Navigating 'race' and challenging racisms in the Academy: the career geographies of a German UK sociologist

ABSTRACT

This article reflects critically on growing societal controversies about the role of racism in Western society and discusses why and how racism and white normativity should be addressed and challenged more prominently in higher education. Reflecting on my own career geography in universities in the UK and Ireland and my positionality as a white German researcher in the UK, I draw on a conceptual frame of Critical Whiteness Studies, historical sociology and racism analysis, postcolonialism and intersectionality to set out the epistemic and ethical gains to be had of a historically grounded intersectional analysis of racism. I show how key discussions and historical insights in the field can help us to more fully grasp and challenge the foundations of racism, and that of racialised inequalities in Western society. I argue that we need to develop a broader understanding of the problematic historical legacy of Western racism and more critical, global perspectives in higher education (and beyond) accounting for and reaching beyond Eurocentric white normative accounts of modern history. A critically informed education is key to achieve this.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education; history of western racism
• white normativity
• intersectional stereotyping
• decolonisation
• anti-racist pedagogy

Introduction

Discourses surrounding ‘race’ and the role of racialised inequalities in Western society of past and present have become increasingly vocal and polarised in recent years. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement’s public challenge of anti-Black racism as a systemic and institutional problem has galvanised anti-racist protests around the globe. Growing activism and demands for change (Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation n.d.) are contrasted by increasing political efforts in the US and the UK government to avoid a broader critical discussion on the role and historical legacy of racism and colonialism in Western society and to restrict teachings on issues of ‘race’ and racism. The overall purpose of this paper is to show how our academic careers might examine meanings of ‘race’ and confront racisms so as to offer critical insights contributing to knowledge production and knowledge politics in HE. As a sociologist in racism analysis, I have been reflecting on my own career geographies, research and teaching on racisms and their legacies in European societies in recent years.

Like many scholars in this field, I have become concerned about recent developments in US knowledge politics and its Conservative government’s push for legal reforms that effectively ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and its critique of systemic structural forms of racism in US society. As part of a backlash to growing anti-racist protests and demands for reform, conservative forces in the US have attacked CRT, with different Republican-led states banning it outright with new legislation from 2021 onwards. New restrictions illustrate these states’ ‘broadened […] legislative efforts to censor what’s taught in the classroom’ and target CRT as a ‘divisive’ concept (Schwartz and Pendharkar 2022; also see Bernstein 2022; Meckler and Natanson 2022; Rashawn and Gibbons 2021).

These US discourses resonate with recent UK parliamentary discussions in the context of Black History Month in October 2020, when K. Badenoch, then Equalities Minister and Conservative MP for Saffron Walden, dismissed Critical Race Theory as a divisive ideology and attacked BLM as a disruptive political movement that the government opposes. She warned schools to not teach CRT as ‘fact […] without offering balanced treatment of opposing views’ as this would be ‘breaking the law’. (The Conservatives n.d.; see also Nelson 2020). Daniel Trilling, journalist and author, raised concerns about this in a recent Guardian Opinion piece asking critically ‘Why is the UK government suddenly targeting “critical race theory”’, a term that had never been addressed in the House before according to official parliamentary records. He dismissed the government’s CRT critique as a problematic attempt to import ‘Trump’s culture war’ and ‘to close down any discussion of structural inequality’ (Trilling 2020).

As a sociologist with an expertise in historical racism analysis, I have been following this current discussion and the polarisation of the debate around ‘race’ and racism with a mixture of interest and concern. Following a PhD in sociology at the University of Hamburg and German monograph on intersections of ‘race’, nation, gender and class in the racist campaign against the ‘Black Shame on the Rhine’ in 1920s Germany (Wigger 2007) and prior research on gypsy stereotyping (Wigger 1996; see also Wigger 2014), I have been researching and lecturing in the sociology of ‘race’ and racism since 2005. My first academic appointment was at University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland, followed by a second one at Loughborough University (LU) in the UK in 2007. Over this time I co-edited a book on Racism and Modernity (Wigger and Ritter 2011), wrote an English version of my monograph (Wigger 2017), continued research on racisms in historical context (Wigger 2009; 2010; Wigger and Hadley 2020), conducted a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust research project on Anti-Muslim racism and ‘intersectional stereotyping’ (Wigger 2019; Wigger, Yendell, and Herbert 2022) and initiated a new international research network on Mixed relationships and racialised boundaries in Europe (1920s–present) with the support of the Independent Social Research Foundation and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.¹ I began to reflect in more depth on my own research and teaching experiences and the wider current global controversies surrounding this field in the context of a Research-informed Teaching Award (RiTA) for my UG third year module ‘Race’ and Racism in Modern Society at LU that I was awarded by my university in September 2022.² Over this period a number of questions were foregrounded which I also use to structure this paper. These include: How can we and why should we examine Western racism and its underlying problem of white normativity more prominently in Academia? What can we learn from previous research in the field about the foundations of racisms, racialised inequalities and politics of exclusion in Western society? And how can we use our knowledge to critique and challenge dominant Western-centric perceptions of history, develop alternative perspectives and argue for a reform and decolonisation of HE?

Methodologically, the article draws on a broad range of secondary sources and some primary report and news article data to explain why, based on the problematic historical Western legacy of racism and white normativity, it is imperative to grasp these issues in HE and wider society, raise critical awareness and challenge racism and other discriminatory practices. The research contributes to the historical sociology of ‘race’ and racism (Quisumbing King and White 2021) and Critical Whiteness Studies and combines a conceptual critical intersectional perspective (Haynes et al. 2020; Hill Collins 2019) with self-reflections based on my experiences as a German sociology lecturer who has been teaching and researching issues of ‘race’ and racism for some 18 years in the UK and the Republic of Ireland.

My discussion of these issues derives from and is closely linked to self-reflections on my own career geography and rich experiences of researching and lecturing and leading EDI work in the field of critical, historically grounded racism analysis at universities in the UK and Ireland between 2005 and 2023. Focusing on the teaching of critical perspectives on ‘race’ and racism as a white woman and German UK academic, the article starts with a conceptual reflection on racism and white dominance in modern Western society. This discussion sets out key insights from Critical Whiteness Studies that can help us engage with our students in the classroom to recognise and challenge the white normative underpinnings of racisms in Western society and develop an anti-racist position. It also explains how a critical intersectional perspective might enable us to examine racism as associated with forms of ‘intersectional stereotyping’; a concept that I have developed elsewhere (Wigger 2019). This is followed by an evaluation of the wider significance of these conceptual discussions on racism for HE and wider society and a brief conclusion.

Teaching critical perspectives on ‘race’ and racism in higher education as a white woman

Having taught the module ‘Race’ and Racism in Modern Society as an optional third-year UG module since joining Loughborough University in 2007, I had the chance to reflect on discussions with UG students, PG students on the core-MA module ‘Politics of Representation’, my dissertation students and associated PhD researchers in the field. My Racism module has attracted a diverse group of students over several years, including many students of ‘colour’ and students from other racialised and minoritised ethnic backgrounds. Students can discuss examples of racism and anti-racism and these discussions play an important role in the student-centred interactive interludes. Students of ‘colour’ have over the years continued to use the module as a learning space to share and reflect on various everyday-life experiences of racism, racist micro-aggressions, racialised stereotyping and discrimination.

Our discussions in class have made the ‘white elephant in the room’ more visible to all. We reflect on issues of racism, colonialism and white domination in the past and present and discuss why typically the majority of students in the classroom have not been taught about or discussed problems associated with European imperialism, colonial racism, the racist concept of white supremacy and its historical legacy in their school education. I have learned a lot in these discussions, and I feel humbled by our students’ engagement, openness, and willingness to address challenging topics and their excellent work over the years. Unlike many of my Black British students, I have never been at the receiving end of racist discrimination. As a white German immigrant, I have been living in Britain and Ireland for over 18 years, have been able to settle in the UK, and to gain permanent residency following Brexit with relative ease. I have been made feel welcome and accepted and was able to develop my academic career here with the support of colleagues and students at universities in the UK, Ireland, and Germany. Michael Kimmel has argued convincingly that ‘Privilege is invisible to those who have it’; reflecting on our own positionality and associated privilege can help us to grasp privilege and challenge it (Kimmel cited in Smith 2016, n.p.).

Recent discussions with students made me think further about possible reasons as to why my ‘Race’ and Racism module (despite being popular with typically between 40 and 80 students) and similar modules on this topic often remain optional ‘add-ons’ at the margins of the sociology curriculum in UK HE and absent from the disciplinary core. The British Sociological Association’s Report on Race and Ethnicity in Sociology has examined how ‘Race and Ethnicity often seems to be taught as an add-on, or specialist module, rather than a fundamentally integrated part of the curriculum’ (2020, 4). John Solomos has highlighted a ‘[…] relative neglect of questions about race and racism in the teaching culture’ and suggests this could be addressed in a wider ‘on-going and unfinished conversation’ within sociology on how we, as a society, can tackle issues of race, ethnicity, and related inequalities (BSA Report Race and Ethnicity in Sociology 2020, 3). The BSA report findings also made me think more about my own positionality and privilege, and on how British academia needs to address the lack of diversity and representation of staff from racialised and minoritised ethnic groups in sociology, other social sciences and beyond.

Towards an anti-racist classroom and knowledge production: some key insights from existing research that can shape anti-racist pedagogies

In my career geography as a University lecturer, I have taken a sociological-historical perspective to examine racisms in their different forms and historical contexts. Students are encouraged to explore racisms in historical context to make sense of contemporary problems of racism.

What is racism and where does it come from?

Racisms in Western societies have developed in different forms and are linked to complex patterns of domination and violence; of inferiorisation, discrimination, oppression, stereotyping and exclusion. Racism is a complex social relation associated with structural and institutional forms of domination and, as Wulf Hund has argued, with different forms of ‘racist discrimination’ and modes of ‘dehumanization’ (Hund 2021). Racism is embedded in the development of Modern Western Society; racist discourses have developed in multiple forms and contexts globally and ‘race’ is intertwined with other markers of difference and social inequality (e.g. gender, nation, class, religion) (Hill Collins 2019).

When attempting to make sense of its multiple forms, and study, for example, racist Antisemitism, Anti-Muslim racism, Anti-Black racism and Anti-Irish racism, it makes sense to take a historically-reflexive perspective and examine racist discourses within their specific historical and social contexts (Back and Solomos 1996; Virdee 2014, 2019). Different forms of racism and racist oppressions predate the social construction of the category ‘race’ in modern society and were historically linked with colonialism and the development of capitalism. Examples of racist discourses have been identified, for example, in ancient Greece and China, medieval Europe, Spain in the early modern period, sixteenth century France, 19th and twentieth century America and early twentieth century Germany (see Hund 2023).

Racist logic labels targeted groups as inferior others. It ascribes a sub-human status to them and associates them with stereotypical negative, allegedly natural inferior cultural qualities and abilities (eg primitivity), attempting to naturalise social inequalities and differences. Racism leads to the ‘social death’ of those targeted by it (Hund 2021, 2023). Early Western theories of race date back to race discourses originating in the early European Enlightenment and created a scientific racism that inferiorised ‘non-white races’ and attributed backward economic development, primitive cultural qualities and a lack of ability to progress to them. These hierarchical and pseudo-scientific theories became increasingly popular throughout the nineteenth century, turned into a ‘world view’, and were mobilised ideologically to justify Western colonial domination and oppression (Smedley 1999).

In our classroom discussions, we use this historical knowledge to critically reflect on the racist and colonial logic of Western perceptions of progress. Students have also used these insights to question current political/governmental attempts to limit or prevent critical discussions on the history of racism and colonialism in mainstream and higher education. As a sociologist and educationalist, I consider attempts to hinder critical reflections on the role of racism in our past problematic and short-sighted, as they ignore the importance of critical historical engagement and understanding for the development of a fair and equitable society today; a society able to reflect and learn from its history and to work collectively on overcoming racialised barriers and intersectional inequalities. N. El-Enany has reminded us of the need to remember Western society’s past, and to confront its history of imperialism and colonial racism. She argued – with reference to Toni Morrison’s critical reflection on violence and slavery in US history and Catherine Hall’s discussion of European colonial history: ‘If a society is to “come to terms with its own raced history”’, painful memories must be ‘re-membered … [or] they will haunt the social imagination and disrupt the present’ (Morrison 1987, quoted in El-Enani 2017, n.p.).

Addressing the ‘white elephant’ in the room

When I started teaching on issues of ‘race’ and racism in 2005, I knew, based on my studies and research in historical sociology, that notions of morality and justice in Western history have a racialised, colour-coded dimension. The ‘color line’ that W.E.B Du Bois conceptualised over 100 years ago continues to shape and divide Western societies, deeply embedded in structural forms of racism and discourses, practices and politics of racist exclusion and violence in our contemporary world. However, critical research in the field of racism analysis that focuses specifically on issues of whiteness has been emerging only in the last decades.

Whiteness has developed into an important and divisive issue in the study of ‘race’ and racism and issues of ‘white supremacy’, ‘white normativity’, ‘white privilege’ and colourism are now examined critically in a growing body of research in the new field of Critical Whiteness Studies associated with Critical Race Studies and discussions linked to Black Feminism and intersectionality.

British Sociological Association President Susan Halford and others have acknowledged white privilege as a problem for the academy as well as the wider society, highlighting both ‘many examples of excellent research, education and organizational practice that challenge race and racism within our discipline’ and the outstanding task ‘to address the structural whiteness of HE institutions and their teaching curricula’ (BSA Report 2020, 2). The Higher Education Institute has similarly pointed towards ‘[t]he white elephant in the room’, sharing ‘ideas of reducing racial inequalities in higher education’ (2019, n.p.).

Reflecting on these new developments in research and my own positionality as a white German UK lecturer and white ally in the development of an anti-racist pedagogy at my university, I have made the social construction of whiteness and white normativity key issues for discussion in my racism module. Reflections on issues of racism and whiteness also form a crucial part of my other teaching, (e.g. on social theory, globalisation, introductory sociology and sociological futures).

Critical Whiteness Studies as a relatively new perspective have enriched analyses of racism – providing us with important challenging insights into the ideologically-laden underpinnings of white normativity in Western society, including its notions of civilisation and progress, and ongoing struggle with different forms of racism. Three key concepts that I found important to discuss with students in this context are whiteness as a Western norm, the Racial Contract and white fragility.

Different contemporary studies have suggested that issues of racism have been enmeshed with racist phantasmagorias of ‘white supremacy’ throughout modern history and that, to challenge racism, we ought to make sense of its constructions of whiteness in Western society. Whiteness is considered a normative category of identity, power, dominance, and social exclusion. Steve Garner, for example, has shown how it acts as a ‘fulcrum of domination’ and often invisible context of categorisation and oppression in Western society (Garner 2007, 175). Wulf D. Hund argued that racism, as a social relation and ‘mode of negative societalisation’, creates societal integration through racist othering and the inferiorisation and dehumanisation of targeted groups. He critically examines (with David Roediger and others) discourses of whiteness in Western society as linked to ‘racist symbolic capital’ (Hund 2010).

Charles W. Mills captures ‘racism’ and ‘global white supremacy’ in his ground-breaking book on The Racial Contract (1997) as the hidden ‘political system’ and ‘power structure’ (3) that has shaped Western society. It selectively benefits ‘white people, Europeans and their descendants’ globally shaping a world ‘in their cultural image’ and prioritising them within an economy of ‘racial exploitation’ and a ‘moral psychology of white privilege’ (Mills 1997, 40).

Mill’s work confronts white racism in the history of Western thought and critically reflects on the reproduction of the Racial Contract in European colonialism, domination, conquest, slavery and the formation of racial states, such as Nazi Germany. His anti-racist strategy challenges anti-black racism and questions white domination and ignorance (Mills 2007). Mills urges us to oppose the Racial Contract’s racialised ‘differential privileging of the whites as a group with respect to the nonwhites as a group’, condemning ‘the exploitation of their bodies, land, and resources, and the denial of equal socioeconomic opportunities to them.’ Mills’ argument that ‘All whites are beneficiaries of the Contract, though some whites are not signatories to it’ shows that tackling racism means acknowledging and challenging white privilege as an underlying structural problem and barrier in Western society (Mills 1997, 11).

Mills’ critique of the Racial Contract features prominently in my work with students. It helps us to understand racialised inequalities as an ongoing societal issue and shows us historically how the ‘color-coded morality’ of Western society that emerged meant that European philosophers’ ideas of natural freedom and equality were often ‘restricted to white men’ (16). Ultimately, Mills and other critical studies on racism draw our attention to the ‘uncomfortable fact […] that we live in a world which has been foundationally shaped for the past five hundred years by the realities of European domination and the gradual consolidation of global white supremacy’ (20). It is also important to remember that this historically specific situation has evolved since the early modern period through European colonialism and thus can and needs to be challenged and changed.

Issues of white dominance have also been highlighted by DiAngelo’s studies on white fragility (DiAngelo 2011), amongst others. She examines how white people in North-America live in a society that reproduces their privilege by shielding and protecting them ‘from race-based stress’ and how ‘[t]his insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort’. This has created an environment in ‘which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves’ and emotions including ‘anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation’ (54) and in which displaying these behaviours then functions ‘to reinstate white racial equilibrium’ and maintain white dominance (54).

Intersectionality of ‘race’ and gender and intersectional stereotyping

When researching racism in my own work, I realised early on that ‘race’ as a social construct of difference and the genesis of racism in Western society cannot be analysed adequately without considering their historical links with other categories of difference, including gender, nation, and class (e.g. Wigger 2007). The critical work of Black intersectional feminist thinkers has enabled us to investigate persistent ‘racialised boundaries’ in the Western world and challenge intersectional inequalities. Black feminist intersectional perspectives have become increasingly influential within racism analysis, and intersectionality has also become a crucial part of EDI discussions in the HE sector. Coined by Kimberley Crenshaw (1989), and developed in the works of different Black scholars, intersectionality focuses on the complex intersecting, that is interlinking of multiple discriminations and oppressions based on categories of ‘race’ and gender (and other markers of difference) in the lives of subjected groups in society, with its main focus upon the lives of Black women.

Intersectionality has developed into a broader ‘Critical Social Theory’ focusing on the interlocking of different forms of oppression and discriminations (Hill Collins 2019). Intersectional research has shown us how ‘race’ and gender are interlinked as socially constructed categories of difference and produce intersecting forms of discrimination. Intersectionality has challenged Western hegemonic knowledge and developed counter-narratives and critical alternative perspectives – resisting and challenging power to dismantle global intersectional oppressions (hooks 1998).

De Groot, Hund and others have demonstrated how racist discourses and racism as an ideology and social relation historically intertwine in complex ways with other discourses and categories of difference. To capture them, we need to look at racism in relation with its intersecting inequalities in the social fabric and genesis of modern society. De Groot (2000) argued that nineteenth century discourses of sexuality and gender difference referred to and contributed to similar discourses on racial and ethnic differences and identities. She examines how perceptions of both: women and people of ‘colour’ as inferior attempted to ideologically justify their oppression and shared similarities in their structure and logic, attributing naturally inferior qualities to both, valuing them in terms of their alleged ‘natural servitude’ and placing them in an oppressive relation of domination and subordination to the white man. Femininity – alleged female inferiority as well as attributed ‘natural inferiority’ linked to racialised groups in a colonial context were seen as essential natural features.

These perceptions were based on earlier Enlightenment discourses on human difference, which produced hierarchical theories of ‘races’ and allegedly natural differences between them, and similar theories about ‘natural’ inequalities of the sexes. De Groot’s work has been very useful in my teaching of critical racism analysis and highlights ambivalences within the European Enlightenment project, which was a process of emancipation, liberation and reason, but at the same time limited, compromised and perverted by white male chauvinist perceptions of women and people of ‘colour’, that socially constructed, inferiorised and excluded them as ‘Others’. De Groot (2000) argues that dominant white European men, constructed categorisations of women and non-Western ‘Others’ to uphold their own power and domination over them, to resist attempts to challenge white male domination (e.g. linked to the Suffragette movement and anti-colonial protests and resistance) and to silence alternative views by claiming that the domination of these groups was protecting their true needs and natural identities (as both groups were depicted as in need of domination by Western men).

As a historical sociologist and racism analysis researcher, I have drawn on intersectionality as a critical conceptual frame when recently forming a new interdisciplinary research network on ‘Mixed-heritage relationships and racialised boundaries in Europe’ with an international diverse team and the support of Loughborough University, the Runnymede Trust, Independent Social Research Foundation and UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.³ I developed the concept of ‘intersectional stereotyping’ – combining an intersectionality perspective with Stuart Hall’s concept of stereotyping and representation and highlighted the benefits of a historical critical intersectional analysis of media representation and stereotyping, using anti-Muslim racism in German mainstream news media as an example (Wigger 2019). In my teaching practice the concepts of intersectionality and intersectional stereotyping resonate well with different students and have been a prominent topic in coursework and our informal module discussions alike.

Intersectional stereotyping works as a conceptual tool to capture and critically reflect on the discursive interlocking of concepts of difference (associated with socially constructed narratives of e.g. ‘race’, sex, gender, religion) in media representations. I developed the concept to make sense of the interlinking of stereotypical categories of difference in the racist depiction of Muslim migrant men in German Media, ‘where depictions of male Muslim migrants are entangled in multiple narratives of difference that intersect and form a toxic racist conglomerate of ascribed “Otherness”’ (Wigger 2019, 249). This ‘intersectional stereotyping combines the racialisation of sexism and sexual violence with a gendered and religiously charged racism, framing Muslim migrant men as sexually deviant and dangerous criminals/harassers and associating this deviance with their religious belonging’ (Wigger 2019, 249). I have shown how intersectional stereotyping derives and differs from intersectionality arguing:

While intersectionality traditionally refers to a membership of multiple socially constructed categories that those concerned often acknowledge, to some extent identify with and adopt as an active political identification, […] intersectional stereotyping refers to a largely false ascription of membership of disrespected negatively labelled categories to those who are (genuinely) members of the (possibly already intersectional) category being stereotyped. (Wigger 2019, 257)

My conceptual perspective on intersectional stereotyping resonates with and differs from a few earlier works, including A.E Doan, and D.P. Haider-Markel’s use of the notion of intersectional stereotyping in their empirical article on Gay and Lesbian Political Candidates perceptions (Doan and Haider-Markel 2010). Their article focuses on situations in which ‘intragroup differences exist within the larger stigmatized group’, to show how stereotypes linked to these intersect, ‘producing a unique stereotype that cannot be understood separately’ (71). Their empirical discussion shows how the ‘intersection of gender and sexual orientation suggests that the perceived bending of gender stereotypes intrinsically shapes and underlies perceptions of gay and lesbian candidates, making it pertinent that intragroup differences be taken into account in studies’ (85/86) and observes ‘different evaluations of political candidates, depending on what aspects of the candidate are being evaluated’.

An earlier work by Ange-Marie Hancock (2004) has addressed different forms of stereotyping/discrimination Black women are subjected without using the notion of intersectional stereotyping. Jessica Denyse Johnson Carew has identified intersections of stereotypes of race and gender in the evaluation of political candidates, based on her survey data, and demonstrated how Black women with ‘different social status levels’ and ‘skin tone’ have been subjected to different degrees to ‘racialized, gendered, and intersectional stereotypes’ (Johnson Carew 2012, v). The notion of intersectional stereotyping thus provides a useful conceptual lens in different sociological research contexts that aim to understand and challenge racism and racist behaviour.

Critical reflections on racism, eurocentrism, intersectionality and White Normativity in education and beyond

In her reflexive critique of ‘Whitening Intersectionality’ and the ‘Evanescence of Race in Intersectionality Scholarship’ (here and in the following Bilge 2014, in Hund and Lentin 2014, 175), Sirma Bilge raised concerns about the current integration of the intersectionality paradigm into the societal and academic mainstream and warned that intersectionality as a ‘Counter-hegemonic knowledge project[]’ is undergoing a problematic ‘hegemonic recuperation’ within a ‘process of academic incorporation and disciplining, which makes it collude with neoliberal knowledge governance and the management of neutralized difference in our post-racial times’. Bilge urges us to defend intersectionality as a critical epistemology with the potential to ‘disrupt Eurocentric knowledge-production politics’ and calls for a decolonial intersectional perspective to counter its current neutralisation in an only allegedly post-racial era marked by structural racism and an expanding ‘racial neoliberalism’.

Bilge’s plea to protect intersectionality from scholarly attempts to depoliticise it, as they would leave intersectionality compromised, highlights the challenges associated with the increasing popularity of the intersectionality paradigm in Western research and policy discussions in the education sector. Intersectionality is a crucial critical counter-hegemonic perspective rooted in and closely linked to Black intersectional feminism and has together with Critical Race and Whiteness Studies generated and inspired a growing body of critical research and historical reflexive knowledge on intersecting inequalities and oppressions in the past and present of Western society, which have only been sketched rudimentary in this article.

While intersectionality as a critical research perspective can be used to challenge intersecting issues of racism and white normativity, sexism, classism and other forms of domination and discrimination within the education sector and beyond, it should not become subjected to a process of ‘Sinnentleerung’ – an extradition of meaning process through being incorporated in corporate ‘diversity management’ strategies. The latter often fall short of: (a) a genuine critical reflection and intervention to dismantle problems of racism, sexism, lack of equity and diverse representation on a systemic, institutional level; and (b) of challenging the Western-centric and white normative legacy of mainstream knowledge discourses.

A recent BBC Broadcast with LaVon Bracy, who was one of the first Black students graduating from Gainesville High School in Florida, US 58 years ago, highlights our moral responsibility as a society to take an actively anti-racist stance, challenge racist discrimination and privilege, and to broaden and deepen critical awareness on the legacy and ongoing issues of racism, racial violence and intersectional discriminations. Bracy still struggles to visit her former school, as a childhood place that ‘brings back too many memories’ – memories of being ‘routinely tormented’ by the white children in her class, only ‘because she was one of the first black students to integrate the school in 1965’ (Bailey and Drenon 2023, n.p.)

LaVon Bracy had for decades been invited as a guest speaker by different schools in the US during February Black History Month, to share her story and battle against white dominance and racial violence in the context of school integration in the US, following upon previous segregation. In 2023, her usually around twelve invitations radically reduced to only two. She commented in disbelief: ‘I never would have thought that 50 years later that we are in this battle we are in today’ (Bailey and Drenon 2023, n.p.) referring to the recently introduced new US legislations in nine US states, led by Florida’s Republican Governor DeSantis. Ray and Gibbons have argued that these legislations, while (with a few exceptions) not referring to the words ‘critical race theory’ directly, would ‘mostly ban the discussion, training, and/or orientation that the U.S. is inherently racist as well as any discussions about conscious and unconscious bias, privilege, discrimination, and oppression’. Importantly, legislation is also ‘to include gender lectures and discussions’ and several ‘additional states’ were in 2021 in the process of planning ‘to introduce similar legislation’ (Rashawn and Gibbons 2021, n.p.).

W.E.B Du Bois identified and challenged racist divisions within US society in his pioneering work over 125 years ago. In an 1897 essay, he uses reflections on his own childhood to capture the experience of Anti-Black racism, racist exclusion and white dominance as a veil and ‘colour line’ dividing Western society. Du Bois (1897) knew how deeply-rooted this division and white racial privilege was in US history and considered racism the overarching problem of the twentieth century:

And yet, being a problem is a strange experience, – peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first burst upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys’ and girls’ heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards – ten cents a package – and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card, – refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the world I longed for, and all its dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head, – some way. (Du Bois 1897, 194)

When I read about the new governmental policies in the US banning critical reflections on racism and its legacy from the classroom and about the recent UK government’s attack on Critical Race Theory, I thought about Du Bois and why his research – and the work of other critical thinkers in this field – matters and should be remembered, considered and discussed in a pluralistic democratic society, rather than be censored, restricted, ignored, or forgotten. We have discussed Du Bois’ groundbreaking and outstanding work with students and colleagues for several years, as it explains, within a critical reflection on US history, what damage racism, racist privilege and white domination can do when left unchallenged on a structural and institutional level in a society. They form a system of discrimination that based on a colour-coded morality humiliates, degrades and oppresses people of ‘colour’, whom, he insisted, the American state was meant to support and protect as citizens. For Du Bois, this societal racist status quo of modern capitalist society had to be challenged to achieve equality and the right to diversity in society – both fundamental to the human condition in Modernity:

The equality in political, industrial and social life which modern men must have in order to live, is not to be confounded with sameness. On the contrary, in our case, it is rather insistence upon the right of diversity; – upon the right of a human being to be a man even if he does not wear the same cut of vest, the same curl of hair or the same color of skin. (Du Bois, cited in Wintz 2015, 110)

Du Bois knew at the turn of the nineteenth century that the ‘colour-line’ and problem of racist oppression were key to an understanding of social inequalities deeply embedded in US society and history. His work was a powerful call to resist, mobilise against and challenge systemic racism radically and build a fairer and more equal society – for the benefit of all. Du Bois was not prepared to accept any pleas for ignorance, silence or complacency: ‘We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white’ (Du Bois [1903] 2007, 42).

Michael Burawoy’s (2021) recent reflexive article on Decolonising Sociology and the work of Du Bois and his call for a recomposition of the sociological canon based on a full consideration of Du Bois’ work highlights the complexity, difficulty and limitations within the current debates surrounding racism, whiteness, its historical legacy and decolonisation in HE. Burawoy acknowledges that Du Bois had been ‘largely ignored by sociology, until the last two decades’ (545) and proposes a re-composed, and extended sociology canon with a ‘global and historical perspective on capitalism’ and understanding of ‘the centrality of race’ in Western history (550). He then dismisses postcolonial thinkers’ calls for a more radical change and diversification of the Western core, expressed in Connell’s call for a ‘Southern Theory’ (551) for example.

Burawoy’s attempt to integrate Du Bois into the theoretical sociological canon made me think further about my own perspective on this disciplinary canon and the meaning of decolonisation in the Academy. Does decolonising academia mean that we ought to adjust, ‘re-vamp’ and extend our existing ‘conventional’ canon of thinking and attempt to integrate those that have been left out, excluded and othered based on the historical white normative legacy of this canon? Or do we need to go beyond this, reflect on the systemic character of the problem of their exclusion further, question its very notion of conventionality, and rethink the canon more radically?

Following discussions with students and colleagues, I think that we need to address that ‘white elephant in the room’ more directly and examine why the Academy has historically neglected and ignored ‘other(ed)’ perspectives, (including Du Bois’ work). Developing an Anti-racist classroom requires us to address the hegemonic white historical legacy of Western Universities and modes of racist exclusion within it that have prevented more diverse bodies of knowledge to be voiced and established. It also means that we have to scrutinise the historical conventions of our own subjects more critically including their relationship with racism (see for Sociology and Racism, Hund and Lentin 2014).

Gurminder Bhambra’s work – as part of a growing body of critique in current sociological and postcolonial debates – reminds us that challenging racism, white dominance, Eurocentrism and their historical legacies remains an urgent task in our global world and particularly in the education sector. In her co-edited book ‘Decolonising the University’ (2018), Bhambra argues that the recent student-initiated international movement for the decolonisation of universities has increased pressures on universities to reflect on their colonial legacies and engage with decolonial work. She shows us how calls ‘to decolonise universities across the global North […] gained particular traction in recent years, from Oxford’s Rhodes Must Fall (RMFO) campaign […] to recent attempts’ including the UK’s National Union of Students (NUS) campaigns ‘Why is My Curriculum White?’ and ‘#LiberateMyDegree’ by addressing ‘Eurocentric domination and lack of diversity' in UK universities’ curricula (Bhambra, Gebrial, and Nişancıoğlu 2018, 1).

Bhambra’s book joins wider international calls within Academia and social activism for fundamental changes in pedagogy, the curriculum, and the wider institution, including Arday's and Mirza's critical ‘Dismantling Race in Higher Education: Racism, Whiteness and Decolonising the Academy’ (2018), and Doharty, Madriaga and Joseph-Salisbury’s (2021) critique of ‘structural and institutional forms of whiteness’ and ‘lousy diversity double-speak’ in the debate (233). The need to recognise and tackle the underlying white normative structures of the Academy as a social institution and university curricula internationally has thus been established and it seems clear that decolonisation is and will be an ongoing and challenging project.⁴

While it could be argued that in many ways, we have moved on from the society W.E.B Du Bois examined and critiqued at the turn of the nineteenth century, racism remains a major global challenge. A historically grounded analysis of and critical reflection on racism in past and present can help us to develop an inclusive, anti-racist position and strategy of decolonisation, that resists and challenges old and new populist agendas and persisting problems associated with racist discrimination, Western colonial legacies, white normativity and intersectional inequalities in our contemporary world. The education sector needs to play a pivotal role in this important and pressing endeavour.

Conclusions

As discussed throughout this article, different forms of racism, white normativity, exclusion, and intersecting inequalities, remain an urgent problem in our contemporary world. The paper has argued with reference to sociological-historical discussions in this field that to make sense of and confront these issues in contemporary society, we must recognise and critically reflect on their ideological foundations and roots in the history of Western society and thought. Du Bois urged us over 100 years ago to take a stance on racial justice, challenge racism and related structural inequalities, oppressions, and exclusions in Western society, considering this a moral responsibility for everyone. Since then, researchers in the social sciences and humanities, social activists and writers have worked intensively on examining and challenging racism in various forms and explored its historical context. ‘Race’ however, remains – as Michael Rustin poignantly reflected – ‘both an empty category and one of the most destructive and powerful forms of social categorization’ (2000, 183). It is up to us to refute it, raise critical awareness and challenge racism and white privilege – in the lecture room and in wider society. Critical Racism Analysis and Critical Whiteness Studies should thus be a part of the core curriculum in higher education to enable more people to grasp, study, and critically reflect on racism and its historical legacy in Western society, challenge it in our contemporary world and develop just, inclusive, and Anti-racist perspectives for the future.

This paper has also suggested that politically motivated calls to ban a discussion about racisms and their historical legacies are ill-advised, and ignore the need for historical critical reflection to address and confront ongoing problems of racist discrimination – that might seem ‘uncomfortable truths’ to some. Global issues of racism, white dominance and intersectional inequalities in Western history and present should be(come) a core issue to be addressed inside the Academy – not least as an integral and important part of a wider meaningful institutional anti-racist equity, diversity and inclusion and decolonisation strategy in HE social sciences and beyond.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all students on our ‘Race’ and Racism in Modern Society module at Loughborough University for their great contributions to the module over the years and students who worked on issues of racism in their UG and MA dissertations and PhD research with me. This article is inspired by our work and ongoing discussions on racism, white normativity, intersectionality and Anti-racism. I would like to thank my colleagues and friends at Loughborough University for their continuous kind support for my research in this field for many years and the university for awarding me the research-informed teaching award for my work on this module in 2022. Moreover, I would like to thank the LU EDI community for driving and encouraging broader discussion of some of the issues raised in this article across our university and their important work on creating critical awareness and more diverse and inclusive communities across and beyond campus. A special thanks goes to Liz Mavroudi, a Geography colleague and dear friend for working closely with me on EDI issues in our School and for supporting my work and research in many ways and to Denise Coles, the whole LU Equity, Diversity and Inclusion team and all members of our EDI community for promoting race equity, anti-racism and decolonisation at LU together. I would like to also thank our School of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Committee for supporting our current Race Equity Charter work and the Independent Social Research Foundation, UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Loughborough University for supporting and funding our new international research network and research programme on ‘Mixed relationships – ‘racialised boundaries’ in Europe (1920s-present). Many thanks to Susan Robertson and Heike Jons for kindly commenting on and helping me to enhance earlier versions of this paper. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends wholeheartedly for embracing, supporting and ‘putting up’ with me and my research ‘through thick and thin’.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 https://www.lboro.ac.uk/schools/social-sciences-humanities/research/dimensions-of-inequality/mixed-relationships/

2 This is an annual award at Loughborough University and my RITA Award is dated 21.09.2022. For further info see https://www.lboro.ac.uk/services/od-hub/topics/research-informed-teaching-awards/

3 This research network has been awarded a small group grant by the Independent Social Research Foundation and a Networking Grant by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council . On our network’s work see: https://www.lboro.ac.uk/schools/social-sciences-humanities/research/dimensions-of-inequality/mixed-relationships/ and https://www.isrf.org/fellows-projects/mixed-relationships-racialised-boundaries-white-normativity/

4 Johnson and Mouthaan have in collaboration with The Runnymede Trust highlighted the importance of raising the critical awareness of lecturers and teachers on racism and decolonisation within the decolonisation process. https://www.runnymedetrust.org/blog/decolonising-the-curriculum-the-importance-of-teacher-training-and-development