Chapter 12 Pedagogies that enable racism

Racism is all forms of discrimination and/or disadvantage accruing from processes of racialisation (SOAS 2018). A survey report in 2016 commissioned by University College Union (UCU 2016 as cited in Bhopal and Pitkin 2018) and more recently by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (2019) found that racism is present in Higher Education (HE) for staff and students. The term racist pedagogy or Western/Eurocentric or ethnic neutral pedagogy is described as a dominating construct or strategy in curriculum design, that results in racialised disadvantages for the Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) populations (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights and Council of Europe 2010, DaCunha & Cidalia 2016, Showunmi et al. 2016, Jivraj 2020). This is structural racism which “is understood as the patterned production of hierarchical entitlements and life-chances between racially-identified groups, based on forms of social control” (SOAS 2018, p.3). The following sections present the diversity of knowledges and action in addressing a racist pedagogy from curriculum, institutional identity, and professionalism.