Present
In the UK today, of the 18,000 professors, just 85 are racialised as black, and only 17 of those are racialised and gendered as black women. Despite the links between racialisation and intelligence being disproven, and the pursuit and promotion of equality being a legal obligation for academic institutions, unjust racialised hierarchy persists.
This inequality is also reflected in the curriculum, with White Dominating, Anglocentric assumptions and perspectives often taken for granted in the scholarly texts canonised by the academy.
There are two key campaigns which seek to challenge this.
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Research carried out by the National Union of Students concludes the underrepresentation of professors racialised as black to be impacting detrimentally on the learning experience of all students. The narrow section of society currently overrepresented in professorial roles is stifling the variety of perspectives that make scholarly rigour and debate an exciting and progressive endeavour.
Yet, this imbalance of power has a particularly detrimental impact on students racialised as black, according to the National Union of Students Black Students National Students Survey. Although the black presence in the population is only 3.3%, the black presence among students is 6.0%, and among Londoners is 11.2%. By contrast, although the black presence among ‘cleaners, catering assistants, security officers, porters and maintenance workers’ in universities is representative, at exactly 3.3%, the black presence among academics is only 1.1%, and among professors only 0.4%. The message coming from universities is clear: persons racialised as black do not produce knowledge, at most, they consume it and clean up after that consumption. How can we, at UCL, improve this message?
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“London[, . . .] the greatest city of Europe[, . . .] for intelligence and wealth, as well as numbers, [ . . . including] about forty thousand males, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one: the usual period of academical education[, . . . ] may fairly be deemed the first City in the civilised world”
“The mural by Henry Tonks (1862-1937), in the dome above the Flaxman gallery in the main UCL library. It shows William Wilkins (1778-1839), the architect of the main building, submitting the plans to Bentham for his approval while the portico is under construction in the background. Needless to say, it is pure fantasy”
Our College’s first prospectus, published in 1826, and Tonks’s mural, painted nearly a century later, in 1922, both portray an Androcentric, Eurocentric, and, ultimately, Anglocentric fantasy. These are just two unsubtle examples of how whiteness and maleness have been socially constructed as if they stand at the moral and intellectual centre of our world. In the past, this fantasy fuelled European, and ultimately, British imperial invasions across the globe. It justified those invasions, by ordering human beings into a hierarchy, with the National Eugenicist ideal at the top. In the present, this fantasy focusses our teaching and learning on the biased perspectives of those who have stood, or who now stand, at the top of that hierarchy. Yet there are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in the philosophies of ‘wealthy white men’ . . .
Research carried out by the National Union of Students concludes the underrepresentation of professors racialised as black to be impacting detrimentally on the learning experience of all students. The narrow section of society currently overrepresented in professorial roles is stifling the variety of perspectives that make scholarly rigour and debate an exciting and progressive endeavour.
Yet, this imbalance of power has a particularly detrimental impact on students racialised as black, according to the National Union of Students Black Students National Students Survey. Although the black presence in the population is only 3.3%, the black presence among students is 6.0%, and among Londoners is 11.2%. By contrast, although the black presence among ‘cleaners, catering assistants, security officers, porters and maintenance workers’ in universities is representative, at exactly 3.3%, the black presence among academics is only 1.1%, and among professors only 0.4%. The message coming from universities is clear: persons racialised as black do not produce knowledge, at most, they consume it and clean up after that consumption. How can we, at UCL, improve this message?
“London[, . . .] the greatest city of Europe[, . . .] for intelligence and wealth, as well as numbers, [ . . . including] about forty thousand males, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one: the usual period of academical education[, . . . ] may fairly be deemed the first City in the civilised world”
“The mural by Henry Tonks (1862-1937), in the dome above the Flaxman gallery in the main UCL library. It shows William Wilkins (1778-1839), the architect of the main building, submitting the plans to Bentham for his approval while the portico is under construction in the background. Needless to say, it is pure fantasy”
Our College’s first prospectus, published in 1826, and Tonks’s mural, painted nearly a century later, in 1922, both portray an Androcentric, Eurocentric, and, ultimately, Anglocentric fantasy. These are just two unsubtle examples of how whiteness and maleness have been socially constructed as if they stand at the moral and intellectual centre of our world. In the past, this fantasy fuelled European, and ultimately, British imperial invasions across the globe. It justified those invasions, by ordering human beings into a hierarchy, with the National Eugenicist ideal at the top. In the present, this fantasy focusses our teaching and learning on the biased perspectives of those who have stood, or who now stand, at the top of that hierarchy. Yet there are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in the philosophies of ‘wealthy white men’ . . .
1
JUST 85 PROFESSORS (BE THE CHANGE MIX)
2
Why Isn’t My Professor Black? On Reflection
Timeline
Past
Present
Future
