Tag Archives: Intersectionality

Reflecting on Race. Future imaginations

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In my teaching context at UAL, I could, fortunately, not be under the naive illusion that academia is post-racial (Wong et al. 2021). This is firstly due to my personal experiences over 5 years as an associate lecturer, and secondly, due to the Spatial Practices programme where I teach and the PgCert course where I study openly recognising UAL’s shortcomings in racial justice. 

Rhianna Garret’s article on the career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhD students in UK higher education (Garrett 2024), and professor Shirley Anne Tate’s TEDx talk on BPOC attainment gap (Tate 2018) each sketch out issues that I also recognise from my experience at UAL. Garrett’s article draws on interviews conducted with BPoC PhD students, who identify issues such as universities making ‘poster children’ out of their BPoC students and members of staff, predominantly white spaces, and colonial structures that shape individualistic practices (Garrett 2024). In her talk, Shirley Anne Tate talks about her own positive experience in receiving higher education where her teachers were recognising her as a person and nurtured her, whilst highlighting that 30 years on, the institutions’ ‘cold climate’ hasn’t changed, there is a growing BPoC attainment gap, and overall, institutional racism is still everpresent. These examples are directly reflected in my teaching context.

Having taken part in the undergraduate interview process at Central Saint Martins, UAL in 2021 and 2022, I was positively taken by UAL’s contextual admission policies, and I found the web-based training for challenging my own biases very useful. Both of these things are also a part of UAL Anti-racism action plan from 2021 (UAL 2021). However, it isn’t hard to agree with most authors of the provided resources that as the impact of such measures like training and simple diversification of student and teacher body aren’t showing meaningful improvement in attainment and career opportunities (see Garrett 2024, Sadiq 2023, Tate 2018, Wong et al. 2021) we must do more, i.e. intervene more meaningfully. Asif Sadiq concludes his TEDx talk with a list of possible solutions, from which I find the following directly and immediately applicable to my teaching context at the Spatial Practices programme at CSM: localising knowledge production, i.e. creating opportunities for sharing experiences in our direct learning communities, rather than relying on corporate structures; experiential learning, i.e. creating teaching briefs that take people out of their comfort zones and engaging them in experiences that include multiple perspectives (of their peers); encouraging self-lead learning, while opening up space for group learning (Sadiq 2023). Sadiq’s solution-based talk stood in great contrast to James Orr’s damning report on institutional anti-racism strategies where he offered no critical perspective or possible solutions other than essentially regressing to an openly unjust learning environment under the guise of meritocracy (Orr 2022).

Finally, the materials left me with some open-ended personal questions. Am I acting as a bystander (Wong et al. 2021) in my teaching context, and if so, is that an manifestation of white fragility (Amanpour & Co. 2020)? My area of expertise – architecture – is failing to meaningfully strive for inclusivity, so can we consider this to be one of the reasons why it is losing its social relevance? What is the relationship between localising (Sadiq 2023) and eurocentrism (e.g. Tate 2018)? The last question rooting from my two very different teaching contexts: one in my native Estonia, which has been subjected to Russian imperialism and where academics’ credibility seems always on a lesser standing than in Western Europe, and the other in London, with its globalism and imperialist history.

Bibliography:

Amanpour & Co. (2020) Excerpt from Robin DiAngelo’s 2018 interview with Michel Martin about White Fragility [Online]. Youtube.

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.

Orr, J. (2022) Revealed: The charity turning UK universities woke. The Telegraph [Online]. Youtube. 5 August.

Sadiq, A. (2023) Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Learning how to get it right. TEDx [Online]. Youtube. 2 March.

Tate, S.A. (2018) Tackling the ‘BPOC’ Attainment Gap in UK Universities [Online]. Youtube. TEDx/Re:Act, Royal School of Speech & Drama. October.

UAL (2021) Anti-Racism Action Plan Summary. Arts.ac.uk [Online].

Wong, B., Elmorally, R., Copsey-Blake, M., Highwood, E. & Singarayer, J. (2021) Is race still relevant? Student perceptions and experiences of racism in higher education. Cambridge Journal of Education, 51(3), pp359-375.

Reflecting on Faith. Epistemic (in)justice

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Until I read Jaclyn Rekis’ article on religious identity and epistemic injustice (Rekis 2023), it was very difficult for me to engage with the subject of faith as part of the course. The term epistemic injustice, coined by Miranda Fricker (Fricker 2007), provided me a way into understanding the importance of acknowledging learners’ religious identities, and moreover, the harm that overlooking them might do. 

Of the recurring themes in all the provided resources, I found the most important to my teaching context to be firstly, the possible integrity of someone’s religion and all other aspects of their life, and secondly, the deflation of a person’s credibility due to their religious identity. As both Kwame Appiah in his TED talk and Jaclyn Rekis in her article emphasise, for many people, there is no separation between religious ways of knowing and e.g. scientific ways of knowing (Appiah 2014, Rekis 2023). Therefore, for epistemic justice, we must attribute credibility to religious speakers when they speak from their theological resources and concepts. This is important not least because attributing credibility to a religious speaker helps the speaker to live with integrity (Rekis 2023, 793-794). The unjust deflation of a person’s credibility due to their religious identity, however, often happens before a person even gets a chance to offer a testimony. More often, the deflation can already happen due to prevailing stereotypes and certain associated visual religious features, e.g. muslim women wearing a veil, sikh men wearing the dastar. Simran Jeet Singh talks about the importance of challenging such stereotypes in the classroom by developing empathy, and engaging with difference (Trinity University 2016), while Jaclyn Rekis refers to the observations by Alia Al-Saji: “… the simultaneous denial of veiled Muslim women’s voices and persistent view that equates the veil with oppression itself makes it so “the veiled woman is at once hypervisible as oppressed and invisible as subject” (Al-Saji 2010, 891)” (Rekis 2023).

Even though by now I recognise my own faith-related prejudices in my teaching practice and strive to challenge them, it also pains me to realise how I’ve been affected by them in the past without questioning them. The clearest examples of this have to do with the intersection of religion and gender, and with the associated stereotypes of oppression and incredibility. I was particularly struck by Rekis drawing on the experiences of veiled muslim women to exemplify the intersection of faith and gender, but perhaps even more strongly, I was affected by her drawing on the example of Sojourn Truth, in whose case we can discuss the intersection of race, gender and faith (Rekis 2023). In this example, Rekis makes a strong case about Truth’s ways of knowing being rooted in her Christian faith. 

In my own teaching, I can identify with the issue of avoiding certain topics and themes out of fear of having to address the different life experiences and sources of knowledge my students might possess due to their faith. I recognise now, that avoidance is also injustice – the possibility to interpretate religious experiences is ruled out in the academia, and so their credibility is not deflated but removed altogether. By doing so, we are practicing injustice towards the religious students, but also, we are losing the potential to diversify the understanding of secular audiences. So how to encourage the sharing of knowledge that is rooted in faith? How to give time and space to discussions that grow empathy and engage with difference?

Bibliography:

Al-Saji, A. (2010) The racialization of Muslim veils: A philosophical analysis. Philosophy & Social Criticism 36 (8): 875–902.

Appiah, K. A. (2014) Is religion good or bad? (This is a trick question). Youtube [Online]. 16 June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2et2KO8gcY

Fricker, M. (2007) Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jawad, H. (2022) Islam, Women and Sport: The Case of Visible Muslim Women. [Online].

Reki, J. (2023) Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account. Hypatia 38, pp779–800.

Trinity University (2016) Challenging Race, Religion, and Stereotypes in the Classroom. [Online].

Reflecting on Disability. Building collective capacity

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‘If you don’t see us, we have no place to be,’ says the artist Christine Sun Kim, who is deaf, in one of the short videos we watched as part of the Inclusive Practices (IP) unit.[1] Kim expresses how she is driven not to ‘get trapped in the deaf community’ [1], which she says could be comfortable as opposed to feeling oppressed as part of the hearing community. However, she is committed to the wider visibility of Deaf culture, and actively fights its marginalisation. What stands out in the video is how she has chosen to align her artistic work closely with her lived experience, i.e. how her identities as an artist and as a deaf person intersect. In the video, Kim focuses on her abilities and on skills, which she has developed because she has to navigate the world as a deaf person. By doing so, her story isn’t told from the perspective of an impairment, but from a unique set of skills. 

Its positive message harks back to the video interview with the Paralympian Ade Adepitan. He says, it is the society that creates discrimination by restricting some people’s access to parts of it, and thus creates disability. But if a person is nurtured, accepted and let shine, rather than being defined by their dis-abilities, it is their set of abilities which matters.[2] Ade Adepitan refers to the marginalisation of people with disabilities as a structural issue, and highlights the ensuring of accessibility as the most important way to confront it. When talking about the importance of the inclusion of disabled people to the LGBTQ+ community, Chay Brown emphasises accessibility as being key to trans justice too. They say about their work with TransActual, ‘If we are not working for the disabled trans people, we are not working for the trans community, because we are missing people out.’[3]

The basketball player Ade Adepitan, artist Christine Sun Kim and co-founder of TransActual Chay Brown are all spokespersons from and for intersecting marginalised identities. There is noticeable strength and resolution in their respective messages, and even though each of them speaks to an extent about the discrimination they’ve been confronted with, they have come to a point of confidence, and have the resource to empower others. 

But what could I, an able bodied (or body-minded?) tutor, do to support the learning of someone with a disability, or rather to support the learning of all my students?

As an Associate Lecturer I follow the institutional guidance and measures that have been set up to support the students who identify as disabled. These measures include extra time given to students for submitting their final deliverables (ISAs), guidance on how to accommodate for certain disabilities in my teaching practice (written guidance, clarity in feedback etc.), and signposting students with disabilities to UAL services that are available to them. However, often these measures appear somewhat technocratic, and are not always helpful for building a strong student-tutor relationship, or for nurturing a learning community [4].

This brings me back to the more everyday experience of studio teaching, and the importance of valuing each and every students’ lived experiences. In order to avoid a merely transactional relationship between myself and the students, as well as between the students themselves, it is important to allow for space to create mutual understanding and aid in the studio – or as Annabel Crowley put it at today’s IP workshop, to build our collective capacity. In order to do that, I need to design teaching interventions that facilitate the sharing of everyone’s lived experiences, e.g. assignment briefs that allow for the creation of personal work and briefs that help students figure out their positionality. Not to be afraid of clumsiness, and potential discomfort will be key to opening up space for deeper understanding.

References:

[1] Art21 (2023). Christine Sun Kim in “Friends & Strangers” – Season 11. [Online video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NpRaEDlLsI&t=779s (Accessed 11 Mayl 2024).   

[2] ParalympicGB (2020). Ade Adepitan gives amazing explanation of systemic racism. [Online Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAsxndpgagU&t=164s (Accessed: 11 May 2024).  

[3] Parapride (2023). Intersectionality in Focus: Empowering Voices during UK Disability History Month 2023. [Online video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yID8_s5tjc&t=110s (Accessed 11 May 2024).   

[4] hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress. Educations as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.