Reading Rhianna Garrett’s article Racism Shapes Careers (2024) leads me to reflect on my privilege as a white PhD student and associate lecturer at UAL. Early on, the article provides statistics showing just how poor representation of people of colour is in professorships in UK HE institutions (Garrett, 2024, p.1), but describes intersectional identities and how these are effectively erased in the institution. Her research, rooted in Critical Race Theory and intersectionality, considers how racialised PhD students’ experiences in UK academia affects how they plan and imagine their future career pathways.
Whilst reading, I was reminded of a class discussion related to Sara Ahmed’s On Being Included, where she writes about institutions using DEI to present an image of progress while maintaining the same power structures. Garrett’s participants speak of being made hypervisible for their difference while feeling unsupported, even erased. Our class discussed how decolonising the curriculum must be in tandem with the deeper work of changing norms and values.
In my field of sound studies, there has been a shift only in the past ten years or so, towards engaging more critically with race. Jennifer Stoever’s The Sonic Color Line (2016) exposes how white listening habits define who gets heard and how. Dylan Robinson’s Hungry Listening (2020) challenges settler-colonial frameworks in music and academia, asking how we might listen differently. These works have shaped how I teach and think about our subject—which appeared for many decades to be more interested in listening to birdsong than to people in struggle. These authors also challenge me to confront the whiteness of the spaces I help sustain.
Garrett’s participants described academia as a space that demanded assimilation—a place where being racialised, working-class, disabled, or neurodivergent meant not being fully seen or supported. Though I’ve experienced a normal amount of imposer syndrome in returning to academia, I’ve benefited from assumptions of belonging. I haven’t had to doubt whether my presence would be read as ‘qualified’ or ‘professional’. This advantage is uncomfortable to hold, but necessary to name.
I also think about mentorship. Garrett shows how racialised PhDs rely on mentors who understand their experiences—yet these mentors are often undervalued and overworked. How do we avoid placing all the responsibility for change on those already carrying the most weight? What does meaningful solidarity look like from someone like me, who hasn’t had to fight to be included?
I had to put this to the test recently, as a fellow associate lecturer made a public accusation of racism towards the course leadership. She felt she was being particularly silenced on the topic of Palestine solidarity on account of her race. As an employee of UAL I knew that there are processes for such complaints that are intended to impartially investigate in such situations. But having been in grievance procedures myself elsewhere in the past, I know the huge weight of having to gather evidence, only to have it dismissed by a committee that was likely always going to serve its institutional master. I offered solidarity to my colleague in the form of an outreach email, which she responded positively to, though it felt a bit weak on my part.
I don’t have any answers to offer, just questions I keep returning to: What does it really mean to listen? Can inclusion mean more than assimilation? How do we open up space for students and colleagues to be fully present—without carrying the burden of having to fight for institutional change?
Refs:
Ahmed, S. (2012) On being included: Racism and diversity in institutional life. In On being included. Duke University Press.
Garrett, R. (2024) ‘Racism shapes careers: career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education’. Globalisation, Societies and Education, pp.1–15.
Robinson, D. (2020) Hungry listening: Resonant theory for Indigenous sound studies. U of Minnesota Press
Stoever, J. (2016) The sonic color line: Race and the cultural politics of listening (Vol. 17). NYU Press.