Revisiting the events surrounding the murder of Stephen Lawrence in this unit was a visceral reminder of the racist attitudes that I heard growing up in the south of England in the 1990s.
Describing her insistence on a discourse grounded in intersectionality bell hooks tells us she uses the phrase “White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy” because she “wanted to have some language that would actually remind us continually of the interlocking systems of domination that define our reality” (hooks).
As the Macpherson Public Inquiry demonstrated when it published its findings in 1999 following the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, racism in the UK has been baked into institutions. In that case it was the Metropolitan Police which was found to be institutionally racist.
Perhaps not unrelated to this structural and institutional racism, I learned whilst participating in a mandatory UAL staff Anti-Racism Development training session in 2025, that no senior managers have undertaken this training themselves.
What could this reflect? To whom does the responsibility fall to enact anti-racism at UAL? Does this disconnect between policy and the individual actions of senior managers indicate something about structures which are replicated in other intersecting areas?
In What’s the Use? Sara Ahmed draws attention to public relations statements failing to match institutional behaviours (Ahmed 2019), and in Complaint!, she highlights the importance of holding institutions to account (Ahmed 2021). Ahmed says:
“Exploitation works by making it harder to complain. And you might not complain because you are told, again and again, that you are a stranger, not from here, if you are brown or black you are treated as not from here even if you were born here; that you should be grateful just to be here.” (Ahmed 2020)
In 2020 shortly after the murder of George Floyd by the white policeman Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a wave of awareness around the dramatic under representation thinkers, artists and theorists from the Global Majority in university teaching materials and reading lists came to the attention of colleagues. This was recognised even at an institutional level[1].
This lack of representation is only one of several factors contributing to students from the Global Majority feeling alienated in Higher Education (HE) settings.
Rather than extracting data through online forms, the Decolonizing the Arts Curriculum[2] zines foreground the testimony of students thereby humanising a process of coming to “address disparities in experience and attainment for International students and students of colour” (Decolonising the Arts Curriculum 2025).
The awarding gap metric uses data on race and ethnicity to document that different groups of students are awarded different grades from their studies. It is broadly understood that the disparity evidenced underlines the systemic inequalities that disadvantage black and brown students. Recent Arts SU research[3] suggests a sense of belonging reduces this gap across all groups.
How can we refocus on developing community amongst staff and students? How can community be established within the neoliberal funding model of HE in the UK? Is a balance being struck between understanding student needs by requesting disclosure, and student’s right to opacity[4]? How can we change the parameters to ensure that those historically excluded are able to have a “feel for the game”[5].
References
Ahmed, S. (2021), Complaint. Durham: Duke University Press.
Ahmed, S. (2019), What’s the Use? On the Uses of Use. Durham: Duke University Press.
Ahmed, S. (2020), Use is a Life Question, [website] Available at: https://feministkilljoys.com/2020/08/28/use-is-a-life-question/ (Accessed 12 July 2025)
Banerjee, P. (2024), “Connecting the dots: a systematic review of explanatory factors linking contextual indicators, institutional culture and degree awarding gaps”, Higher Education Evaluation and Development, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 31-52. https://doi.org/10.1108/HEED-07-2023-0020
Decolonising the Arts Curriculum: Perspectives in Higher Education (Accessed 5 July 2025) https://decolonisingtheartscurriculum.myblog.arts.ac.uk
D’Souza, A. (2024), Imperfect Solidarities, Floating Opera Press, Berlin.
Hooks, b. [YouTube],
https://youtu.be/sUpY8PZlgV8?si=oxC85aGZvb_HNQGN (Accessed 5 July 2025)
Hu, M. (2024) International students’ feeling of shame in the higher education: An intersectional analysis of their racialised, gendered and classed experiences in the UK universities. Sociology Study, 14(1), p. 71. https://doi.org/10.17265/2159-5526/2024.01.006
[1] For example, in the UAL Anti-Racism plan, published in 2021.
[2] The first of these zines was co-curated by Rahul Patel, Lucy Panesar, and Hansika Jethnani in 2018.
[3] This research conducted by Arts SU demonstrates a significant improvement in retention and reduction in the awarding gap across demographics when students are actively engaged with Arts SU. Presenting this research at the Education Conference at LCF in June 2025, Yemi Gbajobi concluded by asking how else we (academics) can prioritise “non-academic” factors to support students.
[4] With reference to Edouard Glissant, Aruna D’Souza discusses the “right to opacity” in her 2024 book Imperfect Solidarities. She says “The right to opacity stands in opposition to Western ontology’s demand for transparency–a demand to know the other (whether an individual or a culture, or in fact, however otherness is being conceptualized in the moment).” She warns: “The West’s need to know is never innocent curiosity, and rarely is it a simple desire for entanglement–it almost always takes place within a relationship of domination, and thus whatever knowledge results is essentially derived without real consent.” (pp. 52-53).
[5] In her essay International Students’ Feeling of Shame in the Higher Education (Hu 2024), Hu draws on Bourdieu’s sociological framework which proposes “higher education is conceptualized as a dynamic ‘field of struggles’, wherein students actively participate in competitive endeavours aimed at accumulating various fomrs of capital to enhance their person-value” (Hu, 2024 p. 81). She goes on: “This recognition facilitates the development of a ‘feel for the game’ (Bourdieu, 1990b), wherein individuals not only comprehend the implicit rules and norms of the field but also succeed in positioning themselves as legitimate participants” (pp81-82).
Thank you for such a thoughtful and powerful post. I really appreciated the way you wove together personal reflection, structural critique and theory with such clarity. Revisiting the murder of Stephen Lawrence through this unit brought up a lot for me too – your framing made the weight of that moment, and its ongoing relevance, feel very present. The point about senior UAL managers not participating in anti-racism training is shocking. It speaks to a wider disconnect between institutional values and lived practice.
Your use of Ahmed throughout was really effective – I kept returning to the line about exploitation making it harder to complain. It’s something I’ve felt, even if I haven’t always had the language for it. And your inclusion of Glissant’s “right to opacity” was such an important reminder – inclusion shouldn’t require full visibility or constant explanation.
If you’re interested in reading further, I’d recommend We Want to Do More Than Survive by Bettina Love. It explores what abolitionist education might look like – moving beyond surface reform to address deep structural harms – and it resonates with many of the themes you raised.