Racially minoritised students’ strategies for navigating and resisting racism in higher education

ABSTRACT

For years now racially minoritised people have entered UK Higher Education (HE) at higher rates than their white peers and, in recent years, recognition of race inequality in the sector has been growing. Despite this, institutional racism and whiteness continue to underpin UK HE. A growing body of work centres the experiences of racially minoritised students and considers how they experience racism and whiteness in HE. Less scholarly attention has been paid to how students respond to and resist racism and whiteness. As such, this article draws attention to racially minoritised students’ agency and the strategies they develop and deploy to navigate and resist racism in HE. In so doing, it challenges deficit discourses that suggest that racially minoritised students lack the capital required to survive in the academy. Second, through exploring students’ agency and resistance, it reveals the weight of institutional whiteness in HE.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical race theory (CRT)
• cultural capital
• whiteness
• bodies out of place
• racism
• higher education

Introduction

In the UK, racially minoritised people have entered UK Higher Education (HE) at higher rates than white people “for more than three decades” (Arday, Branchu, and Boliver 2022, 12) and, in recent years, particularly following Black Lives Matter mobilisations in 2020, recognition of race inequality in the sector has increased (Arday, Branchu, and Boliver 2022; Otobo 2020). Despite this, institutional racism and whiteness continue to underpin UK HE (Arday 2019; Joseph-Salisbury 2019; Rollock 2012). Whiteness in HE, and more broadly, works to construct those racialised as white – their interests, knowledges and cultures associated with them – as the “norm”, whilst systematically disadvantaging and excluding racially minoritised people who are constructed as “Other” (Sian 2017, 7). This means that, though the doors have been opened to racially minoritised people, they are still positioned as “bodies out of place” upon entry (Puwar 2004a, 2004b). Students who are not recognised as the racial (or classed) “norm” – who are seen not to have “acquired the appropriate codes and conventions” of a white, middle-class habitus – enter the university field and experience a mismatch or clash of “habitus” (Abrahams and Ingram 2013, 1–3).

In this paper, I draw attention to the strategies that racially minoritised students develop and deploy at university that allow them to navigate this “clash”. Where less scholarly attention has been paid to the “strategic capital” and “navigational capital” that racially minoritised people bring with them and develop in HE (Yosso 2005), I pay “due regard” to racially minoritised students’ agency, their “resilience and determination” and the ways they navigate and resist racism in HE (Rollock 2021, 215). The contribution of this is twofold. First, I challenge deficit discourses and misinterpretations of Bourdieu’s “cultural capital” that suggest that racially minoritised students “lack the appropriate social and cultural capital required” to survive in the academy (Yosso 2005, 77). Second, through exploring students’ agency and resistance, I reveal the weight of institutional whiteness in HE. I find that racially minoritised students develop and deploy a range of “strategies of navigation” and “strategies of resistance” and that these strategies can co-exist. I centre and celebrate the agency of racially minoritised students, however, I argue that these strategies respond to, and are only necessary because of, the whiteness and racisms they face in HE.

I begin the paper with a brief overview of the frameworks that inform the research – Critical Race Theory (CRT) and, more specifically, Yosso’s (2005) “Community Cultural Wealth” – and define what “strategies of navigation and resistance” means. After outlining the methods, I offer the findings of my research and outline the different types of strategising. First, I discuss two related but contrasting strategies: distancing from the field and adapting to the field. Second, I explore the ways in which students create “networks of protection” through their social networks and, relatedly, how they carve out alternative spaces of belonging. I then explore the strategy of speaking back to whiteness and attempting to defy stereotypes. Finally, before concluding, I consider the toll that this strategising can take through a discussion of “Racial Battle Fatigue”.

Theoretical framework

Critical Race Theory (CRT) can be thought of, not as a rigid theory, but as a “conceptual toolbox” (Gillborn 2008, 31) that can inform “theory, research, pedagogy and policy” (Yosso 2005, 73). It has porous boundaries and overlaps with other critical approaches. In this paper critical race scholarship works in dialogue with theories of cultural capital and class.

Beginning from the premise that racism is ordinary and ingrained in society (Gillborn 2008; Solórzano and Yosso 2002), CRT centres race and racism – with an intersectional lens – interrogating the ways white supremacy is (re)produced in institutions, like universities. CRT refutes post-racial ideology – an ideology that denies the significance of race and the existence of racism in favour of “treating everybody the same” whilst wilfully failing to eradicate inequity and, in turn, serving the interests of white supremacy (Gillborn 2008; Joseph-Salisbury 2019; Lentin 2014). It instead seeks to go beneath this “progressive façade” to reveal how race and racism continue to structure and shape society and institutions like universities (Gillborn 2008, 28–29).

CRT seeks to empower minoritised groups and recognises the value of their experiential knowledge, seeing it as “legitimate, appropriate, and critical” and capable of challenging “traditional research paradigms, texts and theories” (Solórzano and Yosso 2002, 26; Yosso 2005, 74). CRT values counter-storytelling – the methodological approach of this paper – which amplifies and legitimises the counter-hegemonic voices of racially minoritised people to expose and challenge dominant racialised narratives that uphold whiteness (Arday 2019; Harper 2009; Jones 2021; Rollock 2021; Solórzano and Yosso 2002). CRT, then, is an appropriate framework to understand how whiteness functions in UK HE and, importantly, how racially minoritised students are navigating and resisting it.

In this paper, rather than arguing that racially minoritised students “lack” the cultural capital required to thrive in the academy, I focus on the “wealth of cultural capital” that allows these students to agentically navigate and resist the racism they face at university (Shilliam 2016, 96). I centre students’ “Community Cultural Wealth ” – which refers to the “accumulated assets, resources and forms of capital” racially minoritised students bring with them to university (Yosso 2005, 77) – focussing particularly on their “navigational capital” and “resistant capital”. The former refers to the “skills of manoeuvring through social institutions” like “racially-hostile university campuses” and the latter to the “knowledges and skills fostered through oppositional behaviour that challenges inequality” (Yosso 2005, 80). Building from this framework, I refer to students’ “strategies of navigation” and “strategies of resistance”. Strategising is something racially minoritised students do in response to the racism and structural barriers that whiteness produces in HE. It is the “deliberate” and strategic work racially minoritised students put in to navigate through, survive and/or “endure” the university (Rollock 2021). Rather than seeing strategies of navigation and strategies of resistance as separable or distinct, I think of them as related and co-existing. I show that racially minoritised students can, and do, develop and deploy both “types” of strategies at different times, for different purposes depending on the situation and context. Before moving to explore racially minoritised students’ strategies of navigation and resistance in HE, I first set out the methods.

Methods

Utilising data from previous research (O’Neill 2023), the analysis presented in this article comes out of the accounts 30 racially minoritised students from 13 different universities in England, Wales and Scotland (O’Neill 2023). The research was approved by The University of Manchester’s School of Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee. The paper draws predominantly on semi-structured interview data and is supplemented by data from 5 participant diaries (plus follow-up interviews). I note where diary-based data has been used. Verbal and written consent was obtained from all participants. Data was collected between December 2020 and June 2021 and was analysed using NVivo 11 software.

Participants were all studying, or had recently studied, Politics at undergraduate level, including students on Joint Honours programmes and in sub-disciplines of Politics (e.g. International Relations). The rationale for this disciplinary focus was that Politics warrants attention because of the whiteness and colonial logics that underpin it and because knowledge produced there is reflected “out there” in global Politics (see O’Neill 2023). This is not to say that whiteness, racism and coloniality are distinct to Politics, they characterise UK HE as a whole. The findings in this paper go beyond disciplinary boundaries and speak to participants’ experiences of HE broadly.

Participants were invited to self-describe their racial identities. Table 1 outlines each of their racial identities and their: university; self-described gender identities and Home/International status. Those who participated diary-keeping are identified with a star (*) and each participant has been pseudonymised.

Table 1. Key information on participants.

	University	Race	Gender	Home/Int
Jasmine*	Manchester	Asian Indian, British Indian	Woman	Home
Michael	Exeter & Nottingham	Mixed-Race	Male	Home
Annie	SOAS & Goldsmiths	Afro-Asian (Half Ivorian, Half Japanese), “Moves through the world as Black”	Woman	Home
Shireen*	Manchester	Arab-Egyptian	Female	Int.
Samantha*	Manchester	Black African	Female	Home
Ayesha	Leicester	Bangladeshi	Female	Home
Ahmed	Manchester	Pakistani	Man	Home
Radhika	Bath	Mixed (Indian & English)	Female	Home
Zahra*	Bath	Mixed (White & South Asian)	Female, Cisgender	Home
Lauren	Bath	Indian	Female	Home
Simon*	Bath	Half Caucasian, Half Middle Eastern (Iraqi)	Male	Home
Rose	Goldsmiths	Mixed-Race (White & Asian)	Female	Home
Simran	Manchester	Asian British, Punjabi	Female	Home
Eleni	Aberdeen	Black African, Ethiopian	Woman	Home
Kiara	SOAS	Mixed-Race (Half Jamaican)	Female	Home
Sia	SOAS	Indian	She/Her	Home
Maria	Sussex	Black Caribbean, Austrian, Chinese (Mixed-Race)	Woman	Home
Jedi	Sussex	Thai-Hong Kong	Male	Int.
Ciara	Leeds	Mixed, Black Caribbean	Female	Home
Sathya	Leeds	Sri Lankan	Male	Int.
Francis	Leeds	Black British, Black Caribbean	Female, Cisgender	Home
Anaya	Warwick	Pakistani-Muslim	She/They	Home
Kemi	Lancaster	Black African, Nigerian	Female	Home
Richard	Nottingham	Mixed-Race (White & Caribbean)	Male	Home
Jane	Leeds	Mixed-Race (South Korean & White British)	Female	Home
Diya	Lancaster	British Punjabi	Female	Home
Harry	Aberystwyth	White & Black Caribbean	Male	Home
Niveditha	Lancaster	Eelam-Tamil, Sri Lankan	Cisgender, Female	Home
Sunny	Lancaster	Black British, Black African, Black	Female	Home
Paul	Lancaster	English & Chinese	Male, Cisgender	Int.

Having set out the methods, next, I present the findings of the research and outline students’ strategies of navigation and resistance.

Findings and discussion

Distancing from the field and/or adapting to the field

The first two strategies I discuss are consistent with what has been described as “distancing from the university field” and “adapting to the university field” (Abrahams and Ingram 2013, 5). The field here refers to the social “world” of the university, it allows us to think through the ways in which students have developed a particular habitus¹ in their local fields or fields of origin and how that fits with the new “field” of the university (Abrahams and Ingram 2013). This is helpful in thinking not only about class but also race and the ways students experience the white, middle-class field of the university.

Harry, Sathya, Jasmine and Ahmed described the various ways they “strategically opted out” and “avoided the social milieux” of the university (Crozier et al. 2008, 174). Ahmed explained that “the main aspect of my social life is probably not at university”. Being a living-at-home student, he told me that he felt “fortunate” that he “lives where he grew up” which means “even if I don’t get involved much at uni, I still have that”. Ahmed found the social side of university to be exclusionary, as he said,

… one of the main facets of student life is drinking, and I don't drink. So, I’m quite excluded from a lot of social events […] I can’t really get involved in many things because there is like a culture of drinking which […] it does exclude people who don’t drink.

Ahmed, who is Muslim and does not drink, highlights the social exclusion of Muslim students due to drinking culture – a culture that is normalised at his university and universities generally. Retaining his friendships outside of the university and separating his social life from the university by spending time at home allowed him to navigate this exclusion. Home, for Ahmed, “provides relief from the discomfort of university” (Osbourne et al. 2023, 505).

For other participants, distancing from the university looked different. For example, when I asked Harry how he navigated being at a university that he described as “very white”, he said, “I try and stay in contact with my background and culture”. He explained,

… my Grandma taught me how to cook so I do things like that, like cooking food from Jamaica. I read a lot on my own personally, I’ve just read a James Baldwin book … 

Harry described that, because he only knew “a few Black people” and that none of them studied the same course as him or lived in his student accommodation, it was difficult to feel connected to his Blackness at university. Counter to this, these individual cultural practices allowed him to feel connected to his heritage despite being in a white space. Here, we can see the value of Harry’s cultural knowledge in shifting the focus away from what is “lacking” and focussing instead on what he brings to university in order to navigate its whiteness (Yosso 2005). Like Harry, Simran also found practical ways to distance herself from the white field of the university. She said, “I’ve had to just create spaces for myself online where I find these things [community and belonging], because uni is not going to provide it for me”. She said that the online spaces she sought out – spaces that reflected some of her lived experiences “like South Asian Sisters Speak²” – enabled her to navigate through the whiteness of university because she had found a sense of community elsewhere.

Sathya’s mode of distancing from the university was more psychological. He talked about white students at Leeds and what he called the “edgy liberal” culture associated with them, explaining that,

… I am part of it, definitely, you know. But I have my own definition of how much a part of it. Don’t ever mistake that I’m completely part of whatever you guys are doing, I feel like I belong but at my own definition and at my own distance.

Whilst Sathya is not wholly distant from or outside of this culture, he keeps a critical distance from the dominant group as a means of “protecting his identity” in response to the whiteness of the university field; by drawing a psychological boundary he establishes something of an “oppositional social identity” (Tatum 2017, 60). Jasmine also distanced psychologically from the university field. She said,

… I don’t think I have the best coping mechanisms. […] University is unique in that you can get away with accepting the situation because you do sort of have that like, ‘Once you’re in, it’s just til you’re out’ sort of thing. (Diary-based Interview)

Adopting a mentality of non-permanence (“it’s just til you’re out”) allowed Jasmine to navigate the exclusionary whiteness and “clash” of habitus she experienced. Further, she added that, “[I] try my best to participate enough that I’m not missing out, or to the point that I do still benefit from my university or things like that”. Jasmine, like Sathya, set boundaries and established her level of investment in the university. Her psychological distancing was strategic and allowed her to both distance herself so that she could “cope” whilst simultaneously “participating enough” to ensure that she doesn’t miss out. In her diary-based interview, she talked about finding it “difficult to adjust” and fit in because university is “so different to how I grew up and where I’m from” but emphasised this was not something she was passively subjected to. Rather she was agentic and said, “another part of me refuses to adjust because I don’t want to accept things as they are”. Jasmine simultaneously adopted a mentality of non-permanence whilst also refusing to adjust because she rejected the way things are. Her strategising, like other racially minoritised students, was complex. What can be understood from both Sathya and Jasmine’s accounts is that racially minoritised students can decide how much they keep a psychological distance from the university field. They undertake an ongoing process of “opting in and out” for survival. Whether by staying connected to their “local field” and/or refusing to adapt into the new field, participants’ varying strategies of “distancing from the field” allowed them to protect their own identities and “buffer the impact of racism” and whiteness as a form of self-preservation and care (Kinouani 2021, 196).

In contrast, some participants demonstrated their “navigational capital” by adapting to the university field in a variety of ways. For example, Lauren expressed a desire to “integrate myself into the main student body and put myself out of my comfort zone”. Understanding that the university is not necessarily a “comfort zone” for racially minoritised students, and that the white gaze marks them as “Other”, one of the most common ways participants deployed this strategy was by modifying their behaviour in order to “fit in” and minimise racialised social exclusions. This is an example of “double consciousness” – “always seeing oneself through the eyes of others” (Du Bois 1903, 9). Participants discussed deploying this strategy particularly, though not exclusively, in the context of the “classroom”.³

Whilst Ahmed distanced from the field in his social life, he adapted to the university field in the classroom by monitoring and modifying his behaviour. He said, “I won’t say anything because, coming from someone who looks like me, [it] might come off wrong”. He explained that this strategy was especially necessary in conversation in which he had a “vested interest” as a racially minoritised Muslim man – “like immigration or whatever” – where he felt he had to “watch what he says” and “be wary of saying anything in case you come across aggressive or whatever”. Here, we can see how Ahmed feels compelled to adapt through self-censorship because of his awareness of how he, as a Muslim man, is positioned in the white space of the classroom. Feeling the weight of the white gaze in the classroom, and conscious of the sexist and racist stereotypes that construct Muslim men as “threats” that are so deeply entrenched in British society and culture (Akel 2021), he modifies himself in order to avoid being seen as threatening, aggressive or angry (Yancy 2008, 15).

This sentiment was echoed by Diya, Samantha and Ayesha. Diya said, “I’ve had to learn to like keep quiet and be careful of what I say”. She explained that she sometimes has to “calm it down because sometimes it can come across aggressive”. This led her to feel like she has to “bite her tongue” and, though “learning how to just calm it down a bit” is a skill she has developed, she noted this is something that she “shouldn’t have to” do. It is worth emphasising Diya’s point here that she shouldn’t have to modify her behaviour in order to fit in. It is the whiteness of the university, and society more broadly, that disciplines racially minoritised people and produces the need for them to constrict themselves and modify their behaviour (Joseph-Salisbury 2018; Yancy 2008), thus it ought to be the university that changes, not racially minoritised students.

Samantha and Ayesha both described processes of “reading the room” and assessing what they feel able to say and modifying their behaviour accordingly. Samantha said,

… Let’s say we’re talking about race, I think it can be hit or miss, so I think not saying anything at all can like … just to like really reduce that tension of anyone coming for my neck […] Or I speak my mind. But it does depend on the room. […] I will read the room.

Like Ahmed and Diya, Samantha uses strategic silence to shield herself from potentially being read and treated as an “angry Black woman”. Her silence or “refusal to engage” allows her to form boundary that protects her from backlash and the kinds of debates she sees as not worth having (Kinouani 2021, 154). For Samantha, being strategic in this way is a protective strategy of survival due to the whiteness of the institution. Moreover, being one of “only two Black people” on her degree programme, Samantha may be subjected to the “burden of representation” – being seen as a representative for her “racial group” or “community”, particularly on issues of race (Puwar 2004a) – and this strategy, then, is both protective of Samantha individually and, more collectively, of the wider group she may be seen to represent. It is worth noting here that in the Politics classroom, “contentious” topics – topics that can be racialised and put racially minoritised folks at risk of racism and/or backlash (e.g. Migration, Security and Terrorism, Nationalism and so on) – may be more likely to be the subject of “debate” so these protective strategies respond both to her discipline and to the institution.

Participants’ strategising, here, might be understood through Abrahams and Ingram (2013) frame of “developing a chameleon habitus”. Developing a “chameleon habitus” is about retaining a sense of self outside of the university whilst strategically adapting in order to “fit in and be immersed” in the university too (Abrahams and Ingram 2003, 10). The authors use this concept to explore the experiences of local, working-class students encountering the middle-class field of the university and, though it is useful in thinking about racially minoritised students’ encountering whiteness at university too, it is important to note that the extent to which racially minoritised students can deploy a chameleon habitus is constrained by the ways in which they are racialised by others and interpellated as “non-white” due to the corporeality of race. Bearing in mind these limitations, the concept is helpful in illuminating the ways that racially minoritised students adapt to the white university field by modifying their behaviour when navigating the university space. Having internalised the dynamics and expectation of the classroom, Samantha, for example, attempts to switch between fields and adapt to better belong in the space.

This might also be the frame through which Ayesha’s strategising can be understood. Like Ahmed, Ayesha knew there were certain topics that required her to “wait and gauge the reaction of the room”. These topics were things like “Winston Churchill, like terrorism”. She said when engaging in these topics “you have to be so careful”. Ayesha chooses when to speak up and when to adapt, being careful and selective in the classroom when “risky” topics come up. As a visibly Muslim woman of colour in a white space, modifying the way, and when, she communicates goes some way in protecting Ayesha from possible racist and Islamophobic exclusions in the classroom.

Participants’ ability to modify their behaviour when they need to whilst refusing to adapt at other times “illustrates a degree of ‘reflexivity’” (Abrahams and Ingram 2013, 11), might also be understood as “code-switching”. Here, critical race theorising and theories of class and cultural capital work in dialogue. Code-switching is the process of adopting a “different persona, mannerisms, accent and sometimes language to fit in” or “leaving your Blackness at the door to get in” (Kinouani 2021, 122). This was reflected in Jasmine’s description of the ways she “switches on” and becomes “very, like, whatever the neat professional type is”. Likewise, Samantha and Ayesha both had strategies that could be described as code-switching. Ayesha explained that “the way you convey information has to be dependent on your recipient” and that “if I was white, I would be saying this, like, very freely because … But because of the way I look and how I present, I can’t … ” Similarly, Samantha found herself having to adopt an “objective” and detached tone in the classroom in order to protect herself. She explained, “I am very politically correct. I am trying to word it correctly to make sure I’m not going to offend anyone or no one looks at me sideways”. She explained that this required her to “take herself out of the situation” and speak “objectively” even if she is speaking about topics she has been through herself. Aware of the way that the white gaze positions her as a “racialised spectacle” in the white and Western-centric classroom and university (Johnson and Joseph-Salisbury 2018, 151), she switches to an “objective”, detached voice in an attempt to conform to the white imaginary of the knowing subject as one who is “able to know the world without being part of that world” and produce knowledge that is “universal and independent of context” (Mbembe 2016, 33). Her white peers, who are already imagined to be legitimate knowing subjects, are afforded the privilege of being viewed as speaking objectively, particularly on issues of race. This notion of “objectivity” – which “operates in racialized ways” (Gillborn 2008, 31) – is one that CRT refutes.

Though not explicit in their accounts, modifying behaviour and code-switching are not only class and race-based strategies, there is a gendered dimension too. It is significant that a group of women – Samantha, Ayesha, Jasmine and Diya – all talked about changing their behaviour, particularly how they speak and communicate, in order to protect themselves from racist and sexist exclusions that emerge in the white, androcentric space of the university classroom. Not only is the university a white space, it is also an androcentric space that has imagined the student and producer of knowledge to be a white man. As such, these racially minoritised women “find themselves needing to codeswitch to ‘fit into’ the predominantly White, middle-class, heteronormative academic environment” (Begum and Saini 2019, 198). It is important to note too that class-based code-switching intersects with race and gender too as Jasmine’s experience highlights. Seeing her racial identity and socio-economic background as deeply entangled, for her, the “the neat professional type” that she switches too is not only about adapting to a white space but adapting to a middle-class culture too.

As well as being deployed in the classroom, some participants also used strategies of adapting to the field in their social lives. Both Anaya and Jedi referred to modifying their behaviour in order to make friends with their white peers. Jedi, an international student who described his racial identity as “Thai-Hong Kong”, described changing his accent in order to combat feelings of exclusion that came out of British Home students’ inability to understand him,

… I have a really strong accent, people can’t really understand me, they’re not [sic] really want to talk to me and stuff. So I kind of feel left out. But after that, I’ve been working on my accent a lot to make it more clearer, so they can talk to me and understand me. And I guess that that’s helped a lot.

To counteract being excluded and feeling a sense of non-belonging, Jedi modified his accent so that British Home students might be more willing to speak with him. It is important to note here, the “work” and energy that goes into Jedi’s, and others’, strategising and the “racial battle fatigue” that may result from it, which I discuss in the penultimate section of this paper. This reveals the xenophobic whiteness within the university and – though this strategy was something Jedi felt positively about and he was pleased that he had since made friends with Home students – illustrates that adapting to the university field can entail a distancing from one’s own identity in order to fit in. Moreover, it demonstrates that institutional cultures and norms – like Britishness – are reproduced interpersonally as well as institutionally.

Anaya adapted outside of the classroom. She explained that, “in my house I have fun, and it is fun, but you have to switch off your brain”. Just as other participants were strategic about certain topics in the classroom, in order to get along with her housemates – a group of boys she described as being problematic and perpetuating racism and misogyny in a variety of ways – Anaya found that she had to “choose her battles” and let things go when discussions around race and gender came up in order to avoid awkwardness and ostracisation.

These are the various ways in which participants strategically distanced themselves from and/or adapted into the university field in order to more easily navigate the whiteness of the university.

Creating networks of protection and carving out alternative spaces of belonging

Another strategy participants described developing and deploying related to their friendships, social networks and the alternative spaces of belonging they carved out for themselves. In this section, expanding on Bhopal’s notion of “communities of support” (2011, 525), I first discuss the ways in which racially minoritised students, having been positioned as outsiders in the white university, developed “networks of protection” to help navigate a hostile environment. Ayesha explained that,

… when you see a lot of Hijabis or when you see a lot of Black and Brown people hanging out together, you wonder why these lot are, you know … It’s protection! […] It’s like having someone there for us because when we’re in classes, when it’s majority white people […] you’ll be thrown to the wolves. […] And that’s when we tend to stick to our own.

She added to this that walking into a lecture theatre sent her into “instant survival mode” and that she assumed that people with the same lived experience – “Brown or Black [people] or Hijabi[s]” – were her “best bet of being safe”. For Ayesha, the lecture theatre is a hostile space – due to the institutional racism of the university and from interpersonal experiences with racism and Islamophobia in those spaces – and, because of this, she seeks out protection. She points to an inter-ethnic solidarity that comes out of the shared experience of being racially or ethnically minoritised and, for her, that wider group of racially minoritised people – not only those who share her specific identity – are a source of security and a network of protection who make the space safer to be in.

Samantha and Sunny also sought out networks of protection. Samantha said, “I have made a conscious effort to try and organise it that I’m with another Black person, like another friend, so we just don’t feel alone”. Sunny, similarly explained,

… as soon as I made Black friends on the course, we would sit together and, yes, maybe if we were in a lecture and we didn’t maybe agree with some of the things that were said, we’d maybe side-eye each other like ‘Mmm’.

Samantha and Sunny, both Black women, specified that it was with Black people that they felt safe and better equipped to survive white spaces that can otherwise be exclusionary and hostile. The seemingly small act of sharing a “side-eye” with a friend is significant in that it non-verbally signals to them that they are supported and understood. Though for Ayesha, who is Bangladeshi and Muslim, it was with those who shared the experience of being minoritised by whiteness more broadly with whom she found protection, for Samantha and Sunny this strategising was more specific. Sunny and Samantha, attentive to the specificities of anti-Black racism in HE – which can be perpetuated by racially minoritised people too – strategised around this. What these three women share, however, is that they are racially minoritised students responding to and pre-empting the “environmental stressor of racism” (Tatum 2017, 62), and their networks go some way in protecting them from an institutionally racist and hostile environment.

For Ayesha, Sunny and Samantha, networks of protection were based on identity and/or lived experience of minoritisation. For Jane and Harry, their networks were based on racial literacy and a more general understanding of minoritisation (related to gender or class, for instance). Whilst Jane said, “I feel most comfortable when I’m around people who are of ethnic minorities”, she said they didn’t have to share her specific racial identity or heritage they just had to be “aware”. There was a sense of solidarity and shared understanding related to experiences of minoritisation rather than identity per se. She explained,

I feel comfortable also with my friends, they can be white […] But they are at a level where, you know, like if you’re doing a PhD you kind of have to be quite aware of what’s going on.

Though being in academia and having a PhD by no means equates to racial literacy, Jane’s academic friends were more racially literate which created a sense of safety and comfort. Harry also explained that his friends who are “switched on” are the ones with whom he found a safe and comfortable space. He said,

… it’s partly people that are switched on, like my girlfriend's from South London as well […] so she's very switched on, like because she grew up in London she just knows a lot more. […] I guess, in some ways the people I do hang out with at university, even if they're not Black, they do understand that there are issues and they’re even trying to address those issues. And yeah I guess it's not just about race, but also like gender issues, class issues.

Harry’s network was made up of those who “get it” based on other dimensions of identity like geographical location – it can be assumed here that he is considering the multicultural diversity of London – and class as well as racial literacy.

Samantha and Jedi added another form of “networks of protection”. For them, befriending white peers was a protective strategy that allowed them to navigate the university. Samantha was explicit about this strategy and said that,

… as bad as this may sound, it’s actually sort of befriending white people in your tutorials as well, or just befriending other white students so it doesn’t look like it’s an ‘us versus them’ sort of thing.

Samantha’s quote suggest that she wants to protect herself as a Black person – and perhaps, in so doing, Black people more broadly – from potential stereotyping and a perception of self-segregation. This also protects against potential antagonistic interactions in the classroom. Samantha, then, can be said to deploy a two-pronged strategy. First, she had a network with Black friends with whom she felt safe, as discussed above, and second, she sought out networks white peers for further protection.

For Jedi, it was more implicit. He sought out networks that both protected him from being Othered and allowed him to feel included with British Home students. He explained,

I approach them first, that’s how I make friends. Like if I don’t approach them first – like other international students – then they’re more likely to left out [sic] in the class as well.

He took a proactive approach in befriending British Home students to combat the exclusionary whiteness he, and other international students, face at university. In contrast to those participants who seek safety amongst those who share their experience of being minoritised and/or excluded by whiteness, Jedi pursues inclusion, and subsequent protection, within the “dominant” group.

These various strategies of creating networks of protection all demonstrate the “social capital” – capital “accumulated through interactions between individuals and groups” (Bhopal 2011, 521) – that racially minoritised students deploy at university (Yosso 2005, 79). Establishing these networks was empowering in that it enabled students to feel protected whilst moving through the hostile, exclusionary “white, middle-class world of the Academy” (Bhopal 2011, 525).

Related to this strategy of creating networks of protection, though slightly different in terms of the function and outcomes, some of the participants deployed their “resistant capital” – knowledges and skills that challenge inequality – by carving out alternative spaces of belonging in opposition to and in spite of the exclusionary university (Yosso 2005, 80). Rather than being about protection, these spaces were about belonging. Whilst this overlaps significantly with creating networks of protection, carving out spaces of belonging goes beyond navigating the university field, it is a form of resistance against it.

Sunny, Simon, Rose, Kemi, Shireen, Samantha, Ayesha and Ahmed all discussed belonging they carve out for themselves. For example, Rose explained that she carved out belonging with friends who were racially minoritised but who did not necessarily share her specific racial identity. She said,

I feel a real sense of belonging amongst like … The little kind of friendship group that I’ve made […] I feel really kind of at home with them, because we all kind of have similar experiences, we’re all not white.

Whilst the university positions racially minoritised students as “outsiders” or “space invaders”, Rose carved out a space where she could feel “at home”.

Sunny explained that she created belonging with a group of Black friends who “hold their own events” or “find a way to [get] plantain from the next city because our city doesn’t have it”. These quotidian practices amongst friends – like sourcing plantain – empowered Sunny and enabled her to find belonging. Kemi similarly carved out a space with Black friends and claimed belonging in these spaces despite the exclusions of the university. Though she hadn’t anticipated needing to carve out spaces for herself, she said “once I got to university […], I noticed that I fit in more with the Black kids […] with my Black friends I don’t feel out of place […] We kind of made our own space”. Kemi added that she can be “more myself” with her Black friends, explaining,

… it’s just so much easier. Like even things like hair, like wearing a wig or something like that, you know. I mean like that’s like frowned upon amongst your white friends, but […] for your Black friends it’s just normal.

Sharing tacit understandings about hair – which is racially, culturally and politically significant (see Joseph-Salisbury and Connelly 2018, 4) – was important for Kemi as a Black woman. As well as hair, other quotidian practices like laughing and enjoying music together were significant for Kemi. Kemi and Sunny’s Black friendship groups empowered them in that these were spaces in which, unlike in the university more broadly, they could be the “somatic norm” (Puwar 2004b, 52).

Samantha emphasised that she carved out her own spaces of belonging as opposed to seeking out “official” spaces like the African and Caribbean Society (ACS). She said,

… I wouldn’t say that on the uni campus, my sense of belonging is with the ACS. […] I think more of my belonging comes from just like my friendship group at uni and we all come from different degree backgrounds and … But we are all Black. But I think what brings us together … […] we’ve got like the same mind-set, same mentality. Yes, being Black is a contributing factor but I wouldn’t say it’s because we’re all Black … 

Samantha pointed out that, though her belonging came from her Black friendship group, it was their shared understanding and mind-set that affirmed her, rather than race per se – or being the “somatic norm”. Samantha, Sunny and Kemi, all Black women, found that carving out spaces in which they were positioned as “insiders” or the norm – somatically or in terms of mind-set – countered the exclusionary white space of the university. Though these accounts show that racially minoritised students carve out spaces of belonging in varied ways, it is clear that this strategy responds to, and pushes back against, the exclusionary white university that positions them as outsiders and engenders non-belonging.

Speaking back to whiteness and attempting to defy stereotypes

Speaking back to whiteness was another form of “resistant capital” that participants deployed at university in both academic and social settings. In academic settings like the classroom, lecture theatres and in interactions with teaching staff, participants spoke about the ways that they speak back to the whiteness of the curriculum and classroom dynamics in particular. Francis said,

I will usually make a point of not censoring myself, because I realised that there’s a habit among a lot of Black people when they’re in big white spaces to tend to like quiet down and not say certain things [that] make people uncomfortable.

In contrast to the strategy of adapting to the field – a strategy that was deployed to shield from racist exclusions – Francis takes an alternative route. She refuses to be censored or silenced and, in so doing, gains “a form of liberated voice” (Fredericks in Pechenkina and Liu 2018, 4). This is not to say that this is a better strategy than adapting to the field, rather they work in different ways to resist and/or navigate whiteness.

Jedi similarly pushed himself to speak up. He said,

I need to always force myself to speak up […] Because if I don’t say anything, I can be dominated by like other British students who are more talkative. […] My ideas will be dominated and erased. So, I always force myself to speak up, to show my opinions.

Here, Jedi’s account points to the way that normalised whiteness and Western-centrism at university allows British students⁴ to feel at ease speaking and, simultaneously, make racially minoritised students – particularly International students – feel less at ease to speak up. Rather than being passively subjected to this, Jedi resisted this by pushing himself to speak up. Anaya, Simon, Diya, Sathya and Paul all also articulated the ways that they spoke back to whiteness in academic settings. Both Anaya and Simon (in his diary-based interview) talked about challenging their lecturers and teaching staff when they felt there were erasures in their curricula and teaching. Sathya was involved in “decolonising the curriculum” initiatives and saw this as space within which to speak back to whiteness. Paul, who explicitly stated that he did not support calls to “decolonise” and felt that the whiteness of HE was not problematic, expressed the importance of “giving his perspective wherever he can” by “talking about Second and Third World nations”. Though Paul framed this as speaking back to the Western-centrism rather than whiteness per se, it is reasonable to argue that Western-centrism is bound up with whiteness and, thus, Paul can be said to be resisting whiteness.

As well as speaking back to whiteness, some participants “attempted to defy stereotypes”,⁵ or tell counter-stories, as a strategy to resist whiteness and the majoritarian racist narratives that whiteness produces (Solórzano and Yosso 2002, 28–29). Lauren, for example, discussed “changing her lifestyle” in order for white friends and peers to “see that, like, those stereotypes are completely, they’re just stereotypes”. Whilst she was quite vague about what these stereotypes were, she emphasised that she does “a lot of different things […] that statistically BAME girls don’t do”. Lauren described being driven by a desire to “show every white person at uni” that they have “got it all wrong”. Though she caveated this saying “I know you shouldn’t base your life around breaking stereotypes”, she felt “quite strongly” about “breaking stereotypes” as a form of resistance that challenged homogenising stereotypes about racially minoritised people.

Though less explicitly than Lauren, Ciara also attempted to defy stereotypes. Ciara explained “ … just being at university in itself […] getting good grades and coming in with good points in seminars, it kind of just breaks down the stereotypes”. Ciara was aware of the deficit discourse in HE (and education more broadly) that pathologises racially minoritised students and particularly attributes “underachievement, disengagement, and attrition” to Black students (Harper 2009, 708). Demonstrating “double consciousness” and “looking at herself” through the eyes of the white institution (Du Bois 1903), she distanced herself from this and saw her academic achievement, combined with her presence more generally, as resisting the deficit discourse by refuting the assumption of “Black inferiority” and non-belonging in HE. Without diminishing Lauren and Ciara’s sense of agency and attempts to resist here, it is worth raising the individualistic focus of their practices. Lauren positions herself as “different” to other “BAME girls” and Ciara focuses on her individual achievement without problematising the institutional structures that produce racialised “achievement gaps”. In so doing, they may unintentionally “reinforce the prevailing racist imaginary” that they are attempting to distance themselves from (Joseph-Salisbury 2018, 80).

Racial battle fatigue

Though the strategies discussed so far illustrate the “navigational” and “strategic capital” of racially minoritised students, it is important to note that all these forms of strategising place an additional burden on racially minoritised students – burdens that their white peers do not take on – on top of the responsibilities and pressures of student life. Racial Battle Fatigue is illuminating here – or the “response to the distressing mental/emotional conditions that result from facing racism daily” (Smith in Rollock 2021, 212). The concept names “the physiological and psychological strain exacted on” racially minoritised people (Jones 2021, 3) and prompts us to recognise the time and energy racially minoritised people lose “learning how to exist/dance”, or navigating through, racist, white spaces (Andrews 2023, 14). Simran captured this powerfully saying, “navigating whiteness at university, that’s kind of just every day. And it’s tiring, but it’s every day”.

Simran points to the constant need to actively and consciously navigate through the university space and emphasises having to strategise every day is “tiring”. The “constant” burden takes a toll, as Kehinde Andrews puts it, it is “something that we have to just get used to, but there is a cost” (2023, 13–14). Simran further explained that,

… it feels like a full-time job sometimes to be a person of colour […] Why is that not being promoted by them [the university], helped by them? […] Why is it always students who have to set things up?

As Simran highlights here, she, and other racially minoritised students, have to put in “work” just to be at university. Further, she questions universities’ inaction and lack of care in terms of addressing this additional labour racially minoritised students are burdened with. Her question draws attention to the institutional failure to address racial inequalities. This idea of strategising being “work” was referred to by other participants too. Eleni, for example, said “ … there’s part of me that says this isn’t my job, I’m here, just like everyone else, to learn. So I don’t feel like taking that on”. Eleni’s emphasis here on it not being “my” job points to this institutional failure and, recognising the toll that results from taking on this “job”, Eleni wants to spend her time and energy, like her white peers, on learning. Eleni’s quote encourages us to consider that the time and energy racially minoritised students dedicate – whether consciously or otherwise – to strategising could, if the structures of the university were transformed, be “more profitably invested” into their academic experience (Harper 2009, 709).

As well as being able to invest time and energy to academia, if the structures of the university were such that racially minoritised students did not have to spend time strategising, a greater range of areas of study and interest would be opened up. Annie, when discussing how race and gender are at the forefront of her academic and research interests, said, “I’m always talking about race, always talking about gender and I am interested in other things but this feels more urgent to me”. Annie expressed that, because of the racialised and gendered inequalities in the university (and more broadly), she felt that she had to prioritise those issues that felt “more urgent” over other academic interests she might have otherwise liked to explore. It can be said, then, that not only does the racial battle fatigue associated with strategising have a significant impact on racially minoritised students’ time and energy, it can also shape and restrict their academic interests, thus shaping their pathways beyond university too.

Whilst participants did not explicitly use the language of “racial battle fatigue” – only Eleni and Simran referred directly to “work” and the tiring nature of strategising – that does not mean it is something that they are not experiencing too. Many other participants, as demonstrated throughout this paper, put time, energy and effort into developing and deploying various strategies of navigation and resistance. This, whether they explicitly name or recognise it or not, takes a toll and places “strain” on racially minoritised students (Jones 2021, 3).

Though it is important that we acknowledge the “cost” of strategising for racially minoritised students and the failures of the institutions to account for this burden, the experience of “racial battle fatigue” should not diminish the agency and self-empowerment racially minoritised students demonstrate in their strategizing. As Rollock argues “due regard” ought to be paid to the “resilience and determination” of these groups (2021, 215). However, we should not normalise the need to be resilient, it is a direct response to the structural racism and whiteness of HE and it is this that needs to change. Paying due regard to racially minoritised students’ strategies of navigation and resistance is useful because they expose the racism and whiteness underpinning HE and the failure of institutions to transform this.

Before concluding, it is worth noting too that regard ought to be paid to those who do not deploy these strategies. I have not discussed – given that my focus is on those in the academy – the choice not to enter, or withdraw from, the university. The strategies discussed here – those deployed within the university – are not the only, or best, ones. The “rejection of the ivory tower” is itself an important and effective strategy of resistance and self-preservation (Johnson and Joseph-Salisbury 2018, 155).

Conclusion

This paper has explored the numerous and multifaceted ways that racially minoritised students develop and deploy capital to navigate through and resist the institutional racism and whiteness they encounter at university. Through telling their counter-stories, I recognised the value in their lived experience and treated their accounts as legitimate and counter-hegemonic sources of knowledge – a central tenet of CRT (Gillborn 2008, 30–31; Solórzano and Yosso 2002, 26). I drew attention specifically to students’ “strategies of navigation” and “strategies of resistance” and noted that these strategies coexist and are used according to participants’ identities, lived experiences and the specific dynamics of race, racism and whiteness in particular contexts (i.e. strategies used in social contexts are different than strategies deployed in classroom contexts). I have shown that racially minoritised students are not passively subjected to institutional racism and whiteness at university; rather their strategies demonstrate their resilience, determination and agency. Highlighting racially minoritised students’ agency and capital in this way challenges dominant ideology and counters deficit discourses – another core feature of CRT (Yosso 2005, 73). Throughout, however, I have argued that all of their strategies, both resistant and navigational, respond to, and thus expose, the weight of institutional whiteness in HE and the persistent failure of universities to tackle racism. The counter-story presented in this paper ought to disrupt “complacency” when it comes to race in HE (Solórzano and Yosso 2002, 32); universities need to radically transform so that racially minoritised students do not have to strategise in order to survive in these spaces.

Statement of ethics

The research was approved by The University of Manchester’s School of Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee (Ref: 2020-10109-17086).

Acknowledgements

I extend my thanks to Dr Remi Joseph-Salisbury, Dr Lateesha Osbourne and Professor John Solomos for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Economic and Social Research Council.

Notes

1 Habitus refers to our internal systems of dispositions (Bourdieu 1977), our ways of being, moving through and relating to our social world and the spaces we inhabit (O’Neill 2023, 112).

2 A social media platform for connecting South Asian women and sharing experiences.

3 The seminar room, lecture theatre and other teaching spaces.

4 Who he seems to assume are also white students.

5 Rather than “breaking” stereotypes, I call this strategy “attempting to defy” because, whilst students may want to break stereotypes, the questions remains whether this is possible.