This book has been a long time coming. If we start the story from my PhD, I have been in the academy for around twelve years. This, I believe, is a sufficient amount of time to deliver a ‘longitudinal’ piece of ethnography that is reflexive and most of all candid and critical. Let me begin with a few disclaimers. This is not a book that has been interfered with, or shaped by, a clinical, soulless, REF criterion. ¹ The ‘originality,’ ‘significance,’ and ‘rigour’ of the text to follow, is not for a small group of white professors—sitting on a research committee—to deliberate or determine. These folks are likely to be ill-equipped to deal with the issues raised by this book, for it requires them to confront their own histories and current practices. In that sense, this piece of research is most definitely not concerned with striving for a ‘high star rating’ that will go onto contribute to detached, neoliberal university league tables.

This book isn’t written by an ‘angry’ woman of colour; it isn’t anti-white, nor is it simply seeking to be ‘reactive’ or ‘polemical.’ As a female academic of colour who is perhaps able to ‘pass’ racial lines more easily than others (superficially, rather than structurally), who isn’t deemed too ‘ethnic,’ and who holds a degree of job stability , I am writing this book because I realize that I am perhaps in a slightly better position to do so than some of my peers. It arises from years of observation, on-going conversations with academic friends from across the globe, and the development of a voice that hopes to be fearless and in keeping with the spirit of the invaluable mentoring I received, and continue to receive, from an academic of colour . The book might be best read as a collectively driven piece of work. It seeks to centre the voices of my respondents and creatively engage with their journeys as well as my own, taking seriously the anger , the tears, the laughter and most of all the strategies adopted to challenge the white academy. It is a book for all those who want to actively, and profoundly think about how we might transform the university both structurally and conceptually. This is not an exhaustive rant, nor a story of victimhood. This is a narrative of survival and resistance in a space that continues to exclude, devalue and dismiss our being.

Racism is the dirty secret hiding behind a string of superficial tag lines that have come to brand universities across the UK. The following myths about the ‘liberal’ university can often be seen touted in marketing brochures, job announcements and website pages promoting the values and responsibilities of the institution:

Beyond these false advertising scams, the real message is clear and simple: Racism in British universities is endemic. This is not ‘hot off the press.’ Academic research has pointed to this fact for well over 20 years. ² Alongside the research, there is also a catalogue of data that explicitly shows the bleak prospects for racially marked academics . To understand the longevity of institutional racism within British universities , one must interrogate its racial history, its white supremacist politics, and its patterns of privilege. Whiteness is a system of violence . The university is structured by whiteness . It follows then, that the university is both a transmitter and a maintainer of violence . By violence I mean that which is both systemic/structural and epistemic/symbolic. As the book exposes throughout, such articulations of violence interplay and intertwine to produce a series of long-term harms that are legitimized by racist power structures. The failure of senior managers to accept or even acknowledge the existence of systematic racism operating in their universities, departments, faculties, and boardrooms is where the heart of the problem lies. Over decades the default option has been to ignore the issue, meaning that structurally nothing significant has changed. Racism isn’t necessarily worse for racially marked academics today; it is as hard now as it was back in the 1950s for racially marked academics to prosper in universities. The climate however has undoubtedly changed creating new pressures and demands making the space more difficult to navigate for those who dare to enter this demanding career.

Informed by a series of in-depth conversations and personal reflections, this book sets out to critically examine the experiences of racism encountered by racially marked academics working within British universities . The text seeks to investigate the various ways in which racism in the academy is performed, maintained and reproduced. Through its rich insights and conceptual enquiry, this book explores both the structural and interpersonal nature of racism enacted in spaces of higher education. It unpacks a range of complex and challenging questions and engages with the way in which racial politics in the university can be seen to intersect with broader issues around gender . The book presents a textured narrative around the key barriers facing racially marked academics , and aims to enhance understandings of institutional racism in British universities . It seeks to develop a series of practical recommendations to encourage and support the participation of racially marked academics in higher education. These issues are of increasing relevance for all those in the sector, particularly in the wake of contemporary global issues such as internationalization, decolonizing the curriculum , and the ‘diversity ’ agenda.

The need for this book is clear. Statistics around Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) ³ representation in universities continue to demonstrate that racially marked academics are marginalized from British universities . Data generated from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) in 2012/2013 revealed that out of 17,880 professors, only 85 were Black, 950 were Asian, 365 were ‘other ’ (including mixed), while the majority 15,200 were White (Bhopal 2015: Runnymede Trust ). In terms of black female professors there are just 17 in the entire British university system (Runnymede Trust: 2015), and in January 2017 the Guardian newspaper reported that for the third year in a row, HESA figures recorded no black academics in the elite staff category of managers, directors and senior officials in 2015/2016 (Adams 2017: Guardian). Alongside the data there is also extensive literature documenting on-going practices of institutional racism in universities, including the gutting of race equality policy, limited access to career advancement , fewer opportunities for promotion , and daily experiences of discrimination (Sian 2017: 1–26). The persistence of racism in British universities shows that at the top very little has been done to encourage progress and racial equality.

Chapter 2 will provide some reflections on method. It will map out the broader conceptual approach, which is informed by critical race theory and black/postcolonial feminism . Such frameworks will enable readers to understand both the lived experiences and the structural dimensions of power operating within British universities . These tools allow for key insights into the ways in which university spaces are structured and patterned by racism . As a female academic of colour , I will also engage with auto-ethnography to allow my own reflections to run throughout the text.

My conversations with racially marked academics unravelled the complex interplay between microaggressions and practices of institutional racism . All of my respondents opened their interviews by detailing a series of incidents related to their day-to-day experiences in their departments as a way to set the scene about the space that they inhabit. Chapter 3 will thus focus on the performance of these everyday exclusionary interactions and examine how they operate to reinforce structures of whiteness in the academy. The chapter will draw upon issues concerning subtle forms of racism —or liberal racism , feelings of isolation , ‘otherness,’ and hyper-visibility and invisibility . In this chapter, the resemblance across the responses will b...