Theorising racist hate speech on UK university campuses through a CRT lens

ABSTRACT

Racist hate speech on UK university campuses remains an increasing concern. This article examines the widespread problem of racist hate speech through a multilayered theoretical approach; and suggests that a fuller appreciation of the problem can only be gained through a race-centred analysis. Drawing on Fraser’s work on the problematics of misrecognition and identity-reification, the article extends Levine-Rasky’s theoreticisation of power dynamics in the intersectionality between whiteness and middle-classness to intersections of whiteness with both middle-classness and working-classness as a contributing factor to mobilisation of lad cultures which is termed as white-laddism. The article advances the understanding of racist hate speech through a conjoined analysis of these concepts through a Critical Race Theory (CRT) lens. The conjoined analysis is informed by the Deleuzian ‘rhizomatic’ approach in order to examine the process by which multiple, diverse and non-hierarchical lines of connection between the concepts shape, dislocate, modify each other in variable ways. The detail behind the bigger picture helps further our understanding of the inadequate nature of equality policies and strategies that often look at issues in isolation, and thus fail to address the inequality and injustice being perpetuated on campuses.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical race theory
• misrecognition
• racist hate speech
• class
• white-laddism
• identity-reification

Introduction

The Runnymede Trust brought issues of racial inequality in UK universities into focus in 2015 in a report on race and higher education (Alexander and Arday 2015). The report revealed continuing racial and ethnic inequality in universities, in access, curriculum and attainment, with insights into the experience of minority ethnic groups and institutional cultures that give rise to inequality in the first place. Since then, student and staff activists have continued to organise around an anti-racist agenda through highly visible campaigns such as ‘Rhodes Must Fall’; ‘Why is my curriculum white?’ (Peters 2015); ‘Decolonise the university’ and ‘Why Isn’t my Professor Black?’ Underpinning the racism and xenophobia that is permeating through universities is the ‘hostile environment’ created by government policies (Liberty 2018), such as the Prevent duty. The stated aim of the Prevent duty, which was introduced under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, is to ‘reduce the threat to the UK from terrorism by stopping people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism’ (Gov.uk 2016). In practice, implementation of the Prevent duty in UK higher education institutions has stigmatised Muslim students and served only to reinforce anxieties about race and identity on campus.

Amidst growing evidence of resurgence of racism and racist hate speech incidents (Independent 2018), with news reports suggesting that universities perpetuate institutional racism (The Guardian 2019) and that race issues were brushed under the carpet, the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) launched an enquiry into the racial harassment of students in publicly funded universities in England, Scotland and Wales and published its findings in 2019 (EHRC 2019). Universities UK (UUK), the body representing UK universities published its own recommendations designed to tackle racial harassment in UK higher education (HE), calling on university leaders to acknowledge the problem of racial inequality and take decisive action to improve understanding and awareness among staff and students of racism, micro-aggressions, White privilege and White allyship (UUK 2020).

Alongside the growing concerns about the rise of racist hate speech on UK campuses, and spurred by the erstwhile Office for Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education annual report (OIA 2014), the National Union of Students (NUS) led a campaign highlighting the prevalence of ‘lad culture’ on university campuses, and the rise of ‘banter’ that was sexist or racist (Phipps and Young 2013; Phipps 2015). ‘Lad culture’ in UK universities has a different context to how it is understood in secondary schools or the wider popular culture in Britain. NUS define ‘lad culture’ as a potential form of masculinity, that influences that attitudes of university students, mainly groups of men, that frames their experience of university life, and may even shape their identities. The opening up of higher education through WP has been linked to anxieties about lad culture, implying that this problem may be due to institutions accepting more working-class students (Phipps 2015). A recent study that explored perceptions of university staff found sexism as the central aspect of lad culture, but homophobia and racism was also identified as characterising ‘laddism’ (Jackson and Sundaram 2018). Unfortunately, lad culture has become an intrinsic part of university life, especially in male environments such as sports clubs, where ‘pack’ mentality encourages behaviours which are overtly masculine, such as aggressiveness, banter and sexism. Following these events, the All Party Parliamentary University Group on ‘stamping out sexual harassment and lad culture’ in the university sector heard from a number of delegates in a meeting in December 2015 convened to examine and summarise the evidence relating to sexual harassment and ‘lad culture’ (APPG 2015). Under pressure from the media, students and the Government, UUK established a task force to examine these issues which published its reports in 2016 and 2018 (UUK 2016, 2018).

It is extraordinary that the last few years have seen not only a formal enquiry by the EHRC into racist behaviour in universities, but also an enquiry by OIA and a public APPG hearing into lad cultures, signalling that something is seriously going wrong on university campuses. The recent global Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd in the US has once again brought the systemic racism in universities to the fore. Why are the equality policies and strategies not effective in preventing these incidents from happening?

This article argues that a conjoined approach between the politics of recognition, and class and whiteness that often intersects with laddism on campuses, is necessary to identify the root causes of the problem of racism and racist hate speech on UK university campuses. There has not been a pronounced attempt in literature that endeavours to link the key ideas of misrecognition, class, whiteness and laddism in an exploration of the racist bias, structures, power and relationships in UK universities. The article argues that an intersectional understanding of class, whiteness and laddism, conjoined with the concept of misrecognition, would further our understanding of racism and racist hate speech in UK universities; and that Critical Race Theory (CRT) is the toolkit that allows for a conjoined analysis of these concepts to take place. An anonymous reviewer of a previous draft of this article suggested that the thinking of Deleuze and Guattari might be relevant in this context, which might help us understand and respond to issues in better ways. Several of Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical concepts, such as representation, immanence and affective becoming, have been explored in the context of feminist, queer, race and postcolonial theory in recent years, and indeed, Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptualisation of the ‘rhizome’ (2001) perhaps best represents the idea of conjoining of the various concepts in this article. Deleuze and Guattari use the term ‘rhizome’ to describe the relationships and connections between things in the world, wherein, just like the roots of a rhizome, thoughts operate in heterogeneous multiplicities, connect to one another non-hierarchically, and are not subject to any structural or generative models (2001, 7–21). They contrast the rhizome with the arborescent conception of knowledge of a root-tree system, whereby a small seed marks the beginning of an organic system that progressively grows into a tree with numerous branches, but is traceable back to the point of origin which is the seed. In other words, Deleuze and Guattari suggest that a rhizome is a more truthful depiction of the post-modern culture, rather than the root-tree structure which seeks meaning through tracing causality. This article is therefore not a theoretically reductive attempt to identify causality for racism and racist hate speech in UK universities, but instead it is a first step in the analysis to identify how the ‘whole’ piece connects together and holds itself together. Deployment of Deleuze for the purpose of the analysis is outside the scope; however, the conjoining of concepts outlined in the article is intended to follow a rhizomatic approach to look at the practice – the process by which multiple, diverse and non-hierarchical lines of connection between the concepts shape, dislocate, modify each other in variable ways. As Deleuze and Guattari assert, ‘the rhizome pertains to a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable, connectable, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight’ (21). The rhizomatic map is the context through which a fuller appreciation of the complexity of the current landscape of racist hate speech in UK higher education can be achieved, that may help further the understanding of institutional inertia to deal with these issues.

The Critical Race Theory (CRT) lens

CRT theoreticians hold that race and racism are social constructs, and that racial inequality is maintained through deeply embedded structures that appear normal (Bell 1995; Solórzano and Yosso 2001; Crenshaw 2001; Delgado and Stefancic 2017a). CRT as a body of scholarship endeavours to deconstruct and challenge racism in society (Rollock and Gillborn 2011). From a CRT worldview, racism is a form of cultural injustice that includes cultural domination (hostility to alien cultures), non-recognition (being rendered invisible through authoritative representational, communicative and interpretive practices) and disrespect (being routinely disparaged through negative stereotypes in public cultural representations and/or in everyday life situations) (Power 2012). Originating in the USA, influenced by Frantz Fanon’s ideas about race and whiteness, and from the work of W.E.B. Du Bois on racism as an African-American activist, CRT is a contested term in UK higher education and university campuses, often evoking strong reactions amongst the university community. Warmington (2020) has examined the development of CRT in England in terms of its growth in the field of education, where it has had the greatest impact, and discusses the substantive concerns of scholars in their criticism of CRT. The opposition to CRT in the UK is mainly due to strongly held, but perhaps misdirected views of critics, that CRT is somehow incompatible with traditional Marxist view of primacy of class and that CRT term ‘white supremacy’ homogenises all white people together in positions of class power and privilege (Cole 2009; Cole and Maisuria 2007). While the latter point is clearly a misrepresentation, analogous to saying that any form of sociological racial analysis homogenises all people of colour as marginalised and oppressed; the former view is simplistic in its refusal to acknowledge that Marx’s criteria for class membership as defined by its relation to the ownership of means of production is no longer perfectly applicable in the current sociological context. Reay (2018) has argued that class is now a confusing concept in Britain, in that it is particularly difficult to precisely identify class composition as it has evolved in the last century. With the rapid decline in the number of manual workers in mines and manufacturing industries, working class has shifted to the service sector, such as workers in the financial sector, retail and offices. It has been more than four decades since Stuart Hall described ‘race as the modality in which class is lived, the medium in which class relations are experienced’ (Hall et al. 2013, 394); and more than three since Paul Gilroy argued against the ‘absolutist definitions of race and ethnicity’ in his account of race that brings a different understanding of the traditional Left and Right politics that sees black people as victims of oppression (Gilroy 1987); but race still remains secondary for contemporary left scholars in Britain. CRT critics are yet unable to let go of traditional socialist presumptions that any politics that gives pre-eminence to race is somehow unable to address capitalist hegemony and incapable of dealing with class inequality. On the contrary, any anti-capitalist discourse that fails to situate race centrally in the social and economic modes of production in the current context would be highly inadequate. A fuller response to the critics of CRT is outside the scope of this paper’ nevertheless, it was necessary to briefly outline and acknowledge the criticism of CRT in the UK given that this article takes a position that a race-based analysis of the issues is cardinal, particularly in the context of centrality of race in UK education, educational structures and practices. However, in according a pre-eminence to race the article does not disembed class from the analysis, rather it suggests that in the context of racist hate speech in universities, class, whiteness and laddism are conjoined with race. Thus, in developing arguments from a CRT perspective, it is informed by CRT as a ‘framework or set of basic perspectives, methods and pedagogy that seeks to identify, analyse, and transform those structural and cultural aspects of society that maintain the subordination and marginalization of People of Color’ (Solorzano 1997, 6).

The nature of racist hate speech

The resurgence of racist hate speech and racism outlined in the introduction of this paper paints a difficult picture, one that is difficult to relate to without making sense of the larger landscape. What is being seen in the UK currently is similar to what has been happening on American university campuses for the last few decades. There is considerable literature that explores racist hate speech in the US, of particular interest being work of CRT theorists (Matsuda et al. 1993; Delgado 1982; Lawrence 1990; Delgado 2006; Delgado and Stefancic 2009), and literature that debates regulation vs. free speech (Delgado and Stefancic 2017b; Stone 2016). In addition, scholars have conceptualised hate speech as violence and have explored it’s experience from a victim’s perspective (Butler 1997; Matsuda 1989; Whitten 2018; Matsuda et al. 1993). The terms hate speech and racism are quite broad, and denote behaviour that may take the form of biological racism, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, antisemitism, sexism, disablist abusive behaviour or other kinds of negative stereotyping that expresses prejudice or hatred towards particular groups. It is not unusual to find many of these manifestations of hate speech amassed together in a single campus incident, or indeed, several incidents. As Matsuda points out, ‘hate messages are rarely isolated. They usually arise in a setting where racial tensions exist, they tend to spread and replicate, and the presence of one hate message tends to give rise to others’ (Matsuda 1989, 2327). Matsuda also examines the power context in which racist hate speech occurs on campus, targeting minority students and faculty. She makes a powerful argument that speech and acts of racism are not separable, that the harm of racist hate messages is a real harm to real people. It can be argued that groups that engage in racist hate speech practice the same methods that arise from the same motivations, and hence have the same effect, in that ‘racist hate messages, threats, slurs, epithets, and disparagement all hit the gut of those in the target group’ (Matsuda 1989, 2332). Solórzano (1997) argues that there are at least three important precepts in racism definitions. First, that one group believes itself to be superior to other(s); second, the group that considers itself to be superior has the power to carry out the racist behaviour; and third, that racism affects multiple groups; concluding that racism is about institutional power. The nature and complexity of racist hate speech and racism is such that it requires extraordinary imagination to recognise and link these to any one conceptual model or theory. Consequently, hate speech, particularly in the UK, has been explored in a fragmented way, from a feminist, class, race, or lad culture lens.

A politics of recognition

This article draws on Fraser’s model of social injustice, which claims that injustices can occur either in the economic and cultural dimensions, which are interrelated (Fraser 1995; Fraser and Honneth 2003); or in the political dimension (2000, 2005), which she argues cannot be reduced to either the cultural or the economic domain but which is nevertheless essential as it ‘it tells us not only who can make claims for redistribution and recognition, but also how such claims are to be mooted and adjudicated’ (2005, 75). The political dimension in this sense is the context in which economic injustices arise because of ‘maldistribution’ of resources or when there is class inequality for particular groups; and cultural injustice arises due to ‘misrecognition’ or status inequality. For Fraser, most social inequalities are thus on the two dimensions of maldistribution and misrecognition, that is, groups suffering class inequality and status inequality suffer ‘both maldistribution and misrecognition in forms where neither of these injustices is an indirect effect of the other, but where both are primary and co-ordinals’ (Fraser and Honneth 2003, 19). Fraser calls the struggle for justice in the political dimension as the struggle for ‘participatory parity’, where individuals or groups seek equal voice in decision-making about maldistribution and misrecognition injustices.

It is worth noting here that the division of social justice into these three distinct dimensions by Fraser has been contested (Young 1997; Butler 1998). Fraser herself has acknowledged the criticism and has recognised that the injustices in the three dimensions are intertwined (Olson 2008a, 2008b). A detailed account of the theorisation of the interrelatedness of the three dimensions is impractical given the space restrictions, bar the following further elaboration of the problematics of misrecognition and politics of recognitive justice in the context of racist hate speech, which is central to the analysis in this article.

Fraser and Honneth (2003) view misrecognition as distinct from non-recognition, or from being just the inverse of recognition, suggesting that it is rather the withdrawal of social recognition, made visible in the phenomena of humiliation and disrespect for misrecognised groups. The misrecognised groups, including religious and ethnic minorities, are thus looking for an affirmation of their particular identity, commonly referred to as engaging in ‘identity politics’. Fraser (2000) suggests that with the relative decline in claims of redistribution, the issues of recognition and identity have become more central, arguing that despite the rapid globalisation and expanding capitalism, there is a move from redistribution to recognition in a way that questions of recognition are marginalising and displacing redistribution rather than supplementing it. Fraser calls this ‘the problem of displacement’. Equally importantly, globalisation, with increasing transcultural interaction, communication flow and multiculturalism, has not led to a more respectful interaction within cultures but to a simplification and reification of group identities. Fraser calls this ‘the problem of reification’, that encourages separatism, intolerance, chauvinism, patriarchalism and authoritarianism.

Elsewhere, and more recently, Fraser (2019) has argued that the authority of ‘progressive neoliberalism’ (that is, an alliance of neoliberal, expropriative and capitalist programme of distribution with progressive politics of recognition of liberal movements in society seeking recognition on the basis of identity, gender and culture) is now weakening, as it has failed to deliver material gains to a large majority of the people and has benefitted the upper classes most. This has led to the rise of ‘reactionary populism’, a combination of hyper-reactionary politics of recognition with populist politics of distribution, symbolised by the rise in racism, homophobia, xenophobia and misogyny. This can be seen in the rise of the far-right and increasing ethnocentrism and anti-immigrant sentiment across large parts of the world; and plausibly reflected in the context of universities that have seen an exponential increase in the number of students from overseas and from weaker socio-economic sections of society through widening participation and access schemes; but this change in student population diversity has not led to a corresponding increase in multiculturalism and inclusive campuses.

If identity reification due to misrecognition, and politics of reactionary populism are encouraging separatism and intolerance, then how has politics of education in the UK attempted to address this social injustice? Power (2012) provides a comprehensive account of the educational policies of recognition, using examples from England, involving deconstruction of categories of misrecognised groups as well as cultural affirmation. In this perspective, misrecognised groups are able to ‘invert’ their ‘internalised negative identities’ through an affirmation of their own culture and identity, in order to gain recognition from society from this publicly asserted positive identity. A self-affirmed and self-generated collective identity puts moral pressure on individual members to conform to a given group culture, discouraging cultural dissidence, experimentation and criticism (Fraser 2000). Such reification perpetuates stereotypical representations of minority groups, who are ascribed excessive cultural distinctiveness that discourages social integration.

Theorising conjoined Misrecognition, Class, Whiteness, and Laddism

The underpinning premise of this paper is that any racialised analysis of racist hate speech on university campuses needs to consider misrecognition, whiteness, class and laddism in a conjoined way. Apropos Deleuze and Guattari’s (2001) conceptualisation of the rhizome in the context of the analysis in this article, a rhizomatic approach to conjoining is imagined as more profound than just the connection of the concepts under discussion. Conjoining refers not only to the intersections between categorisations that empirically separate people into the same groups, but also to the coincidence of issues arising from the interconnections that cannot be managed as though they were independent of each other. So what do these connections look like?

Fraser’s model of class inequalities (arising due to material or economic inequality) and status inequalities (cultural inequality), discussed in the previous section, indicating a causal interaction between the two, suggests that misrecognition due to race inequality, or class inequality, on their own cannot explain the increasing incidents of racist hate speech on university campuses. In order to make sense of race inequalities, other structural inequalities such as class, ethnicity and gender that intersect need to be analysed as well, with particular attention to the processes of misrecognition. While misrecognition is often intensified due to the intersection of race with class (and gender) for certain persons and groups (Mirza 2009), in university settings the misrecognised groups suffer racist hate speech not just from a particular, homogenised upper or middle class groups, rather, the categorisation of class as either white middle-class or white working-class is fundamental to the understanding of the issues from a CRT viewpoint, given both have been equally involved in recent incidents of racist hate speech, the latter group perhaps more so in the context of who ‘fits’ in with their culture. This clearly suggests that any class-based analysis needs to take into account White privilege as a contributing factor. Furthermore, there is evidence which suggests that white, Eurocentric and masculine perspectives and orientations have historically formed assumptions about who has the right to higher education, and that ‘inclusion’ in universities tends to be more about ‘fitting in’ with dominant cultures (Burke 2012). Fitting in within their respective groups thus makes white middle-class or white working-class students worthier, othering misrecognised groups and reproducing the patterns of social and cultural exclusion which is clearly visible in UK universities in the exclusionary practices that some overseas students experience. It is clear that in trying to address the injustice of misrecognition through simplistic models such as deconstructing racialised categories in policy definitions (Selvarajah et al. 2020) or through the positive affirmation of identities by marginalised or oppressed groups, the fundamental structure of White privilege has remained unchanged.

How does the intersectionality of whiteness and class manifests in universities? Reay outlines how the educational processes in elite universities in Britain are perpetuating elitism and rewarding embodied cultural capital of elite classes (Reay 2001). However, class and ethnic ‘distancing’ are not just a phenomenon at elite universities. With the lifting of student number caps, and the success of widening access programmes, more middle-class students and those from minority ethnic and low socio-economic groups are studying at Russell group and other selective and prestigious universities than ever before. Despite this, most UK universities remain overwhelmingly white; and class remains an uncomfortable topic for discussion, if not entirely forbidden. In the universities formal concept of equality and fair play, everyone is classless, despite the widespread awareness amongst university community that class is a product of accumulation of cultural, social and economic capital; aptly described by Ball (1993) as a lived embodiment made visible in the everyday decisions that privileged classes make. Whiteness on the other hand seeks to bestow power and privilege on the basis of skin colour. Leonardo suggests that whiteness is a ‘racial discourse, whereas the category “white people” represents a socially constructed identity, usually based on skin color … .Furthermore, whiteness is supported by material practices and institutions. That said, white people are often the subjects of whiteness because it benefits and privileges them’ (Leonardo 2002, 31–32). Gillborn describes some of the defining characteristics of whiteness, further distinguishing between ‘white’ and ‘whiteness’ through the concept of whiteness being ‘performatively’ constituted, and arguing that it is this performatively constituted identity that renders whiteness its ‘deep rooted, almost invisible status’ (Gillborn 2005, 490). How does the intersection of whiteness, and middle-classness or working-classness, at a predominantly white, heteronormative and male university creates the power imbalance by which some students assume a position of superiority, where non-white students are rendered as the ‘other’, as lacking credibility and legitimacy to be at a university?

Levine-Rasky (2011) applies intersectionality theory to the ‘other side’ of power relations, in an analysis of the intersections of whiteness and middle-classness, rather than to the more traditional categories of race, gender, and working-classness. She argues that identity is relational to others, and is experienced not as composed of discrete attributes but as a subjective and fragmented set of dynamics which are contingent upon social, political and ideological context that produces and sustains identity. Given that identity is also shaped by material differences, that is, class, which is lived subjectively and practiced in relation to others; and given that similarly, whiteness also is a socially constructed category to create privilege for the White race; Levine-Rasky argues that the two dynamics when studied together are frequently conflated as in the phrase ‘white-middle-class’. The white-middle-class group in defining itself, where the whiteness and middle-classness intersection reinforce each other, constructs otherness and thus assumes a dominant positionality. Congruent with this idea then is the corresponding identity formation of white-working-class groups, given that identity is relational, and develops and surfaces under particular social conditions and group relations. The key similitude between the two constructions, of white-middle-classness and white-working-classness, in the context of racist hate speech in universities, is that both assume dominant positionality in relation to non-whites, with their own clear boundaries that effect exclusion of others who do not conform to whiteness and either middle-classness or working-classness, according both groups power and privilege in the relationality with others. The context linking the two groups in their practice of domination and oppression is historical and cultural White privilege.

The intersections between whiteness and middle-classness and working-classness mobilises ‘lad cultures’. Phipps (2017) argues that more intersectional analysis is needed to broaden our understanding of lad culture, and that the key intersection in the UK is social class. Lad culture is thus another type of reification of group identity, self-generated and self-affirming, one that seeks recognition from like-minded groups and individuals rather than broader society. This identity can be of either kind, working-class or middle-class, as argued earlier in this section, but has in common the factor of whiteness that creates a superior identity, which can be framed as White-laddism. White-laddism seeks dominance in student community through racist, sexist and homophobic behaviour, through acts that disparage other groups. White-laddism unabashedly promotes itself through online and other social media channels with the aim to recruit as many like-minded individuals as possible. Buoyed by ‘reactionary populism’, White-laddism undertakes to normalise racism and racist hate speech as banter in the student community. Universities have always been stratified by class, gender and race, but White-laddism seeks hegemony of its ideology through subordination, through patterns of behaviour that perpetuates inequalities. This is a double blow for marginalised and historically oppressed groups, who are singled out for vilification.

A CRT perspective on the failure of policy in tackling racist hate speech

The increase in incidents of racist hate speech outlined in the beginning of this paper indicate there is a gap between policy intent and implementation. Instead of inclusive learning spaces, UK universities continue to be spaces of overwhelming white hegemony. Gillborn (2005) argues that race inequity and racism are fundamental characteristics of the education system, and that forms of institutional racism are embedded within policy, calling ‘education policy as an act of white supremacy’. It is important though to deconstruct, through a CRT lens, why, with the avowed liberal, inclusive ideals that universities and its communities enshrine, any meaningful change on race equality seems like a distant dream. Firstly, institutions are bound in the shackles of the dominant ideology that argues for objectivity, equal opportunity, and meritocracy. Thus, institutions put in place policies that are ‘colour blind’, that require everyone to be treated ‘equally’, and hence only able to deal with racism that is obvious and visible, with everyday manifestations of racism going unrecognised. Second, and equally importantly, conversations about race and racism with white academics and managers are uncomfortable and challenging. Any attempt at an honest conversation with them means including them in the frame of White privilege and dominance. As discussed in the section on whiteness, its performative constitution that renders it a ‘deep-rooted, almost invisible’ status means there are fundamentally different positions between the two groups, white and people of colour, that are unable to converge. Most racist incidents are dismissed as actions of a ‘minority’ that don’t reflect the espoused values of the university, underplayed as banter, or minimised as isolated incidents that education and training can redress. As Rollock puts it, this means being ‘seduced’ by the idea that acquiring knowledge via a few hours of training (and by extension, by being a member of a departmental or university EDI committee) would be sufficient to enable white colleagues to move beyond whiteness and genuinely committee to tackle racism (2018).

Pilkington (2018) notes that policy initiatives, however effective they might be in relation to other equality strands, have not made any significant difference in tackling race inequality, maintaining that racial disadvantage remains stubbornly persistent. Apple (2004) argues that one of the reasons for this is because educational policy formulation and implementation is actually a form of ‘symbolic politics’. He suggests that this as a systemic issue, in which culturally and economically dominant groups who are the policy makers and responsible for its implementation have a ‘set of values, skills, dispositions and propensities that enables certain groups to employ educational reform for their own individual and collective benefit’ (396). Rollock (2018) similarly contends that institutional initiatives do not seriously engage with the fundamental aspects of race and racism, within the broader institutional context of persisting hegemonic practices, and therefore fail to address race inequalities. She further argues that institutions ‘tend to embrace a range of limited short-term strategies that while giving the appearance of serious engagement, in effect, make little substantial, long term difference to the experiences, outcomes, and success of students and faculty of colour’ (314). While on one hand the equality policies do not deliver on their promise to deal with racial inequalities, on the other hand the performativity of policy making on race matters (Bhopal and Pitkin 2020) works for the benefit of those who contribute to a system which reinforces and perpetuates White privilege. The enactment of policy making supports the CRT theses of ‘Interest Convergence’, or ‘Material Determinism’, that argues that any attempt to tackle discrimination is not altruistic, but is driven by material (or psychological) self-interest of elite Whites (Delgado and Stefancic 2017a). But how does interest convergence explain the acquiescence of working-class whites to symbolic policy structures, who plausibly do not stand to benefit any more from such policies than people of colour? Gillborn (2013) explains this as ‘interest-divergence’, where working-class whites are seduced by a sense of racial superiority that further marginalisation and oppression of non-whites will accrue them some benefit, conceivably influenced and supported by the politics of reactionary-populism as described earlier in the article. No doubt, there is an intersectionality here with nationality and the stoking of patriotism by neoliberal right-wing politics, which has become quite pronounced in UK universities through a continuation of the hostile environment, however an account of this is outside the scope of this article.

Another salient line of argument for the failure of policy initiatives is offered by Phipps (2020), who suggests that the university as a neoliberal institution is more concerned with financial and market logic, and thus subordinates moral obligations to market concerns that normalise, minimise, and dismiss racist and sexist behaviour through what she calls ‘institutional airbrushing’. Universities operating in the neoliberal marketised HE sector seek to suppress issues that may lead to adverse publicity that harms their standing in a highly competitive market, and view each incident from the point of reputational risk. From a CRT perspective, this ‘reckoning up’ of reputational risk versus welfare of survivors who have been target of oppression is clear evidence of an embedded system of privilege, referred to as ‘Structural Determinism’ by Delgado and Stefancic (2017a). Much hand-wringing accompanies the oft repeated phrase of how universities have to ‘protect their reputation’ in order to ‘survive’ in the competitive market-based environment, or how oppression is dismissed through ‘this is just the way things are and we are doing the best we can’. These examples illustrate the concept of structural determinism whereby the structures are deemed inadequate to deal with the issues, and/or that it is the system which is to be blamed. Another CRT notion of ‘Differential Racialisation’ (Delgado and Stefancic 2017a) also finds its place in UK universities. Differential racialisation refers to ways the dominant society racialises different minority groups at different times. Manifesting itself under the guise of compliance with the law, universities unfairly and visibly treat certain minority groups, for example, pervasive attendance ‘monitoring’ of overseas students for the purpose of complying with visa regulations, racial profiling of certain groups under the ‘Prevent Duty’, and nationality profiling of some groups under the Academic Technology Approval Scheme (ATAS) which allows students to study certain sensitive subjects in the UK.

Conclusions

Much has been written and said on tackling racism and racist hate speech in UK universities, nevertheless, race inequalities persist, and policy response has been inadequate in dealing with the problem as outlined in the previous section. This article has taken a new approach in the exploration of racist hate speech landscape on UK university campuses through a conjoined analysis of key concepts that advances the understanding of racist hate speech. In taking a rhizomatic approach to conjoining of the problematics of misrecognition and identity-reification with the intersectionality of whiteness with middle-classness and working-classness, and through incorporating laddism in the analysis, the article builds a nuanced understanding of these conceptions as manifest on university campuses in the UK in the context of racist hate speech. Non-Whites are racialised through misrecognition as the other, as being deviant from norm, with white-laddism assuming the dominant positionality through power difference. Any analysis of racist hate speech in universities intending to inform policy making thus requires a meticulous consideration of the processes of mis-recognition and identity reification that deeply influence the relationality between different groups on campus; and should be equally concerned with white-laddism, which effects the social and cultural domination of white groups on campus. As such, the article argues that an approach that centres race in its analysis is necessary to explain the enduring issue of racism and racist hate speech in UK universities. In doing so, the article has also advanced an appreciation of why policy initiatives are failing from a CRT perspective. This detail helps further our understanding of the inadequate nature of equality policies and strategies that often look at issues in isolation, and thus fail to address the inequality and injustice being perpetuated on campuses.

Institutional affiliation

Senior Teaching Fellow (Management Science) and Doctoral Researcher (Education research), Lancaster University

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).