Black students' experiences of “acceptable” racism at a UK university

Abstract

Our research, conducted with 30 Black students at a predominantly White institution, used mixed qualitative methods to investigate Black students' sense‐making of experiences that signalled their non‐belonging. All participants experienced both overt and covert racism including the n‐word, racist humour, and negative stereotyping; and this occurred in public and intimate spaces. Our reflexive thematic analysis centred on interactional dynamics that can explain how racism on campus is rendered acceptable; and how and why this is consequential for how Black students can act. We found that White students' practices of “acceptable” racism entailed the denial of responsibility and the privileging of White experiences to deflect responsibility. Importantly, these devices signal that the use of racist discourses does not always arise from unconscious bias or naivety. The perceived power dynamics whereby White students decide who belongs and what is acceptable contributed to Black students' inability to act on their own terms.

Under the Radar: A Survey of Students’ Experiences of Discrimination in the German University Context

“…Considering this, gender-based discrimination and perceived non-German origin appear to be among the most prevalent grounds for discrimination at German universities. This is in line with the international literature that reports considerable levels of discrimination against these characteristics in the US [26,27,61] as well as in the UK [62,63].…”

“That’s just the way it is”: bullying and harassment in STEM academia

“…In contrast, the social identity approach conceptualises these dynamics as an intergroup process-between members of groups who occupy different status positions, not just in terms of formal power structures (place in the organisational hierarchy) but in terms of informal power structures, including alliances within the workplace and wider societal structures (e.g., gender, ethnicity, class; Ramsay et al, 2010). From this perspective, what matters about negative workplace interactions is not just that they make a person feel intimidated and excluded as an individual (Naezer et al, 2019); more crucially, they signal that one is not seen as a member of the ingroup, and sometimes do so in ways that make salient other group memberships that might be important to personal identity (e.g., gender, ethnicity) but that in this context mark one as 'other' or outgroup (Osbourne et al, 2023). Moreover, this group-based approach changes how we understand the phenomenon of peer to peer and subordinate to supervisor bullying (Rospenda et al, 1998); these are no less structured by power (e.g., based on gender or class) than the typical representation of supervisor to subordinate bullying.…”

‘I’m going home to breathe and I’m coming back here to just hold my head above the water’: Black students’ strategies for navigating a predominantly white UK university

“…Rather, they are relational and interactional, and to positively experience one's identity, one needs to be recognised by others and have one's belonging to groups affirmed (Reicher, 2004;Tajfel, 1979). For example, previous research showed that Black students often felt that they were stereotyped by their peers as lacking intelligence (Osbourne et al, 2023), the consequences of which can lead to students limiting their involvement in class discussions (Cornell & Kessi, 2017). However, individuals are not simply passive to such negative experiences, making it important to consider how Black students, both collectively and individually, attempt to navigate interactions where identity denial and misrecognition are expected or anticipated.…”