The range of resources we are invited to review for this Blog task is striking. We move from analysis of racial bias in primary school assessments, to barriers faced by racialised minority PhD students, to two popular videos discussing EDI learning in businesses and universities, and finally, an extract from a Channel 4 programme on racism among school-age children. What stands out is the dissonance between the nuanced academic work on systemic racism—drawing on frameworks like Critical Race Theory—and the reductive or hostile reactions seen in comment sections. I was left feeling bewildered and, frankly, a bit scared.
In the Channel 4 extract from The School That Tried to End Racism (2020), students take part in the “Privilege Walk”, inspired by Peggy McIntosh’s (1990) work on white privilege. One white student says, ‘it feels quite weird’ being left at the front. He seems uneasy but also reflective, aware of the privilege the exercise reveals. Importantly, he doesn’t respond with defensiveness or take it as a personal attack. Yet the comments below the video erupt with denial and anger—racism is dismissed entirely, and those articulating systemic concerns are vilified. The problem seems to sit within the perception of white privilege as something gained rather than, as one teacher puts it, simply ‘not having to live the consequences of racism’.
The Telegraph video (Orr, 2022), set to a background of quasi-classical piano music, frames racial inequity at Cambridge University solely in terms of individual incidents of racism. The implication is that if there are few formal complaints, there is little racism. This erases the systemic context and ignores the University of Cambridge’s own statistics (Cambridge, 2023), which clearly demonstrate racial disparities.
[Fig 1: University of Cambridge EDI report 2022-2023: P52]
Garrett (2024), drawing on Bhopal and Pitkin (2020), presents clear evidence of the way racialised individuals in higher education experience a ‘triple burden’ shaped by classed, gendered and racialised identities (Bhopal and Pitkin in Garrett 2024: 2). Calls for policies that do not acknowledge colour ignore the way marginalised staff and students are held to extraordinary standards.
This is a slide I shared during a talk I was invited to give at UAL called ‘how to become a reader’.
Fig 2 Macdonald slide ‘how to become a reader’ (2025)
Here, I was referring to the intersectional biases built into the criteria used within academic meritocratic systems of promotion, which work to exclude most people from applying. I used the word ‘chap’ as shorthand for the presumed norm: white, male, middle-class, perhaps sporty. On reflection, I regret not being more explicit—perhaps I should have said “white chap” or “cricket-playing (able-bodied) white chap”. The discomfort in the room was palpable. I had misunderstood the tone of the invitation, but several women of colour emailed afterwards to say thank you for naming the unspoken dynamics.
*The differential at UAL is even higher at nearly 15% according to the 2024 data report.
References
Bradbury, A. (2020). A Critical Race Theory framework for education policy analysis: The case of bilingual learners and assessment policy in England. Race Ethnicity and Education, 23(2), pp.241–260.
Channel 4. (2020). The School That Tried to End Racism. [YouTube] 30 June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I3wJ7pJUjg
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.
Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). (2024). Staff by ethnicity, sex and mode of employment 2022/23. Table 27. Available at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/staff/table-27
McIntosh, P. (1990). White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. Wellesley College Center for Research on Women.
Orr, J. (2022). Revealed: The charity turning UK universities woke. The Telegraph. [YouTube] 5 August. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRM6vOPTjuU
Sadiq, A. (2023). Diversity, Equity & Inclusion: Learning how to get it right. TEDx. [YouTube] 2 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR4wz1b54hw
University of Cambridge. (2023). Equality and Diversity Information Report 2022–2023. Available at: https://www.equality.admin.cam.ac.uk/files/edi_information_report_2022-23.pdf
Hi Anna, like you I was also struck by the variety of sources and also at the responses to them. I think within academic, and espeically on a course like the pg cert where everyone we talk to within the cohort is engaging with the ideas in an academic framework, it can be easy to forget the harsh brutal and angry ways that racism permeates and rears its head in public. This is of course not to say that racism and prejudice do not rear their heads within academia, although it is perhaps less outwardly violent – yet the effects can be the same (leading to exclusion, etc).
Your chap vs nice chap slide is very thought provoking, while also retaining a sardonic tone – while darkly funny I think this is also a good way to bring things up in a room full of people who would get uncomfortable as it’s less direct? I’d be interested to hear more about how that went down, and I wonder what all your white male colleagues were thinking. Hopefully it stuck with them and they were able to recognise their own privalidges.