Skip to main content

Universities as racist structures: What does it mean to research racism?



I have often wondered this in carrying out our ongoing research on racism and its effects on health and wellbeing in global contexts.

Much like a lot of other things, the scholarship on racism within academia is structured within the logics of Whiteness.

On one hand, to research racism, intersectionality, and forms of inequality is a seductive brand positioning. On the other hand, to commit to dismantling racism in the broader society and in the university structures is a threat to the status quo.

The neoliberal university loves the identity games, what with addressing inequality codified into one of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

You will even contribute to your university's rankings and global "coolness quotient" when you publish on racism.

One will even witness many White scholars studying racism, opining on the presence and extent of racism in society.

It is an altogether different story though when you, as an academic of colour, bring home the research, turning the lens on the university structure itself.

The interrogation of university structures and the logics of racism that constitute them is quickly labeled uncivil, unprofessional, harassment, bullying etc.

The structures of Whiteness respond with complaints about your "incivility" "reverse racism" etc. because, wait, you have turned the lens on the racism that inhabits the university as a structure of knowledge production.

Across classrooms, centers, departments, institutions, academics of colour have been targets of racist attacks for speaking out against racism that occupies academe and voicing their pain amidst the structural inequalities codified into universities.

When these attacks take place, more often than  not, the White scholars that make careers out of writing about racism, adjustment, and cross-cultural communication go missing.

They are quick in their distancing from scholars of colour and our sruggles to dismantle racism.

Such extractive relationships that turn painful stories of experiences of racism into publications often thrive on the circulation of the racist ideology. The existence of racism offers a research topic to study, rather than offering an embodied site for solidarity. It is only when racism turns from a research topic into a site for the everyday work of anti-racist practice can we start imagining societies built on equality.

Popular posts from this blog

The whiteness of binaries that erase the Global South: On Communicative Inversions and the invitation to Vijay Prashad in Aotearoa

When I learned through my activist networks that the public intellectual Vijay Prashad was coming to Aotearoa, I was filled with joy. In my early years in the U.S., when learning the basics of the struggle against the fascist forces of Hindutva, I came in conversation with Vijay's work. Two of his critical interventions, the book, The Karma of Brown Folk , and the journal article " The protean forms of Yankee Hindutva " co-authored with Biju Matthew and published in Ethnic and Racial Studies shaped my early activism. These pieces of work are core readings in understanding the workings of Hindutva fascism and how it mobilizes cultural tropes to serve fascist agendas. Much later, I felt overjoyed learning about his West Bengal roots and his actual commitment to the politics of the Left, reflected in the organising of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a political register that shaped much of my earliest lessons around Global South resistance, collectivization, and orga...
Read more

Zionist hate mongering, the race/terror trope, and the Free Speech Union: Part 1

March 15, 2019. It was a day of terror. Unleashed by a white supremacist far-right terrorist. Driven by hate for brown people. Driven by Islamophobic hate. Earlier in the day, I had come across a hate-based hit piece targeting me, alongside other academics, the University of Auckland academic Professor Nicholas Rowe , Professor Richard Jackson at Otago University, Professor Kevin P Clements at Otago University, Dr. Rose Martin from University of Auckland and Dr. Nigel Parsons at Massey University.  Titled, "More extremists in New Zealand Universities," the article threw in the labels "terror sympathisers" and "extremist views." Written by one David Cumin and hosted on the website of the Israel Institute of New Zealand, the article sought to create outrage that academics critical of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid are actually employed by universities in New Zealand. Figure 1: The web post written by David Cumin on the site of Israel Institute ...
Read more

Whiteness, NCA, and Distinguished Scholars

In a post made in response to the changes to how my discipline operates made by the Executive Committee of the largest organization of the discipline, the National Communication Association (NCA), one of the editors of a disciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (RPA), Professor Martin J. Medhurst, a Distinguished Scholar of the discipline, calls out what he sees as the threat of identity (see below for his full piece published in the journal that he has edited for 20+ years, with 2019 SJR score of 0.27). In what he notes is a threat to the "scholarly merit" of the discipline, Professor Medhurst sets up a caricature of what he calls "identity." In his rhetorical construction of the struggles the NCA has faced over the years to find Distinguished Scholars of colour, he shares with us the facts. So let's look at the facts presented by this rhetor. It turns out, as a member of the Distinguished Scholar community of the NCA, Mr. Medhurst has problems wit...
Read more