Diversity Digest

Equality, Diversity & Inclusion at King's College London

Tag: anti-racism (Page 1 of 2)

Race Equality Wrap-Up – Term 2, 2022/23

June 12, 2023 /

Welcome to our second termly update on King’s race equality activity. Below you will find a snapshot of what is happening across King’s- please do reach out (by emailing diversity@kcl.ac.uk) if you have any questions or would like to get involved. We would also love to hear what you are doing in your area to tackle racism, as learning from each other and sharing best practice is key to becoming an anti-racist institution. 

You can read our wrap-up from term 1 here. 

B-MEntor 

King’s is part of the B-MEntor scheme, which is a cross-institutional mentoring programme for academic, research and professional services staff from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds. This year King’s had 36 participants. 

Terminology 

Following on from the creation of a race equality allyship toolkit, we are currently developing guidance for race and ethnicity terminology. As well as being a response to demand, we also hope this will help people have sensitive conversations about race and racism.  

Success for Black Engineers 

King’s successfully applied for funding from the Royal Academy of Engineering for a cross-faculty programme called Success for Black Engineers. This programme comprises of outreach, mentoring, and other activities to increase the proportion of Black engineering students and to support Black students to achieve first class degrees. This project started in May 2022 led by Professor Kawal Rhode and the project team. Sophie Rust joined as the project’s Coordinator in February 2023, based in the EDI team but working closely with the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences (FoLSM) and the Department of Engineering (NMES). Students on the programme will be visiting Siemens Magnet Technology in April to get exposure to engineering in industry, as well as taking part in funded summer research placements at King’s. 

The Racial Code- Tales of Resistance and Survival 

King’s recently hosted a launch event for Professor Nicola Rollock’s latest book. Chaired by Professor ‘Funmi Olonisakin, a panel of staff and students discussed what the book meant to them and shared their own experiences of racism. 

Diversifying the academic pipeline 

The proportion of academics from minoritised ethnic backgrounds, particularly those who are Black, decreases with seniority, however we know there is work to do at every stage of the pipeline. In order to encourage more Black students to enter academia, we are developing an academic mentoring scheme. We are very early in the planning process, however welcome expressions of interest from academics who would be interested in mentoring a student who is considering a career in academia, explore more here. 

Recruitment 

We were pleased to support the Entrepreneurship Institute (EI) to pilot an initiative to diversify their interview panel. The EI did a call out for volunteers from minoritised ethnic backgrounds to sit on a panel and support with shortlisting. We are now reviewing this approach and looking at how we can implement it in other areas across King’s.  

Microaggression Training 

The EDI team deliver microaggressions training, which is open to all staff at King’s. This training will support you: 

  • To be able to define bias and microaggressions. 
  • To give examples of bias and microaggressions in action. 
  • To be able to describe how biases are formed and the ways in which they manifest and impact people within the workplace and classroom. 
  • To examine your own biases and to consider strategies to respond to microaggressions. 

You can book onto a session via our Skills Forge page. So far we have had 156 signups out of a total of 200 spaces so be quick!  

Want to Learn more about Equality, Diversity & Inclusion at King’s College London?

Race Equality Week: It’s everyone’s business

February 8, 2023 /

Race Equality Week takes place between the 6th – 12th February 2023. The week is a an annual event brining together organizations and individuals to tackle barriers to race equality within the workplace. This years theme is ‘It’s everyone’s business.’ In this blog we explore how members of the King’s community can get involved.

 

Race Equality Week takes place every year, seeing organisations and individuals join forces to further race equality in the workplace. This year’s theme is “it’s everyone’s business”, which is the approach we have taken to tackling racism at King’s. This doesn’t negate the effects of power and privilege- a person’s individual impact can depend on a number of factors- however it does enable us all to take responsibility for creating an anti-racist institution.   

So how can you get involved? 

 

Leaning and development 

On an individual level, you can ensure you have completed the EDI e-learning module on WorkRite. There’s also a range of other training opportunities available to you, from Diversity Matters to Active Bystander. The EDI training webpage has more information. For self-directed learning, take a look at our race equality allyship toolkit, which is designed for the whole of the King’s community regardless of prior knowledge.  

Give something back 

If you want to take things a step further, why not consider being a mentor? More than Mentoring is our scheme for women, disabled, LGBTQ and Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic staff. We’ve had significantly more applications for mentees than mentors, and so the deadline to apply to be a mentor has been extended to the 19th February.  

Let us amplify your work 

King’s Race Equality Action Plan covers a range of areas, from inclusive recruitment to tackling the awarding gap. We also know there’s lots of brilliant work happening outside of this plan, which we would love to hear more about. Tell us what you’re doing to progress race equality in your area and if you require any support. 

Report racism 

John Amaechi defines culture as ‘the worst behaviour that you tolerate’. By taking the approach of racism being everyone’s business, we can see that we are all responsible for the culture at King’s. If you have experienced or witnessed racism (or any form of bullying, harassment or discrimination), you can report it (anonymously if you prefer) via Report + Support.  

Want to Learn more about Equality, Diversity & Inclusion at King’s College London?

Race Equality Wrap-Up – Term 1, 2022/23

December 12, 2022 /

It’s important to communicate progress, especially when we can become preoccupied with daily challenges or jaded by barriers and push back. King’s is on a journey to become anti-racist and, whilst we’re certainly not where we want to be, we can (and should) celebrate our successes so far.  

Our Race Equality Action Plan guides our work, however we recognise the need to be flexible and react to the changing needs of our community. The below is not an exhaustive list; we know there’s lots of great work happening across King’s and so please do tell us what you’re doing in your area by filling out this short form. 

EDI Projects 

There have been a number of race equality projects undertaken by EDI this year. We have developed our first race equality allyship toolkit, which is a learning resource available to all King’s staff and students. It draws on various sources and is suitable for everyone, regardless of your prior knowledge. 

We have put together a race equality communications plan to ensure we’re talking to you about our plans, educating on racism and showcasing the achievements of Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic members of our community.  

We are developing a Maturity Model, which can be used to identify priority areas of work and encourage innovative practice within faculties and directorates. This has been out for consultation, and we are now incorporating the feedback we received.  

We have worked with the Alumni Team to add additional profiles to our Notable Alumni page on order to better represent the achievements of our Black communities. The intention is for staff to use this as a resource when considering external speakers, room names, etc.  

The Edi CAP (Combined Action Plans) has had its first meeting. This group is responsible for progressing the Race Equality Action Plan and the Athena Swan Action Plan. Combining the delivery of these plans enables us to streamline resources (as there’s significant overlap) and supports us to take an intersectional approach. 

Thanks to KURF (King’s Undergraduate Research Fellowships) funding, we were able to recruit a student to investigate King’s approach to Professors of Practice and whether this understanding could help diversify King’s academics. 

Training and Development 

Over the past year we have developed and delivered microaggression training to over 300 staff and students, received 216 applications for the More than Mentoring scheme and received 75 applications for the Aurora leadership programme.  

The B-MEntor scheme is currently open and spans a number of institutions so is a great way to build your network across the sector. You can find out how to get involved on our blog post. 

A snapshot across King’s  

We’re so pleased that Professor Camara Jones has joined King’s as a visiting Professor for the year. Camara has delivered a brilliant talk on race and health inequity, as well as a workshop for EDI Practitioners. 

FoLSM have organised this year’s Harold Moody lecture, which features Professor Stephani Hatch as the keynote speaker.  

King’s celebrated this year’s Black History Month with a calendar of events, including a talk by Professor Kalwant Bhopal on Black & Minority Ethnic experiences in higher education. 

Dr Ashwin J. Matthew, Dr. Peter Chonka and Dr. Rhianna Walcott published a report on the experiences of Black students in Digital Humanities. 

The department of Biomedical Engineering successfully applied for funding for the “Success for Black Engineers” programme. This aims to increase the number of Black Engineering students at King’s, as well as improve their attainment and wellbeing. 

Want to Learn more about Equality, Diversity & Inclusion at King’s College London?

Black History Month 2022: What’s on at KCL

October 6, 2022 /

Black History Month 2022

Every October Black History Month is marked across the UK.

This year’s theme for Black History Month is “Time for Change: Action not Words” and we’re committed to ensuring our celebrations at King’s College London inspire and support tangible action.

Throughout the month we will be sharing Black History research and achievements of our Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic alumni, as well as hosting various events (details below) across the university. At King’s we are committed to creating an anti-racist university and working on initiatives that go beyond the month of October. Later this month we’ll be sharing more on our new race allyship toolkit and race equality maturity model which is currently in development.

To help you get involved with Black History Month at King’s we have pulled together some interesting reads, useful resources and a spotlight on some of our upcoming events in this blog.

Must Reads

Useful Resources

  • You can keep track of what is happening at King’s throughout the month by visiting our staff intranet page here.

 

 

 

  • Follow out team on twitter (@KCLdiversity), we’ll be sharing content throughout the month.

Event Spotlight

Click image to expand the calendar of events

Events taking place across the university this month include:

Afro-Asian solidarities: Lotus and its afterlives exhibition
Thursday 6 October 2022 to Friday 14 October

The exhibition aims at fostering inclusive pedagogy through a focus on the anti-colonial writers and artists of the Afro-Asian Writers Association and their journal Lotus published in Arabic, English and French from Cairo and Beirut (1960s-1980s).

Building on our interdisciplinary expertise we foreground the importance of this neglected body of cultural production from the Global South, stressing its centrality in the making of contemporary global politics and world literature.

Find out more

Shakespeare and Race Festival 2022

The theme of the Shakespeare and Race Festival 2022 is ‘Spoken Word(s)’, withevents and resources available through out the month.

The festival will also showcase new and exciting creative work from the Folger Institute, as well as ground-breaking research from Shakespeare and Race scholars from around the world. This year, the Festival is co-produced and co-sponsored by King’s.

Find out more

Black Heroes of Mathematics Conference Watch Party!

We are warmly inviting you to “Black Heroes of Mathematics Conference Watch Party!” We have dedicated rooms to watch this year’s conference, organised by LMS. Details on the event can be found here: https://www.lms.ac.uk/events/black-heroes-mathematics Please check below when and where you can watch the talks at KCL: Schedule:
– 4/10/22 13:00-16:30 Talks broadcast at Room: FWB 1.20 (Waterloo Campus).
– 5/10/22 10:00-12:00 Talks broadcast at Room: S-1.08 (Strand Building).
– 5/10/22 12:00-13:00 Lunch will be offered at Room: K2.29 (King’s building).
– 5/10/22 13:00-15:30 Talks broadcast at Room: K0.19 (King’s building).
The rooms have specific capacity so the attendance will be monitored at first come first serve base.

Find out more

Events calendar:

The Windrush Compensation Scheme – is justice finally being served?
Wednesday 5 October, 18.30 – 20.00

Set up to right the wrongs committed against the victims of the Windrush Scandal, the Windrush Compensation Scheme ( WCS ) has been in operation for over 3 years. The WCS has been subject to significant criticism which has led to some reform. The panel will provide a current assessment of the WCS and whether it is finally delivering justice.

Register here

Launch event: Afro-Asian solidarities: Lotus and its afterlives exhibition
Thursday 6 October, 18.30 – 20.00

The exhibition aims at fostering inclusive pedagogy through a focus on the anti-colonial writers and artists of the Afro-Asian Writers Association and their journal Lotus published in Arabic, English and French from Cairo and Beirut (1960s-1980s). Building on our interdisciplinary expertise we foreground the importance of this neglected body of cultural production from the Global South, stressing its centrality in the making of contemporary global politics and world literature.

Register here

Black Students Talk: Self-Expression
Thursday 6 October, 18.30 – 20.30

Black Students Talk (BST) is a peer support group that provides safe, supportive and therapeutic spaces for students at King’s who identify as Black (African, Caribbean, Mixed with Black heritage) to meet, share, learn and manage their mental health and wellbeing. These sessions are run by students, for students!

On Thursday 6 October, BST will be kicking off for the new academic year with a Black History Month session on Self-expression. Come along to Guy’s Hodgkin Building Classroom 11 for a thoughtful discussion in a warm and welcoming environment.

Find out more about BST on the KCLSU website

Black Student Leaders Meet and Greet
Monday 10 October, 18.00 – 20.00

Join us in the Vault to meet others in the King’s Black students community and say hello to some of our Black Student Leaders heading up our societies, networks and rep roles. Discover their plans and campaigns for the year to come as well as finding out more about plans for Black History Month!

Sign up here

Roundtable discussion on Black Political Thought

Tuesday 11 October, 17:00 – 20:00

What is the history of Black political thought – as a subject, as a disciplinary field? What should​ it be ? How should historians and other scholars think of it now? Join the KCL History Department and the Medicine and the Making of Race Project for an evening discussing these and other questions with an all star panel of experts in the field, including:
– Dr Tonya Haynes, University of the West Indies.
– Professor Tommy Curry, Edinburgh
– Dr Kesewa John, UCL
– Dr Dalitso Ruwe, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON
– Dr Meleisa Ono-George, Oxford
– Chair: Professor Richard Drayton, KCL

Sign up here

Race and Healthcare in Brixton

Wednesday 12 October, 12:30 – 14:00

Joining us for a discussion about healthcare, race and activism in Brixton, Paul Addae, from the Brixton community organisation Centric, and colleagues open the floor up to history students and interested others to learn about both the long history of activism in Brixton and the legacy that that history has had for the current, dynamic activist agenda around healthcare.
In a conversation that takes us from the limitations of healthcare now to the history of an activist community to the history and contemporary of race and racism in our country now, this discussion with the ‘off stage historians’ of Brixton offers the opportunity to delve into critical contemporary issues as these are refracted through the lens of healthcare.

Sign up here

Black & Minority Ethnic Experiences in Higher Education
Monday 17 October, 17:00 – 18:15

King’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion team invite you to join Professor Kalwant Bhopal and Professor ‘Funmi Olonisakin talk about the experiences of Black and Minority Ethnic people in higher education.

This event has been designed to reflect this year’s Black History Month theme (Time for Change: Action not Words) and audience participation is encouraged. It is free to attend but space is limited so please book your place. If you have any access requirements then please contact diversity@kcl.ac.uk

Register here

Engaging with Blackness – a showcase of some current CMCI research

Monday October 17, 16:30pm – 18:00

Kings Building, K-1.56

This event is intended to introduce you all to some of the current research happening in the CMCI department, that in some way engages with Blackness. In addition to finding out more about the department’s research activity, this event encourages us all to think more reflectively about ourselves as academic researchers. Each of the speakers will provide a short presentation, followed by a conversation (including audience questions) that will be moderated by Dr Jonathan Ward. There is no need to register for this event.

Liberation Ball: Panel and Performance
*UPDATE – Postponed to February 2023*

Join us for our very own Liberation Ball, a homage to London’s queer ballroom scene. This event will be a celebration of achieving liberation through art. We will begin with an informative and exciting panel of London ballroom icons, exploring the history of ballroom culture and its significance to the black, queer, and trans communities. Followed by a ball itself where students will have the opportunity to walk in three categories (Runway, Best Dressed and Vogue) and showcase their talent.

Find out more and register here

 

Meet Juliana Oladuti, the Author of ‘Queen’ for a reading + Q&A, followed by a social

Tuesday 18 October, 13:30-15:30

Activity Room D (Bush House South East Wing, 300 StrandvWC2R 1AE

Join us in celebrating Black History Month with the launch of a fantastic new book “Queen” presented by the author, Juliana Oladuti, on the day. We’ll have a reading & Q&A followed by a social.

Book Synposis: From a tradition of oral storytelling, Juliana, a Nigerian in her seventh decade, decided to challenge herself by putting pen to paper and writing the story of Queen. A bright village child who, despite being born into a culture and at a time when girls were not valued, Queen is forced to undertake an odyssey. The journey takes her through West and North Africa and eventually to Europe.

Sign up here.

Daniell Lecture

Wednesday 19 October, 15:15 – 18:00

PhD student Desmond Koomson will talk about his journey into chemistry research and his current and previous research ahead of the Daniell Speaker guest speaker (Professor Sir David Klenerman FMedSci FRS, Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge).

Sign up here

Estates & Facilities Black History Month Celebration
Thursday 20 October, 11.00 – 13.30

The E&F EDI Race Equality Workstream are holding an event to celebrate Black History Month. This would be an opportunity to celebrate our colleagues success across E&F and discuss remaining challenges.

Register here

Choreographing Freedom: Sound Images of a Black Revolution
Tuesday 25 October, 17.15 – 18.45

In late twentieth-century Britain, Black women, queer folks and transfeminine people were crafting new ways of living. Situated in the heart of Empire, outlaw women, erotic dreamers and gender rebels refused to adhere to the prevailing norms and codes that organised their lives. These adventures with beauty, sex, pleasure and performance offered blueprints for imagining a radically different world.

In a series of extracts from Bentil’s forthcoming book, Rebel Citizen, she explores the lives of those whose stories resist the dominant narrative of History and the insurgent desires that shaped the everyday revolution of Black life in 1970s and 1980s London.

Register here

Film screening and conversation with filmmaker Carl Earl-Ocran

Tuesday 25 October. 18:00 – 20:00

This event will comprise of a screening of the short films ARACHNID and HACKNEY DOWNS (both written and directed by Carl Earl-Ocran.) This will be followed by a drinks reception and conversation and audience Q&A, moderated by Dr Jonathan Ward (CMCI). This event will be live-captioned throughout.

Carl is a British-Ghanaian writer and director, with a passion for storytelling. His aim is to tell long form narratives with personal yet universal themes, sharing emotive, character-driven, socially conscious stories with compelling high concepts, highlighting, in particular, underrepresented voices.

Sign up link

Dismantle King’s Colonial Legacy Campaign Launch
Wednesday 26 October. 17.00 – 21.30

This is the launch event for a student and staff led campaign to Dismantle King’s Colonial Legacy. This event is open to all interested students and staff, and will feature a variety of talks from activists and academics, group discussions and performances.

Sign up here

Anti-Racism and Health: Levels of Health Intervention – Leverhulme Lecture by Visiting Professor, Camara Jones
*UPDATED DATE*

Monday14 November, 19.00 – 20.30

In this, the first in a series of three public lectures on Anti-Racism and Health to be offered by Professor Camara Jones during the year, she will make the case that “racial” health disparities cannot be eliminated until racism is named and addressed. Engaging with audience members in a spirited conversation exploring the pertinence of these ideas in the United States and United Kingdom contexts.

Register here

Want to Learn more about Equality, Diversity & Inclusion at King’s College London?

Women of Windrush

June 22, 2022 /

Windrush Day is marked annually in the UK on the 22nd June. Vanessa Bovell-Clarke (she/her) who works in Student Support & Wellbeing Services at King’s College London,  reflects on the women in her own family and the sacrifices they made so that those who followed them do not have to.

Vanessa sat looking out to sea at the Family House in Barbados

Vanessa at the Family House in Barbados.

For many people, the word ‘Windrush’ often brings to mind images of sharply dressed, young black men and women setting sail for new opportunities and a new chapter of life in the United Kingdom. More recently, the word has become more synonymous with this same generation as well and even their children being forcibly sent away from the UK, labelled as illegal immigrants by the very same government who first requested their help to rebuild a post-war Britain in the 1940’s.

With both my paternal and maternal grandmothers no longer living, I often wonder what they would make of the Windrush scandal having worked so hard themselves to build lives and plant roots in what I now call home.

Clotelle Eudene Roach (or Granny Clo as she was known to me) was born in Black Rock, St Michael on the island of Barbados in 1937, one of four children. Orphaned by the age of 15, Clotelle quickly took on a maternal role and played a huge part in providing for her siblings along with her older sister, Sylvie.

Granny Clotelle passport photo.

Granny Clotelle.

To make ends meet, she worked jobs in catering and as service staff, in the homes of the wealthy (and mostly white) in Barbados. The remnants of British colonisation were clear to see across the island, with limited opportunities for many black Bajans and much of the island’s wealth circling amongst direct decedents of plantation and slave-owning families.

In 1958, Clotelle set sail for the UK in search of a new destiny once her husband, Ricardo had travelled to London ahead of her (as was often the case for couples at that time) and found and prepared a place for them to live. Once settled in East London, Clotelle came into her own and took on a plethora of roles including seamstress and school lunch lady as well as offering her skills in baking and sewing to private clients and friends in the local community.

Further across to the west side of the Caribbean, Hermine Gertrude Morrison (aka Granny Babs) was born in Cave Valley, Jamaica in 1941, the second youngest of 11 children. In a similar fashion, Babs came to England after being ‘sent for’ by her husband, Lesley after he had settled in London in 1963. Just like Clotelle, Babs also threw herself into multiple jobs including work in a shoe factory, wig making, catering and hairdressing.

Granny Babs pictured on her wedding day.

Granny Babs pictured on her wedding day.

Growing up, my grandmothers were the physical embodiment of home, stability, family, strength and damn hard work. I witnessed them prepare gargantuan feasts of brown stew chicken, rice and peas, fried flying fish and cou cou (a cornmeal-based dish, also Barbados’ national dish) for crowds of family, friends and even neighbours on a regular basis. Both were regular attendees and very much involved in the church; some of my core memories include Sunday services and church fetes. They did this all whilst working multiple jobs and fulfilling the role of mother in an era that viewed parenting as very much a solitary and gender-conforming role.

It was only as I grew older, that I recognised the gravity of what they had accomplished. As part of the Windrush generation, being amongst the first in their families to move their whole lives to an unfamiliar country was a massive feat in itself. Facing daily racism in said country was an additional struggle; my Granny Clotelle told us of a time she was stopped by a white woman in the middle of a market, who tugged at the back of her skirt and said, “Let’s see your tail then?!”

This generation faced an untold number of difficulties and struggles most of which were steeped in racism, despite being such an integral part of rebuilding the UK economy, filling roles in nursing, catering, manual labour, hospitality, cleaning and much more.

I wonder about the mental health of my grandmother’s, the burdens they had to bear, the pain behind smiles and the silent struggles that were shared with no one but God. Throughout all of this, they were able to bring such life, culture and happiness to their families, which I will forever cherish. Their struggles and personal sacrifices serve as a reminder to me that I do not wish to and nor do I have to, continue to be ‘strong’ at the expense of my wellbeing. I am lucky to have multiple paths that lay ahead of me that do not necessarily include children and motherhood, but where I am encouraged to speak my truth about injustice and my pain.

November 2021 Barbados Independence Ceremony. Left to right: Prime Minister Mia Mottley, Dame Sandra Mason, Rhianna, Prince Charles.

November 2021 Barbados Independence Ceremony. Left to right: Prime Minister Mia Mottley, Dame Sandra Mason, Rhianna, Prince Charles.

In 2021, Barbados became a republic, officially renouncing the UK and it’s Queen as Head of State. Jamaica, alongside many other Caribbean countries are set to soon follow. This true independence feels like a poignant reflection of the next generation, as we prepare to live life to the fullest, honouring the Windrush legacy as we do so.

References/Relevant Articles:
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Experiences of racial discrimination on clinical placements: A narrative analysis of medical student perspectives.

March 22, 2022 /

KCL Intercalated Bachelor of Science (iBSC) Primary Care Student Luckshi Jegatheeswaran is currently researching medical student experiences of racial discrimination whilst on clinical placements. Luckshi is inviting KCL medical & intercalating students, between the years 2 – 5 to contribute to the project by sharing their experiences.

Why is this study important?

The purpose of the study is to understand how medical students can experience racial discrimination – whether directed at them, other students, or members of staff and to understand the immediate and lasting emotional impacts of these experiences.

The NHS boasts the UK’s most ethnically diverse public sector workforce. Increasing awareness of the experiences of people of ethnic minorities within the healthcare team (from medical students to senior staff) is crucial. This will facilitate greater understanding of the experiences of these groups. It will also allow the identification of areas where measures that will empower and create safe workspaces can be taken, benefiting the well-being of healthcare professionals from ethnic minorities.

What is the aim of the study?

  • To understand how medical students can experience racial discrimination- whether directed at them, other students, or members of staff.
  • To understand the immediate and lasting emotional impacts of these experiences.

Who can take part in the study?

  • Medical & intercalating students between years two and five.

What is involved?

  • You will complete an anonymous survey. The survey will ask you to state your course and year of study. You will be asked to describe your experiences of racial discrimination on medical placements.

How do I take part?

  1. Read this participant information.
  2. Submit your experiences using this online form

For further information please contact Luckshi via email: luckshi.jegatheeswaran@kcl.ac.uk

 

International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

March 21, 2022 /

To mark the United Nations’ (UN) International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Sarah Guerra, Director of Equality, Diversity & Inclusion at King’s College London shares how you can make a difference and tackle racial discrimination. 

The United Nations’ (UN) International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is observed worldwide on March 21 each year. The day aims to remind people of the harm caused by racial discrimination. It also encourages people to remember their obligation and determination to combat racial discrimination.

I only just this year learnt that the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was established six years after an event, known as the Sharpeville tragedy or Sharpeville massacre, which captured worldwide attention. This event involved police opening fire and killing 69 people at a peaceful demonstration against the apartheid “pass laws” in Sharpeville, South Africa, March 21, 1960.

The UN General Assembly called on the international community to increase its efforts to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination when it proclaimed the day as a UN Day of observance in 1966. It also called on all world states and organizations to participate in a program of action to combat racism and racial discrimination in 1983. It held the World Conference against Racism and Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in 2001.

“Youth standing up against racism” is the theme of International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination 2022. A theme that should be close to all university’s hearts especially those like us that have declared themselves determined to be anti-racist.

Young people have the option of posting their opinions regarding discussions on human rights and racial discrimination at Voices of Youth, which is UNICEF’s online bulletin board for young people.

As part of the King’s community, there’s various ways for you to play your part in standing up against racism. EDI will be hosting active bystander training for students on 28th & 30th March and 1st April which you can sign up to here.  We are also delivering microaggression training to staff & students, which will teach you to identify, call out and respond to racial microaggressions. If you have witnessed racial discrimination and wish to report it, you can find out how on our Dignity at King’s webpages.  This also includes the option of reporting anonymously, which helps us monitor patterns to inform our proactive work.

Our Race Equity Inclusive Education Fund (REIEF) has provided over £99,000 across 13 projects, two of which are particularly relevant to today (Gargie Ahmad is bringing anti-racism into education and training for mental health research and practice, and Sapphire Williams is exploring anti-racism globally). Gargie will be telling us more about their research in an upcoming blog.

The opposite of colonisation

October 29, 2021 /

Our latest blog in a series to mark Black History Month is brought to us by Chenée Psaros.

Chenée is a Learning Developer at King’s Academy and Co-chair of Proudly King’s, the LGBTQ+ staff network. She is South African, the daughter of immigrants, the decedent of settlers and an immigrant herself. Her forefathers were white colonisers who benefitted from colonial conquests in South Africa and then, when it became a republic, benefitted again from Apartheid. It is through the lens of a white South African she explores the discourse about decolonisation in higher education in the UK.

As questions of identity, race and inequality are becoming more prevalent and strategies to address social inequities are sought, British universities are endeavouring to ‘decolonise’ their institutions. From the University of Bristol’s Decolonising Education course to our own Voices of Decolonisation KED Talk, you would be hard pressed to find a university in the United Kingdom that has not prioritised decolonisation in the last few years. George Floyd’s death catapulted systemic racism to the forefront of our focus and universities were quick to commit to anti-racist rhetoric and support for marginalised groups. However, much of the discourse around decolonisation and systemic racism are used interchangeably, we should approach the use of these terms with care, because although they are inextricably linked, they are not synonyms.

The opposite of colonisation is not decolonisation, it is repatriation. If universities gained wealth from Britain’s colonial past, we should be asking how repatriation of what was lost should take place. Settler force erased entire indigenous cultures, languages and epistemologies; these are lost forever. The act of the former imperial power trying to ‘decolonise’ for the indigenous populations they oppressed is deeply uncomfortable. ‘Decolonisation is not a metaphor’, and in their seminal text of the same name, Tuck and Yang (2012) argue that decolonisation situated outside of the indigenous context is another form of settler appropriation, used to alleviate white guilt and in doing so undermines the indigenous voices that are key to the discussion.

Much of the debate of decolonisation has focused on statues. Recently, the University of Cambridge made the decision to return a Benin bronze statue to Nigeria (Khomami, 2021). Similar acts have occurred throughout Europe. However, the most concentrated focus on decolonisation and HE is the 2016 fight to remove the statue of Cecil John Rhodes which looms over Oriel College at the University of Oxford. The pinnacle of the Rhodes Must Fall Oxford movement coincided with the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020 (Mohdin 2021). Students who led the movement called for the statue to be removed because they wanted to address ‘the toxic inheritance of the past’ (Rhodes Must Fall Oxford, 2018) and bring attention to the underrepresentation of students of colour. To date the statue has not been removed (Badshah 2021).

This was not the first statue of Rhodes students demanded be taken down. The Rhodes Must Fall Movement in Oxford gained momentum after a less well known, but more successful campaign at the University of Cape Town in South Africa (Chaudhuri 2016). In 2015, students protested about the lack of transformation more than twenty years after Apartheid fell – out of two hundred, there were only five black professors, and the university was not actively diversifying their staff (Peterson 2015). Students wanted change, they did not want the statue of the person who was responsible for the loss of their tribal lands and the rape of their ancestors to hold a place of honour. They protested, the fight was ugly, but the students won. A symbol of oppression was removed and the university reviewed their practices.

It hard to imagine in today’s times who is comparable to Cecil John Rhodes. His wealth and influence in Africa were vast, he had not one, but two countries named after him, a monopoly on Southern African diamond mines, the British Army and his own police force at his disposal. His power was great and far reaching; his forces sequestered native land, pillaged tribal property and raped indigenous women. He might well have been a man of the times but his single-mindedness to expand the British Empire was unparalleled. His legacy lives on. Beyond the statues that honour him, the wealth he gained in Africa allowed him to bequeath vast endowments to Oxford University and establish one of the most famous scholarships of all, the Rhodes Scholarship.

The Rhodes Scholarship was established in 1903 to promote unity between English-speaking nations and when it was set up only white men were eligible to apply. It was slow to diversify, women only qualified in 1977 and black people from South Africa only in 1992. It has since gone on to support people like Bill Clinton, Rachel Maddow and Naomi Wolf. It was in 2018 that the scholarship was opened globally. However, in that same year, of the ninety-five scholarships available fifty-five were awarded to students from the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, only ten were awarded to students who were from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Botswana and Malawi (Rhodes Scholar Database 2021). The demographic data about the students who were selected was not available, but it is doubtful that many indigenous students won the scholarship.

The inequalities that have shaped South Africa from the colonial past (Gebrial, 2018) and apartheid were violently acted out this summer. Riots and looting caused the destruction of businesses in KwaZulu Natal and Gauteng. The unrest was catapulted to the forefront as Covid lockdowns had so adversely affected people. South Africans, unlike people living and working in Britain, were not able to participate in furlough schemes or apply for social security payments to help them out in times of need. The access to vaccines that might have allowed people to return to work sooner was limited because the UK and other wealthy nations stockpiled it. When South Africa asked for Oxford Astrazenca patents to be made available to produce vaccines locally, they were denied (Nocera 2021, Stone 2021, Watney 2021). When the South African government purchased vaccine from Pfizer they were subsequently charged more than their European counterparts because they had not invested in the development (Thanbisetty, 2021). Universities were at the heart of developing vaccines, can those who claim they want to decolonise, work with companies who exploit countries with less global capital?

There is much rhetoric about how higher education can decolonise its institutions, its practices and its curricula. How we move forward to being more culturally competent is at the heart of the discussion. While universities have histories intertwined with wealth from slavery and occupation, we need to acknowledge, living in a former imperial power, that individually we do too. We are not blameless. Regardless of our nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, if we currently reside in the United Kingdom we benefit, to different degrees albeit, from the legacy of the power and positioning modern day Britain inherited from her colonial past. Decolonial work cannot happen in the palace of the colonisers, the Global South needs to have a stake in how decolonial work should take place. If we are committed to decolonisation, we should acknowledge that it cannot take place without indigenous perspectives and contributions of those territories that were once occupied. The Oxford example demonstrates how the appropriation of a movement did not bring about change and how the settler perspective overshadowed the colonial one because of global power constructs. Universities should move beyond decolonisation and explore what repatriation looks like in an HE context. If we really want to make the world a better place, we could do it through scholarships, how we share knowledge and resources, and how we fund research.

References:

Love and Rage – but right now, mostly rage

July 6, 2021 /

Lauren Blackwood, Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Project Officer at KCL reflects on this years UK Black Pride theme of ‘love and rage’. 

Content Warnings: black death, trans death, ableism, racism, and queerphobia.  

It is somewhat bittersweet that I have a platform to write about my rage. It is not often that black people get to do this and be heard, comforted, or accepted by our audience (Ashley 2014; American Psychological Association 2020). Even whilst writing this, I must perform a level of palatability on this platform – juggling respectability politics, tone policing, colonial ideals of professionalism, providing citations for my literal lived experiences so that I’m seen as credible, and my own authenticity – it’s peak. It’s also peak that we – my community, my ancestors, and I – even have to feel this rage and to have carried it over generations for over 400 years. We do not need anyone to validate our outrage, and we don’t need anyone to justify it. I would much rather just exist in a world where we’re loved, and feel love, and I’d get to just write about love. But honestly, that remains an out of reach utopia, even in big-big 2021.  

This year and a half has been a perfect opportunity for non-black people to hear black people, see black life, suffering, and rage. In addition to this, we’ve seen the love that black people continue to extend to one another for the sake of love, survival, and community. To be clear, it is not that these opportunities were not available to non-black people before; it just became a lot harder to avoid engaging with these walks of life. To make it even more shit, what they have witnessed is only a tiny snippet of our lived experiences. Even this opportunity given to non-black people was at the expense of the ongoing detriment of black peoples, and a result of our global suffering and consequent rage.  

We’ve had to watch non-black, and non-queer, people find out for the first time that black people disproportionately account for 14% of UK missing persons – but makeup only 3% of the population (White 2021), “Black and migrant trans women of colour [being] more vulnerable and frequently targeted” (Trans Respect 2020) and “People of colour mak[ing] up 79% of the 28 trans people murdered in the USA” (Trans Respect 2020) in 2020, that the school to prison pipeline exists and has historically targeted black children and youth in Britain (Graham 2016), that there’s a lack of public health services tailored to meet black people’s needs (Mind 2019; La Roche et al 2015). None of this is new news to those that it effects, but it’s so incredibly enraging that change so heavily relies on white people, and cishet people, catching up with what we already know and have been protesting about for generations. And just as a note, we’re hardly even close to having proportionate data on black queer lives to be centrally collected and easily accessible in the UK.  

But in the face-off all of this historical and contemporary violence, failure, and exclusion from our institutions, queer black people still manage to love and support one another; Lady Phil has given queer black people, Black Pride – a space to exist authentically and unapologetically; Melz Owusu has founded a first of it’s kind University, the Free Black University, alongside completing their PhD giving black people the freedom to regain control and access to our own education and epistemologies; Azekel Axelle founded the Black Trans Foundation supporting black trans and gender non-conforming people access healthcare through fundraising and establishing a network of Queer, Trans, and Intersex, People of Colour (QTIPOC) healthcare experts; Eshe Kiama Zuri initiated the Mutual Aid Fund supporting marginalised people, at the intersections of oppression, across the UK. Even when thinking about all of this love and community response I’m perpetually enraged that it even needs to be done. Imagine if we didn’t have to pour ourselves and all of our energy into meeting our basic needs as queer black people – imagine if that kind of love existed beyond our community. Bruh, rage!!! 

Donate to queer black people and organisations this month and every month, whether that be time, requested resources, or money; continuously invest your energy into self-educating about queer black lives, experiences, and history – I promise that you will not run out of valuable things to be learnt; listen to queer black people and act on what you hear – I’m tired of repeating the same requests for meeting basic needs and liberation.  

Happy Black Pride, I guess. Pop up if you want my PayPal (for professional and legal reasons this is a joke).  

American Psychological Association. (2020, July 2). Prospective teachers misperceive Black children as angry [Press release]. http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2020/07/racialized-anger-bias 

Ashley W. The angry black woman: the impact of pejorative stereotypes on psychotherapy with black women. Soc Work Public Health. 2014;29(1):27-34. doi: 10.1080/19371918.2011.619449. PMID: 24188294. 

Graham, K. (2016). The British School-to-Prison Pipeline. Blackness in Britain. 

Mind (2019) https://www.mind.org.uk/news-campaigns/legal-news/legal-newsletter-june-2019/discrimination-in-mental-health-services/ 

White (2021) Accessed at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/black-people-missing-b1827530.html 

La Roche, M. J., Fuentes, M. A., & Hinton, D. (2015). A cultural examination of the DSM-5: Research and clinical implications for cultural minorities. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 46(3), 183–189. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0039278 

Trans Respect (2020) Accessed at: https://transrespect.org/en/tmm-update-tdor-2020/ 

 

King’s reflections a year on from George Floyd’s murder – Part 2

June 18, 2021 /

In the second installment of our series of curated reflections a year on from George Floyd’s murder, we share the reflections of Ellen Clark-King, The Dean of King’s College London.

Reflection on Genesis 21:8-13

In March 2020 I was in Montgomery Alabama. I was there as part of an annual pilgrimage that addresses the legacy of slavery and enduring racial inequality in the US and beyond. It was a mixed group – racially, religiously, some very middle class, some unhoused. We visited museums, talked about our experiences, sang together and also wept together.

The place we visited that hammered at my heart most was Bryan Stevenson’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice. This is a memorial to every person killed by lynching in the United States – over 4000 people, children as well as adults. It is both a beautiful and a gut-wrenching place, lives remembered and honoured with a beauty that condemns the ugliness of their deaths. And what hit me hardest was reading some of the names – the ones whose surname was the same as mine at birth – Clark. Not because I could claim them as my kin but because these were people who had been owned by those who shared my name. My personal Clark ancestors were white working and servant class, not slave owners, but that does not absolve me from the guilt of being part of a system that said that White lives matter and that Black lives don’t.

Sarah said to Abraham: ‘Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.’ Here we are confronted with the reality of slavery at the heart of our sacred scripture. Here Sarah, herself part of a people who were liberated from slavery, stands on the other side. Here she speaks for slave owners across the centuries who have failed to see that other mother’s children are as valuable as their own. Here Sarah is part of my story – part of the story of privilege that belongs to women as well as men because of their race and economic status.

But I don’t want to focus on Sarah. I want to focus on the other woman in the story – Hagar the Egyptian, the one who was cast out into the wilderness, the one who lifts up her voice and weeps in despair. Hagar was the slave woman purchased by Abraham and Sarah to bear children for Abraham when Sarah was believed to be barren. She was, in other words, trafficked and sold as a sex slave. Her very name shouts out her ‘otherness’ and lack of value – Hagar in Biblical Hebrew means ‘alien’ or ‘foreigner’. This is a name given to her by those who own her not by the mother who bore her. The wonderful Biblical scholar Wilda Gafney in her book Womanist Midrash tells us that this is not the only tradition of Hagar’s name. She figures prominently in the Islamic tradition and there her name is given as Hajar. This name has beautiful potential meanings from ‘Splendid’ to ‘Nourishing’. Here is a name that speaks of the worth that belongs to each human creature. Here is a name that says this woman is her own person, a beloved daughter of God, not a possession. This is what I will call her from now on.

I want to take us back a few chapters in Genesis to the place where we first encounter Hajar. At this point Sarah is angry with Hajar because she feels insulted by her attitude – she expects her slave to treat her with respect – and so she beats her viciously causing Hajar to flee to the wilderness. Here Hajar is again at the point of despair and here again God comes to her. God tells her that she and her son are in his care, that she will be the mother of a great nation – the first divine annunciation in the entire Bible. And even more extraordinarily than that – Hajar is the first human being allowed to name God. The first human being in the whole of our scripture who names God is a slave woman – the most powerless of human beings in every hierarchy of the time. And the name that Hajar gives to God is El Ro’i, God of seeing, interpreted by Gafney as meaning ‘Have I seen the one who sees me and lived to tell of it?’. God sees Hajar. God sees her as a human being of meaning and significance, as one who has the right to name the divine as it appears to her, as one strong enough to encounter the living God and to continue living. She is the one who is promised life not only for herself but for her children and her children’s children. And in the second encounter we heard today Hajar’s identity is affirmed as a beloved champion of God’s purposes: no one’s property, no one’s slave. The UK and the US ended slavery generations ago. They officially recognised that no human being should be another person’s property. But white society never took the next step. The step of seeing the children of freed slaves as equal to the children of those who owned them. The step of hearing hard truths and seeking reconciliation through justice. The step of making Black Lives Matter a reality rather than an essential rallying call. The step of racial justice.

And, especially relevant in theology and the academy more generally, the step of listening to the names that Black voices are giving to reality and to God. If all you read in theology or fiction or news articles are the writings of white men then you are not learning the full truth of our world or of God. If you are not hearing womanist voices naming God then you are not hearing a crucial part of how God names Godself. We need to know the God Hajar named – El Ro’i – the one who sees the reality of injustice and oppression; the one who reveals divine reality most clearly to those on the underside of power. We need to know Hajar’s God and we need to work with Hajar’s God to dismantle racial injustice and undo the long, painful legacy of slavery. And we need to do it now.

Reference: Wilda C. Gafney, Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne, Westminster John Knox Press, 2017.

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