Box of delight

This blog was kindly contributed by Professor Randall Whittaker, Pro-Vice Chancellor Academic and Leeds Arts University. You can find Randall on Twitter @RandalWhittaker.

On Wednesday 21 April HEPI hosted the third webinar in a series with Advance HE on ‘How do we ensure equality in higher education in a pandemic?’. You can watch the recording here.

Over the years there have been numerous calls for action to abandon the divisive BAME term which have predictably not been heeded. I have previously argued that the homogenous term BAME is not only lazy but also problematic. Who exactly are you referring to when you use it? BAME has no nuance and the way it is being used impacts the lives of people of colour negatively; ‘BAME’ is being use to misrepresent the experience of Black and brown people and to mask inaction.

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report published at the end of March this year, recommends that the term should be disaggregated. Although I support this recommendation it is concerning that in other parts of the report the Commission use disaggregation to explain differential outcomes between Black communities:

“For our society to cohere, to find a successful identity in the 21st Century with a vision to carry us all forward, we need to shake off some of the shibboleths of the past. Otherwise our vision will be unbalanced by a false sense of what Britain has been, by omission of the contributions of far too many of our citizens.” Navasha Wray, Greens of Colour Education Officer, discusses the importance of decolonizing the curriculum and re-examining Britain’s colonial past.

When the statue of slave trader Edward Colston was launched into the Bristol harbour last week, it propelled a discussion of how Britain regards its imperial and colonial past right into the mainstream and out of the corridors of academia.

About time too, say many BAME writers, artists and academics. They have been calling for an overhaul of the way in which the British imperial legacy has been taught and presented in British schools. Britain’s role in promoting slavery and as a colonial power has been glossed over, if not airbrushed out of the history taught in schools. Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests have opened up a welcome space for us all to debate and reconsider the era of colonialism and how we want to address it.