Fight racism by transforming higher education
HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THE STARK ABSENCE OF BLACK ACADEMICS?
— MUKHERJEE REED
Speaking about her novel Gutter Child, Black Canadian writer Jael Richardson recalls her father’s poverty-stricken hometown. “I started asking questions about what it looks like to grow up in a world that’s designed for your failure,” she says, struck by what she saw.
That is how higher education, as it is currently constructed, feels like to Black students and Black colleagues: a space designed for their failure. There are many reasons for this, as leading Black thinkers tell us.
Let me focus here on one: the problem of deficit thinking.
Deficit thinkers blame the victim for their failures, and ignore structural factors.
Deficit thinking relates to two powerful concepts in higher education: “merit” and “excellence.” Merit is seen as our ability to meet a set of “objective” criteria of “excellence.” If you are “meritorious,” you succeed. If you don’t succeed, there must be a “deficit” in you. You are not meritorious enough. Straightforward? Not quite. How do we explain why specific ethno-racial groups, such as Blacks, cannot gain entry into institutions of higher education? How do you explain the stark absence of Black academics and students in universities?
Thanks to years of activism, we have now learned how systemic racism, and not deficits in particular groups or individuals, causes such absences. Some efforts to address systemic racism are also in place. For example, many top universities don’t use standardized tests for admission anymore, recognizing their inherent racial bias. Holistic recruitment practices are being discussed and implemented. The sciences, medicine, law and many other fields are engaging in much-needed introspection.
But the deficit narrative is still winning. And it takes a huge emotional toll.
Some Black faculty and students say it is getting worse. Following the killing of George Floyd, a drive for Black representation saw talented individuals receive the recognition they were denied for far too long. But their successes are being ascribed to their “advantage” of being Black at a particular political moment. In this framing, if you are Black and you “succeed,” it must be by virtue of your identity. If it wasn’t for your identity, then another person with “more merit” could be in your place.
This does not bode well for the racial reckoning we hoped would follow the killing of Floyd.
This must stop. To transform higher education from a space “designed for failure” into a space for Black flourishing, we need to eradicate deficit thinking like a dreaded disease.
First, we must increase Black representation in higher education at every level in every possible way.
While targeted recruitment of Black talent can continue, our general hiring practices must be overhauled to ensure more just outcomes. Otherwise, we will remain dependent on targeted hiring for increasing representation. This will strengthen the myth that unless we use different standards, Black candidates cannot succeed. Through robust debates about hiring practices, we can shift the focus away from the deficit framing towards the systemic factors that inhibit Black success.
Second, we must centre Black history, Black scholarship and Black creativity in our academic mission. We must collectively understand how much is lost by the exclusion of these histories and knowledges. There is much to learn here from Indigenous educators, whose impact on secondary and post-secondary curriculum is profound.
Third, we must fundamentally rethink what “excellence” means in a world rife with systemic racism. The idea of inclusive excellence, which asserts that inclusion is critical to excellence, is a great starting point. But much work remains: we need to operationalize inclusive excellence further from the perspective of anti-black racism, so as to enable Black flourishing.
Fighting anti-black racism is difficult. But Black scholars and students, activists, artists — and the fights fought everyday by ordinary people — inspire me to participate in that fight, in whatever limited way I can. As Mandela said, there is nothing more powerful than education to assist us in this goal.