I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group.
(McIntosh, 1989)
I remember vividly the aftermath of the murder of Steven Lawrence in Eltham SE London 1993, my heart sank seeing the smiling faces of his killers, secure in the knowledge that the system would prevent them being brought to justice. Steven would have been a little bit older than me, and for me the injustice (just as with any murder) was the life that he would have lived denied by his killers.
The murder of George Floyd in 2020 by police in the US provoked worldwide ‘Black Lives Matter’ (BLM) protests which served as a catalyst for Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) initiatives. However, despite the billions invested (8 billion in US for example) in EDI its effectiveness in driving change is questionable (Sadiq, 2023). The racist murder of Steven Lawrence eventually resulted in the Macpherson Report (1999), hailed as ‘a pivotal moment in the advance of race equality in Britain’ (Gillmore et al., 2017, pp. 848-849). However, the actual progress made since is perhaps equally disheartening.
Racism refers to both ideological belief of a hierarchy of races and those practices which subordinate certain racial groups (Golash- Borza, 2016). The combination of prejudice and power structures sustain the dominance of white privilege and negatively impact the subordinate groups, ‘white supremacy’ being a system which grants white people unearned privileges, protections and power (Saad, 2020). Bhavnani, Mizra and Meeto (2005) argue that racism is less about the measure of social characteristics and is more about the relationship between the dominant and the subordinate. It can also be covert (Coates and Morrison, 2011) and becomes institutionalized when organizations fail to provide ‘an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin’ (Machpherson, 1999, para 6.34).
Systemic inequalities may emerge unintentionally and unconsciously (Banaji, Fiske & Massey, 2021) and, in the HE context, examples of systemic and structural racial inequality include gaps in award, retention and progression, under representation of staff, experiences and representation relating to learning, curriculum and research; and differing experiences of ‘othering’, belonging and safety (Advance HE, 2021).
Using the analytic framework of Critical Race Theory (CRT), Gillmore et al. (2017) explore the impacts on education of the murder of Steven Lawrence and argue that policy interventions have actually widened the gap maintaining Black disadvantage; white students being at least 150% more likely to reach the benchmark, concluding that the negative impacts of policies are much more defined than any reduction in inequality. Likewise, Garrett (2024, p.2) drawing on Advanced HE (2022) data and using a CRT lens finds that whilst the number of white students progressing to professor level increased year on year, the BAME students and academics saw a corresponding decrease. Applying an intersectional lens, the disparity between white and black females is even greater, there being only 61 out of almost 23,000 professors (Ibid, p.1).
In the education context, ‘policy is always political’ producing the discourse of success and failure, which ultimately provides advantage for some students over others (Bradbury, 2019, p. 256), and whilst the ‘leaky academic pipeline’ is examined at the PhD level by Garett (2024), the start point of this pipeline is primary school entry. A ‘datafied system’ perpetuates social inequalities and white dominance through systematic underestimation of English as an Additional Language (EAL) children, many from minoritized communities (Bradbury, 2019, p. 255). There is a tacit intentionality of policy makers in the design of baseline assessments which disadvantages EAL (often racialized) students from the beginning (Ibid). This will perhaps become more obvious policy in future, a new Reform- led council ‘DOGE’ team in Kent aims to get rid of all English as a Second or Other Language (ESOL) teaching provision and have immigrant children use Duolingo (Holl-Allen, 2025).
Whilst the UAL data shows, for example, comparative data between continuation by ethnicity (see Fig 1) it does not take account of first language, which may offer a more intersectional lens to the ‘leaky pipeline.’
Fig 1. Percentage Continuation by Ethnicity (5 way). (UAL, 2025)
It could also be argued that academia stubbornly refuses to acknowledge its complicity in the reproduction of racial injustice and the recreation of inequality (Warmington, 2018). For example, white Professor James Orr (2022) of Cambridge university, takes aim at Advance HE initiatives such as the Athena Swan and Race Equality Charter, which oblige Universities to “make big structural top-down changes” to teaching, research, appointments, and admissions (significantly the two academics interviewed for this film for the Telegraph are not white).
Professor Arad Ahmed suggests that the de facto impacts have created an oppressive environment for academics and “have not been helpful for free speech” maintaining that there is plenty of evidence that implicit bias training “forced on staff,” has no impact, and that anti racism training is worse “as it pushes a particular ideology” (Ibid). Dr Vincent Harriman challenges the claim of the Co-chair of Racial Governance Committe that there is substantial evidence of systemic racism which all universities, institutionally, perpetuate, citing five reports of racism in five years, and based on this framing a charity turning universities “woke,” Orr suggests that any future award from advanced HE should be thrown straight in the Cam (Ibid).
It is worth considering that “white privilege” is often confused with wealth and power, however, in reality, it is the “absence of having to live with the consequences of racism” and whilst overt acts of racist violence and murder can provoke catalysts for change, actual systemic change is resisted by white hegemony whilst simultaneously denying that racism even exists, or that attempts to confront racism are in fact racist themselves – just take a look at the comments to the Channel 4 (2020) video cited above.
References
AdvanceHE (2021) ‘Understanding Structural Racism in UK Higher Education: an introduction’ Available at: https://warwick.ac.uk/services/sg/si/diversity/advance_he_-_understanding_racism_report.pdf (Accessed on 12 June 2025)
AdvanceHE. (2022) ‘Equality in Higher Education: Statistical Reports 2022’ Available at: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/equality-higher-education-statistical-reports-2022 (Accessed on 12th June 2025)
Banaji, M. R., Fiske. ,S. T., and Massey, D. S. (2021) ‘Systemic racism: individuals and interactions, institutions and society’ Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 82.
Bhavnani, R, Mirza, H S, and Meetoo, V. (2005). Tackling the roots of racism: Lessons for success. Policy Press
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
Channel 4. (2020) The School That Tried to End Racism. [Online}. Youtube. 30 June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I3wJ7pJUjg (Accessed on 5th June)
Coates, R. D., and Morrison, J. (2011) ‘Covert Racism Theories, Institutions, and Experiences Series: Studies’ in Critical Social Sciences, Volume: 32.
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.
Gillborn, D., Demack, S., Rollock, N., and Warmington, P. (2017) ‘Moving the goalposts: Education policy and 25 years of the Black/White achievement gap’ British Educational Research Journal Vol. 43, No. 5, pp. 848–874 DOI: 10.1002/berj.3297
Golash-Boza, T. (2016). ‘A critical and comprehensive theory of race and racism’, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 2(2): 129– 41.
Holl-Allen, G. (2025) English classes for migrants face the axe under Reform-led council Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/06/05/english-classes-for-migrants-face-the-axe-reform-council/ (Accessed on 12th June 2025)
Macpherson, W. (1999) ‘The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry,’ London, UK Home Office, Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c2af540f0b645ba3c7202/4262.pdf (Accessed 12th June 2025)
McIntosh, P. (1989) ‘White privilege: unpacking the invisible knapsack.’ Peace and Freedom. Available at: https://med.umn.edu/sites/med.umn.edu/files/2022-12/White-Privilege_McIntosh-1989.pdf (Accessed on 5 June 2025)
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
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
UAL (2025) UG retention and continuation. Available at: https://dashboards.arts.ac.uk/dashboard/ActiveDashboards/DashboardPage.aspx?dashboardid=348a5321-e946-47c1-b9b8-aeb5a841d16c&dashcontextid=638684775887265547 (Accessed on 12th June 2025)
Warmington, P., foreword to Arday, J., and Mirza, H., (Eds). (2018) Dismantling Race in Higher Education – Racism, Whiteness and Decolonising the Academy. Palgrave Macmillan.
2 replies on “Inclusive Practice_Blog Post 3_Race”
This tension with data has been on my mind, and here are my thoughts… On one hand, data is vital. Quantitative metrics around awarding gaps, representation, or progression are often the only way to hold institutions accountable. Without them, disparities remain anecdotal and can be too easily dismissed. In this sense, data provides the foundation for strategic intervention and resourcing. But there’s a risk that what gets measured becomes what matters, and everything else is deprioritised.
Reading this blog, and revisiting Bradbury’s (2020) work, I’m reminded that the way data is framed and operationalised in policy settings can reproduce inequalities rather than mitigate them. The problem isn’t data per se, but how institutional systems tend to value only what is easily quantifiable. Intersectional exclusions or blindspots, often get flattened out because they don’t fit neatly into standardised reporting structures. The omission of first language or religion from UAL’s attainment dashboards is a case in point.
This also affects how qualitative experience is received. Student and staff narratives, or participatory interventions, can surface systemic problems in the curriculum or learning environment, yet they often carry less institutional weight than ‘hard’ metrics. There’s an epistemic hierarchy of information at play.
So the question for me is not whether we need more data, but rather how can data practices themselves become more reflexive and inclusive? How do we make space for forms of knowledge (i.e., qualitative or allegory) that don’t conform to conventional reporting, but are central to understanding inequality as lived and embodied?
Hi Jeff – thanks for the comment – and I think you have well articulated the tension between the hard metric and the allegoric/ qualitative. Something that didn’t occur to me before – is that this is likely the result of neoliberalism and the New Public Management approach that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s – in general to quantify public services – see also NHS waiting lists and wait times.