What is an African University (original) (raw)
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"In attempting to come to grips with the lack of transformation in the Faculty, I do not find it particularly helpful to lament about this or that individual being racist, misogynist, homophobic or xenophobic. If we are serious about transformation, we need to confront the Faculty’s deep-rooted legacy of racial exclusion and cultural domination. This is only possible if we are honest enough to realise that institutional racism did not simply dissipate into thin air when those who had the keys (and still hold the keys) decided to open the doors of the Faculty to people of other races and cultures. A recognition that racism and other forms of discrimination are deeply embedded in the institutional culture of the Faculty would also enable us to analyse and overturn unquestioned power structures and accepted notions of merit. This is necessary precisely because the ‘power of institutional racism resides in taken-for-granted nature of routine operations of an institution and the ideologies on which they are founded’..."
How Appropriate Is It To Characterise Western Universities as Institutionally Racist?
The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Global Studies
How appropriate is it to Characterise Western universities as institutionally racist? The question being explored here has its origins in the murder of a young man in the United Kingdom. Stephen Lawrence was killed on April 22nd, 1993 as he waited at a bus stop in London with his friend, Duwayne Brooks. What prompted a group of White youths to attack him was the colour of Stephen's skin. Stephen was stabbed to death because he was black (Macpherson, 1999). Racist incidents are not a new phenomenon in British society. 'Violence has been an enduring feature of the white British reaction to the presence of 'blacks', 'Pakis', and Jews who have settled on this island' (Bowling, 1999, 54). Racist murders are rarer, but it should not be assumed that the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence was unprecedented. The Institute of Race Relations estimate that there have been over one hundred deaths from racial violence in the twenty years since his death (Burnett, 2013). Although the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence is by no means unique, it is the case which has received the greatest media attention and resonated most with people across ethnic boundaries (Cottle, 2004). This is due in no small measure to Stephen's parents, Doreen and Neville Lawrence, who showed extraordinary resilience in seeking justice for their son and mounted a campaign to that end. While they faced innumerable obstacles, including a flawed police investigation that prevented any of Stephen's murderers from being successfully prosecuted until 2011, their patience and persistence did eventually pay off. They persuaded the incoming Labour government in July 1997 to set up a judicial inquiry into the police investigation of their son's murder. The inquiry was conducted by a former judge of the High Court, Sir William Macpherson of Cluny. The public hearings began on March 24 th , 1998 and the final report, henceforth referred to as the Macpherson report, was published on February 24 th , 1999. The main findings are crisply summarised: The conclusions to be drawn from all the evidence in connection with the investigation of Stephen Lawrence's racist murder are clear. There is no doubt that there were fundamental errors. The investigation was marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership by senior officers. A flawed MPS review failed to expose these inadequacies. The second investigation could not salvage the faults of the first investigation (Macpherson, 1999, 46.1). Acknowledging institutional racism Chapter 6, entitled Racism, was the longest chapter in the report. It addressed what Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, who presented the report to Parliament on February 24 th , 1999, acknowledged to be "the central and most important issue for the inquiry" (Hansard, 1999, quoted in Pilkington, 2011, 2). Remarkably, the chapter concluded that institutional racism was rife in British society. Although the primary focus of the inquiry was on the police, the report suggested that all major organisations in British society are characterised by institutional racism. Racism, institutional or otherwise, is not the prerogative of the Police service. It is clear that other agencies including for example those dealing with ... education also suffer from the disease' (Macpherson, 1999, 6.54).
2011
This study examined the lived experience of black registrars (medical residents) in a predominantly white academic medical milieu using the single case of the University of Cape Town Faculty of Health Sciences in South Africa. It foregrounded this experience by demonstrating how it is circumscribed by notions of race (and racism). Given the centrality of race and consequently, whiteness, a select few members of the white academic staff were included in the study as a 'control' group. In order to decipher this black experience and how whites in turn contended with race, the study employed Critical Race Theory (CRT) as its overarching theoretical lens. Just as CRT received theoretical and conceptual traction in the United States in the light of the post-civil rights struggles, in the context of this study, the post-apartheid racial discourse in South Africa too necessitated employment of CRT in examining the efficacy of the so-called nonracialism, often (mis)construed to mean 'colour-blindness'. In employing CRT as the key theoretical lens, this study paid particular attention to the four basic tenets of CRT, namely, (a) the centrality of race and racism in post-apartheid South Africa; (b) interest convergence / material determinism; (c) social constructionism and; (d) the black voice thesis. In this research, case study research design was preferred together with qualitative research data method. Therefore, in-depth interviews were conducted with 20 black registrars as well as with 5 senior academic staff at the University of Cape Town Faculty of Health Sciences (UCT FHS). In that regard, the study was a single case inquiry. The in-depth interviews conducted, which I prefer to refer to as 'conversations', enabled me to immerse myself into the lives of these registrars as well as afforded me the opportunity to understand the social machination of the white psyche and its propensity to the 'colour-blind' racial frames, anchored primarily through 'abstract liberalist' worldviews and the general minimisation of racism.
This Marker I Call My Body: Coloniality and Racism in the Academy
International journal of African renaissance studies, 2018
Women of colour have had to navigate a particular set of interpersonal and structural challenges in the academy that frustrate and deny their aspirations. these concerns defy a simplistic analysis, as they are part of a complex amalgam of raced, gendered, and classed experiences. I present a framework to analyse how racist/sexist hierarchies of power created during colonialism are continuously rearticulated within academic spaces to account for the persistent marginalisation of people of colour in universities in the USA, and Black women in particular. I argue that we need to understand coloniality as operating within the university as the everyday state of affairs and, as such, as an obstacle to diversity. I show how, in practice, coloniality and white racism work in partnership to construct a world that reduces Black women to their flesh and to beings that are by nature inferior. An analysis that begins with coloniality situates the intersections of racial identity and processes of othering in a system underpinned by social hierarchical relationships of domination and exclusion. My point is not to reject attempts at changing the university, but to call for a deeper understanding of the experiences of Black women in relation to its colonial legacy.