language or behaviour.
Be an ally, supportive and gain knowledge for the student and they know and they feel it… but from UAL, considering their bold claim to tackle social justice …. it needs to be recognised officially with policies and real channel so that the students ( and sometimes staff) know it is officially accept not to accept discrimination.
– Questioning terminology.
– Continuing to speak up, call out, question, reflect, change, learn, listen
Bias is very conscious and linked to Charles Mills racial contract and it’s epistemologies of ignorance….these emerge from our background, our cultural environment and personal experience…we can’t keep saying that unconscious bias stems from just that you know because what it does then it makes us not think about white supremacy at all and maintains white innocence and white fragility
Dwell on the uneasy feelings and uneasy practice caused by white racism, and challenge comments and practices that might get overlooked or self-forgiven by Unconscious Bias category
PADLET – https://artslondon.padlet.org/sosei/wednesday-whiteliness-and-institutional-racism-jt58yaoqmno5ehw2