Ethnic minority leaders upholding white supremacy, says professor

Many ethnic minority academics who take on leadership positions in UK universities are “complicit in upholding white supremacy”, a leading professor has claimed.

Writing in Educational Review, Kalwant Bhopal, professor of education and social justice at the University of Birmingham, asserts that many ethnic minority leaders succeed by “performing whiteness” in the way they dress, speak and behave.

By promoting a “token” handful of academics of colour to senior positions, universities are able to present “the illusion that racial injustices were addressed”, and market themselves to students as inclusive organisations, when in reality the racism experienced by most ethnic minority staff continues, she says.

“Those academics of colour who conform to white normative structures and behaviours protect their own individual interests within this process. By performing whiteness in this way, rather than dismantling racist structures, they are complicit in upholding white supremacy – for their own personal gains,” writes Professor Bhopal, a leading authority on race issues in higher education.

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David Mba, one of two black vice-chancellors in UK higher education, said that Professor Bhopal’s analysis “does not ring true” to him and was “divisive”.

The article is based on interviews with 34 academics, including pro vice-chancellors, executive deans and professors.

A British Pakistani interviewee referenced Rishi Sunak, the former prime minister, whom he described as being “a darker shade of white”. “It’s the same in universities, people look at successful academics who are at the most prestigious universities but they are just like their white peers in how they behave and act and that’s the reason they fit in,” he said.

Several interviewees noted that, while it might be expected that ethnic minority leaders would work to help other scholars of colour to progress, often the opposite appeared to be true.

“When you see a non-white person who has a significant role that can change the way things go in academia, they seem to switch sides. So they become even more competitive with other non-white people and don’t want others to succeed like them, they want to be the only ones who occupy those roles,” reported one interviewee.

“If anything the attitude they seem to have is, well it’s not that bad because I have done it and so can you. So you have to be aware that sometimes those academics of colour in top positions have, in some ways, sold out,” said a black British interviewee.

Another black British interviewee said this attitude was “very damaging and places the blame back on us and makes us feel as though we need to work harder”.

Professor Bhopal told Times Higher Education that the ultimate problem was structural, and therefore it was not solely the fault of ethnic minority leaders, but argued that they needed to take some responsibility.

“If you are going to have academics of colour in powerful positions, they have to be critical, and they have to think about their own behaviours in terms of the performativity of whiteness,” she said.

But Professor Mba, vice-chancellor of Birmingham City University, said it was only by taking on senior roles that minority academics were “most likely to implement the changes required to dismantle structures and practices that maintain inequalities”.

“It is problematic and divisive to adhere to a specific notion that minority ethnic senior academic leaders reach leadership positions because they reinforce whiteness. It is disingenuous to all these leaders. We cannot paint all minority ethnic leaders with one brush,” Professor Mba said.

“My own experience of working with other senior academic leaders from minority ethnic groups does not align with the notion that these leaders are complicit in upholding white supremacy or structural and systemic inequalities. Collectively, we actively seek to educate and dismantle systemic and institutional barriers.”

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com