“They keep putting me on the race things”
Raceification of Black Brit-ish academics within the EDI industrial complex
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21576254 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Fezile Sibanda (0000-0003-4803-6515, University of Sussex, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Issue | 70 |
| Publication date | 2025-04-30 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Educação Sociedade & Culturas (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0872-7643 • E-ISSN: 2184-8408 |
| Publisher | University of Porto (PUBLISHER • PT) |
| DOI | 10.24840/esc.vi70.1164 |
| OpenAlex | W4409998226 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 21 |
This paper draws on the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) industrial complex, as well as anti-racist and decolonial discourses taking place in Higher Education (HE) in England. It introduces raceification as a process in which Black academics are produced and reproduced as perpetual race experts within HE. This framing occurs through a colonial gaze and hegemonic whiteness, shaping how Black academics and their knowledges are seen. Coloniality in academia is explored through the lived experience of Black Brit-ish academics working in HE in England. Central to this discussion is ‘Brit-ish’ identities, a hyphenated term, reflecting the complex, tenuous belonging of Black people living within the metropole and working in colonial institutions like universities. I drew on an Ubuntu-inspired methodology and used storytelling to document and analyse the experiences of 19 Black Brit-ish academics. Also drawing on my own experiences as a Black (Zimbabwean Brit-ish) academic using an autoethnographic reflective research journal, making me the 20th contributor within the study. The storytelling sessions took place during November 2022 and April 2023 (mainly online) with Black academics located in England as part of doctoral research at the University of Sussex. This paper will illuminate the key findings from the research; raceification as a colonial reproduction and raceification as a duty and burden affecting Black Brit-ish academics working in the liberal colonial university in England
Sociology · Gender Studies · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy
Using Storytelling in Ubuntu-Inspired Research to Explore the Experiences of Black Brit-ish Academics in England
Antiracism
Epistemic Racism/Sexism, Westernized Universities and the Four Genocides/Epistemicides of the Long Sixteenth Century
Decolonising or anti-racism? Exploring the limits of possibility in higher education
Back to Black
A Racism Burnout
Decolonizing the Academy – Between a Rock and a Hard Place
We need a woman, we need a black woman’
Unspoken rules of engagement
Your skin has to be elastic’
Afterword
Occupy the classroom radically
A Pedagogical Response to Decoloniality
Success Against the Odds
Understanding Mental Health
Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy
Being Black in a White World
Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom
Story as Research Methodology
Why don't you get somebody new to do it?' Race and cultural taxation in the academy
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |