RACE [548 words] —

To continue to question art school education and its role in preparing students for industry futures, the link between race and class must also be explored. Rhianna Garrett’s 2024 paper on how racism shapes careers, evidenced how racialised minority PhD students and graduates relate to an academic career trajectory and identity, how they experience white organisational spaces, and how diversity (or lack thereof) affects their career choices and imagined futures.[1] The examples this paper explores correlates closely with the experience of Reni Eddo Lodge who, whilst evidencing racist pay gaps for graduates,[2] writes of experiences of ‘assimilating’ to a lack of diversity. These experiences stress that class is much more than money:[3]

The children of immigrants have quietly assimilated to demands of colour-blindness, doing away with any evidence of our culture and heritage in an effort to fit in. We’ve listened to our socially conservative parents, and educated ourselves up to our eyeballs. We’ve kept our gripes to ourselves, and changed our appearance, names, accents and dress in order to fit the status quo. We have bitten our tongues, exercised safe judgement, and tiptoed around white feelings in an effort not to rock the boat. We’ve been tolerant up to the point of not even mentioning race, lest we’re accused of playing the race card.[4]

It is important to think about how the necessity to ‘fit in’ with white dominance is encouraged in the University classroom and curricula. With Eddo-Lodge’s inclusion of the parental relationship in her above statement, I am reminded of Mike Phillips’ poignant introduction to the programme Black Teachers, an Open Door broadcast, where 7 black teachers (including Phillips) discuss discrimination and the serious lack of diversity and opportunity in the educational system:

Schools are training people for various roles in society […] Look at the lowest income groups, the cleaners, the washers up and so on, and who do you see? Us. […] If you are a black parent, and you’re sitting there thinking that just because you dress up your child neat and tidy when you send him to school in the morning, that he’s going to come out as a civil engineer, or a lawyer, or a doctor, or even as an average, skilled man — think again! The most likely thing is that he’ll turn out not to do better than you, but to do the same, or worse. Because that’s the position that society has marked down for him.[5]

It is heartbreaking that Phillips’ words, spoken in 1973, echo the same sentiments of academics addressing Critical Race Theory[6] today.[7] Within my own teaching practice, I believe this represents an urgent necessity to re-address what success on a degree course might look like. I believe this is essential not only in diversifying references of ‘career success’, building towards addressing Sadiq’s poignant concern: ‘how can I become something I can’t see?’[8] — but perhaps more importantly, in platforming emotional, philosophical success and cultural empowerment, outside of monetary gain. As bell hooks so powerfully concludes:

The notion that problems in all our lives, but most especially the lives of the indigent and the poor, can be solved by money will continue to serve the interests of a predatory ruling class while rendering the rest of us powerless to create meaningful changes in our lives across class.[9]

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[1] Garrett, Rhianna (2024) Racism shapes careers: career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education, Globalisation, Societies and Education, Routledge, DOI: 10.1080/14767724.2024.2307886

[2] “After I graduated, I quickly realised that social mobility was not going to save me. My suspicions were backed up by the statistics. When the Trades Union Congress looked at data from the Office for National Statistics Labour Force Survey, they found that black employees were dealing with a growing pay gap in comparison to their white counterparts, and that this pay gap actually widened with higher qualifications […] university-educated black graduates saw a gap of, on average, 23 percent less pay than their white peers.”

Eddo-Lodge, Reni (2017) Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race, Bloomsbury Publishing, p. 208. Statistic taken from: ‘Black Workers With Degrees Earn a Quarter Less Than White Counterparts, Finds TUC’, tuc.org.uk, 1 February 2016

[3] hooks, bell (2000) Where We Stand: Class Matters, Routledge Books, p.157

[4] Eddo-Lodge, Reni (2017) Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race, Bloomsbury Publishing, p. 208

[5] Phillips, Mike (1973) Black Teachers, Open Door, BBC Broadcasting. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06ctzhf (Accessed 26 July 2024)

[6] Critical Race Theory (CRT) focuses on how racism is embedded within everyday contexts and practices. Gillborn, David (2008) Racism and Education: Coincidence or Conspiracy? Routledge Books

[7] “The spatial context of the institution also further marginalises racialised, working-class students, as institutional environments perpetuate the construction of meritocracy and underachievement, rather than addressing the structural and cultural processes at work excluding them (Scandone 2017)”

Scandone, Berenice (2017) Social Class, Ethnicity and the Process of ‘Fitting In, Higher Education and Social Inequalities: University Admissions, Experiences, and Outcomes, edited by Richard Waller, Nichole Ingram, and Michael Ward, p. 1–21, Routledge Books in Bradbury, Alice (2020) A Critical Race Theory Framework for Education Policy Analysis: The Case of Bilingual Learners and Assessment Policy in England, Race Ethnicity and Education, 23:2, 241-260, DOI: 10.1080/13613324.2019.1599338

[8] Sadiq, Asif (2023) Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Learning how to get it right, TEDx. Youtube, 2 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR4wz1b54hw(Accessed: 26 July 2024)

[9] hooks, bell (2000) Where We Stand: Class Matters, Routledge Books, p.157-158