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ECR Forum - Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Working Group

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ECR Forum - Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Working Group

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The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) working group has been set up as a part of ECR Forum at the University of Surrey with the following objectives:

Gather information on the state of ED&I for ECRs at the University level to identify gaps and challenges

Create awareness within the University at different levels (ECR to Higher management) using the information

Propose short-term and long-term solutions to inform University policymakers to create an impact

The group will initially focus on three areas: Athena Swan (gender equality), Race equality and LGBTQ+ equality. The focus will be expanded in future to other important areas including disability, neurodiversity, and mental health. The Working Group meets approximately once every six weeks and is organized by Dr Armin Mustafa & Dr Giovanni Mirouh. Any ECR Rep is welcome to attend, contribute, or suggest agenda items.

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Equality, Diversity and Inclusion working group

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) working group has been set up as a part of ECR forum at the University of Surrey with the following objectives:

The group will initially focus on three areas: Athena Swan (gender equality), Race equality and LGBTQ+ equality. The focus will be expanded in future to other important areas including disability, neurodiversity, and mental health.

The Working Group meets approximately once every six weeks and is organized by Dr Armin Mustafa & Dr Giovanni Mirouh. Any ECR Rep is welcome to attend, contribute, or suggest agenda items.

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Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) working group has been set up as a part of ECR forum at the University of Surrey with the following objectives: The group will initially focus on three areas: Athena Swan (gender equality), Race equality and LGBTQ+ equality.

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'What it means to be Black and British today'

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'What it means to be Black and British today'

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Jeffrey Boakye
Excerpt from Black, Listed (2019)
Jeffrey Boakye is the British author of Hold tight: Black masculinity, Millennials, & the meaning of Grime and Black, Listed. He also writes for the Guardian and teaches English in secondary schools and sixth form colleges. Black, Listed is an exploration of 21st century Black identity, told through a combination of autobiographical musings and pop culture analyses. In this excerpt from Black, Listed we see how meaningful the distinction between “Black and British” and “Black British” can be, and in the interview he discusses grime, politics, and the Windrush scandal.

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Black, Listed by Jeffrey Boakye

It must have been 96 or 97. Possibly as far back as 95? A busy house in Brixton. Picture three overexcited siblings listening to the Saturday morning breakfast show on Choice 96.9FM. It was a weekend ritual. My two older sisters, assorted visiting cousins and I would tune in on the dial and listen out for competitions in the hope of scooping a record or two, maybe tickets to some local event, maybe even a film on VHS cassette. This was back when you would pay up to £17.99 for the privilege of watching a film that would erode in quality over time and ran the risk of being destroyed beyond repair if you felt the need to rewind or fast forward at any point.

I can't remember the prize on offer that one week, but I can definitely remember the competition question: who should play the next James Bond?

At this point I should remind you that Choice FM wasn't just any radio station. It was a black radio station. A source of black music across many genres and, based in Brixton, one of the most famously Afro-Caribbean communities in the UK, an analogue meeting point for south London's black community. All morning we listened to callers dialling in and offering up a selection of very black 007s. Denzel Washington. Blair Underwood. Eddie Murphy. Wesley Snipes. Tyson Beckford. Tupac Shakur. Et cetera. It's worth noting how American these options were, proving how UK blackness at the time was so heavily influenced by Afro-American culture (as is much of this book, but more on that later).

None of them won. Because my big sister Marcia won. She won by suggesting that the next James Bond should be David Jason. Specifically, David Jason in the role of Delboy Trotter, the hapless wheeler-dealer star of that classic British sitcom Only Fools and Horses. What my sister had done that none of the other callers had thought of was remember that Choice FM was British as much as it was black. She offered up a very British James Bond, someone hopeless and un-secret agent like and charmingly misguided and hilariously unsuited to the role. David Jason was the best answer, because, in context, he was the most British answer. Cool Americans didn't stand a chance.

Being Black British is a tangible identity in as far as there are black people who are British. (I'm one of them.) It is equally true to state that there are British people who are black. (I'm one of these too.) This may sound like unnecessary tautology, but it's important to stress that Black British isn't a 50-50 split; it's an ideological knot. Another anecdote might help to explain. November 2016. I'm driving to work on the morning after Skepta's Mercury Award-winning Konnichiwa has been certified Gold. I haven't seen it, but he has been celebrating on social media. For some reason, I'm listening to Radio 1. The DJ is young, caffeinated and vaguely irritating, which is perfect for the breakfast broadcast. He is also white. He is talking about Skepta having posted a video on Instagram in which he is singing along to a song in celebration of his album's Gold-selling success. You won't believe the song he's singing, I'm told. And, with a tone bordering on disbelief, the DJ continues to tell me that Skepta knows all the words. The song in question? Gold by Spandau Ballet.

A few facts. Skepta is black. He's also a very successful grime artist. But he's also a British-born 30-something. Which means that he has spent three decades living and growing in these Great British Isles. Of course he knows all the words to Gold by Spandau Ballet. He's British. He's been subject to the same cultural influences as any other British person who came of age in the 90s, which means he's been hearing traditional British floor-fillers like Gold for as long as he can remember. No doubt he's equally au fait with Come on Eileen, Club Tropicana and Agadoo-doo- doo, push pineapple shake the tree, whether he likes it or not.

For there to be any surprise over Skepta's familiarity with Spandau Ballet is a reminder of the invisible division between 'Black' and 'British' in the 'Black British' persona. This is not to say that Black Britons don't have specifically black experiences. For me, growing up Black and British was like a cultural Where's Wally?, searching for racial representations of myself in a very white (specifically British -- even more specifically, English) landscape. It might be hard to believe that there was a time not that long ago when seeing a black contestant on a TV game show was reason enough to jump on the landline and call as many of your closest friends and family as possible. No word of a lie, a black guy on Blind Date could clog up the house phone for the rest of the evening. Then there are all those very non-British things that Black British people go through, including but not limited to:

Putting hot sauce on things

Being the last person in your friendship circle to have a particular labour saving device in your family home

Having cousins who aren't your cousins

Having aunties who aren't your aunties

Having uncles who aren't your uncles

Church

Turning up two hours late and still being half an hour early

Living with a debilitating fear of dry of skin

Cocoa butter and Vaseline (see above)

Other such stereotypes

Black Britishness is essentially just British Britishness among people of Afro-Caribbean descent, but the black part is too easily assumed to be an overpowering element affecting the whole. What my sister did on that Saturday morning in 1995, 96 or 97 was to prove that blackness and Britishness are not mutually exclusive. She showed me the possibility of embracing Britishness in a black context, something that mainstream radio would struggle to do twenty years later -- not out of malice, but due to the conceptual gap between Black and British as distinct identity markers.
Black, Listed by Jeffrey Boakye is out now, published by Dialogue Books.

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what it means to be black and british today

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Black, Listed by Jeffrey Boakye It must have been 96 or 97. Possibly as far back as 95? A busy house in Brixton. Picture three overexcited siblings listening to the Saturday morning breakfast show on Choice 96.9FM. It was a weekend ritual.

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Tackling Racist Structures in Academia: a workshop series

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Tackling Racist Structures in Academia: a workshop series

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Sapphire Lally
Doctoral College Blog, October 2020

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Being in academia is about more than just research. To position an academic role in society, we have to answer to many responsibilities: reproducibility, open access, research ethics, good teaching practice, peer review. Considering these things is part of the job, but something that often gets left out is anti-racism. And yet, we know academia is built around racist structures. We see the consequences in all sectors: the leaky pipeline within academia, the BAME Covid-19 report, the frequent stories of AI tech that responds differently to white and non-white faces. I think it is vitally important to promote anti-racism as a standard part of academic culture, to challenge the existing biases built into the system.

The workshop series "Tackling Racist Structures in Academia" is intended to do exactly this: promote anti-racism as part and parcel of the academic culture, to encourage researchers across all faculties to engage in discussions about anti-racism, and to face the ways BAME people are disadvantaged both in academia, and by academia - as a result of research that did not fully consider the implications on BAME people.

There will be a workshop each Wednesday afternoon at 2pm for a period of three weeks, starting on October 28th. The full schedule is below:

28th October 2pm: Shabana Kausar
Anti-Racism and Intersectionality
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/tackling-racist-structures-in-academia-workshops-shabana-kausar-tickets-124549215055

This workshop will explore the topic of intersectionality and anti-racism. Through a range of activities, the session will focus on:

What is meant by anti-racism and intersectionality;

What prevents an intersectional approach;

What is the impact of racism and discrimination; and

What does inclusion and social equity look like?

Shabana Kausar is the Strategic Lead for ending Violence against Women and Girls across three London Boroughs. She is passionate about women' s rights, tackling inequality and racism and has worked actively on ending violence and abuse on a national and international level, through training, policy work, and developing best practice. Shabana has worked in this field for 10 years and previously managed a charity called Salaam Shalom, which used media and the arts to address race and faith-based discrimination. She is on the Board of Trustees of ' My Body Back,' which supports sexual violence survivors accessing sexual health services and a Trustee for ' The Sky project,' a forced marriage and so called ' honour' based charity. She is currently undertaking a MA in Human Rights and Social Justice.

4th November 2pm: Maxine Thomas-Asante
My Voice: Power, Privilege, and Progress
Usings my research to amplify voices and make positive change
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/tackling-racist-structures-in-academia-workshops-maxine-thomas-asante-tickets-124549879041

Maxine Thomas-Asante spent two years as co-president for democracy and education at SOAS, negotiating her way from unpaid student volunteering to a full-time paid role. She worked on developing support networks for BAME students: liaising between BAME students and University management, creating mentoring programs, and holding focus groups to identify some causes of the BAME attainment gap. She has an LLB from SOAS and is currently studying for a Masters in International Social and Public Policy at LSE.
11th November 2pm: Professor Peter Hegarty Peter Hegarty is a professor of psychology who recently left the University of Surrey to join the Open University. Much of his research focuses on the psychology of discrimination, and he has published extensively on the construction of social norms and explanations of group differences.
Title TBC
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/tackling-racist-structures-in-academia-workshops-professor-peter-hegarty-tickets-124550336409 Sapphire Lally, PGR Quantum Biology DTC
Peter has spent over 20 years in research and teaching, and has won numerous awards including the British Psychological Society Award for Promoting Equality of Opportunity in Psychology in 2017, and the University of Surrey Prize for Teaching Excellence in 2004. He has contributed to the Psychology's Feminist Voices project, and has been quoted in the media for his research on assumed whiteness.

Why do I want people to attend these workshops? It's important to keep momentum going on anti-racism, and not pay attention only when it's in the headlines. The monthly anti-racism reading group is a good way to keep a consistent dialogue going, but we need to hear directly from experts, as well as just reading texts.

More than anything, I feel strongly that the more we - as young researchers - spend time grappling with anti-racism now, the better place we will be to positively shape the spaces we enter throughout our careers - whether we go on to do research, develop policy, sit on editorial boards, sit on grant award panels, or write journalism - the lens of anti-racism will help us contribute to making the kind of changes we wish had already been made.

Finally, I want people to feel empowered and determined - rather than hopeless - in the face of accepting responsibility for tackling racist structures. Challenging ourselves is a method of positive development - and we should celebrate the freedom and opportunity we have. These workshops are free to all, and whether you sign up to one or to all three, I hope you will take something away.

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Tackling Racist Structures in Academia: a workshop series

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Being in academia is about more than just research. To position an academic role in society, we have to answer to many responsibilities: reproducibility, open access, research ethics, good teaching practice, peer review. Considering these things is part of the job, but something that often gets left out is anti-racism.

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PIER is a group of University of Surrey PhD students sharing, discussing, and acting collectively to identify and address inequality issues. In November 2020 they are organising a series of workshops focusing on different strands of inequality - learn more here.

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The workshop series “Tackling Racist Structures in Academia” was designed promote anti-racism as part and parcel of the academic culture, to encourage researchers across all faculties to engage in discussions about anti-racism, and to face the ways BAME people are disadvantaged both in academia, and by academia. The three workshops were held by experts from different fields, and will covered intersectionality and anti-racism, decolonisation of universities, and psychology of discrimination.

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Launching the Anti-Racism Reading Group 

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Launching the Anti-Racism Reading Group 

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Sapphire Lally
Doctoral College Blog - July 2020

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If you read my recent blog post, you will have heard about the Strike for Black Lives which took place last month. I spent a day - along with some colleagues - reading about racism in science and the academy, followed by a meeting in which we discussed the day-to-day racism experienced by Black scientists, the history of racism in medical trials, the myth of racialised IQ, and the fact that lots of science is enabled by wealth generated by colonialism.

While sobering, the discussion we had felt important. It also felt shocking that we didn't already know many of these things, or didn't actively think about them on a regular basis. That's why I thought we should keep having these discussions, and invite as many people as possible. In the first meeting of the reading club, we'll be discussing an interview with Angela Davis - on her experience being a Black activist, professor of philosophy, and Marxist - an essay about the construction of whiteness as a social category, and some academic articles which analyse the British Empire's collapse in India.

There is much I do not know about the British Empire - which has always felt faintly embarrassing to me, as the mixed-race child of an English woman and a Pakistani man. I couldn't tell you much about the Partition of India, or the circumstances which led up to it. I couldn't tell you much about the British slave trade, or its continued impact on the lives of Black people across the Western world. Actually, I only have a dim knowledge of the world outside Europe and America - which feels inexcusable in the information era.

It's easy to say - well, why does it matter that you don't know about the British Empire? It's all over now. But being a researcher is about looking beneath the surface, finding the nuance and not accepting the first answer. The history of Britain's relationship to the rest of the world directly impacts the people who are alive today. By learning about the history, we can recognise the impact - and start thinking about how we can change things. A reading club is a small action, but education is the enemy of complacence. Maybe some of us will be in positions in the future where we have the potential to make a difference: I want to make sure I have the background to take advantage of that!

This reading club is a space for people to learn, and explore, and broaden their horizons. It's a space for people to recommend texts - that deal with topics they are passionate about, that deal with topics they'd like to learn more about. It's a space for people to turn up knowing little, and leave knowing more. It's a space for people to turn up and teach others, if they want to. Most of all, it's a space for you.

Our first monthly meeting will take place on Friday 24 July at 11am. To register via Eventbrite, click here. Your booking confirmation email will include full details of the texts we will be reading, and a link to the Zoom meeting.
Sapphire Lally

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University of Surrey Researchers Anti-Racism Reading Group

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If you read my recent blog post, you will have heard about the Strike for Black Lives which took place last month.

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'Black British Intellectuals and Education: Multiculturalism’s Hidden History'

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'Black British Intellectuals and Education: Multiculturalism’s Hidden History'

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Paul Warmington, 2014
For our main text this month we will be looking at chapters one and two of Paul Warmington's Black British Intellectuals and Education: Multiculturalism’s Hidden History (2014).

The book provides a critical history of diverse currents in black British intellectual production, from the eighteenth century, through post-war migration and into the ‘post-multicultural’ present, focusing on the sometimes hidden impacts of black thinkers on education and social justice.

The ebook version is available from the University library via this link.

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Sharpening the global focus on ethnicity and race in the time of Covid-19

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Sharpening the global focus on ethnicity and race in the time of Covid-19

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Bhala N, Curry G, Martineau AR, Agyemang C, Bhopal R. The Lancet. 2020 May 30;395(10238):1673-6.
A short article which highlights the unequal effect of the Covid pandemic in the USA and UK on people belonging to South Asian or Black ethnic groups, using it as a springboard to argue for better outcomes for these groups across all healthcare sectors.

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28/10/2020: Shabana Kausar - Anti-Racism and Intersectionality 

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28/10/2020: Shabana Kausar - Anti-Racism and Intersectionality 

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This workshop will explore the topic of intersectionality and anti-racism. Through a range of activities, the session will focus on:

What is meant by anti-racism and intersectionality;

What prevents an intersectional approach;

What is the impact of racism and discrimination; and

What does inclusion and social equity look like?

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04/11/20: Maxine Thomas-Asante - My Voice: Power, Privilege and Progress 

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04/11/20: Maxine Thomas-Asante - My Voice: Power, Privilege and Progress 

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Using my research to amplify voices and make positive change

Maxine Thomas-Asante spent two years as co-president for democracy and education at SOAS, negotiating her way from unpaid student volunteering to a full-time paid role. She worked on developing support networks for BAME students: liaising between BAME students and University management, creating mentoring programs, and holding focus groups to identify some causes of the BAME attainment gap.

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'What Does It Mean for Rhodes to Fall?' 

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'What Does It Mean for Rhodes to Fall?' 

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Dalia Gebrial
(Excerpt from Decolonising the University, ed Gurminder K. Bhambra, Dalia Gebrial, Kerem Nišancloglu, Pluto Press, August 2018.)
The issue of statues of questionable historical figures has been in the spotlight over the last few months, but it is not a new issue - as this essay by the organiser of Rhodes Must Fall Oxford shows. In this essay, Gebrial asks us to consider what statues mean to us - individually and collectively-, how history is constructed, and how we build a national narrative about the British Empire. She finishes by asking how our answers to these questions impact the school curriculum, and - further - what this tells us about the purpose of education.

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Here, 'history' is not the ongoing and deeply contested process of narrative building around the past; a process over which the present has agency, and which is often - in its most mainstream form - shaped in the image of dominant ideological frameworks. Rather, 'history' is fixed, unquestionable and precious because it preserves a particular reading of the past, which reinforces a particular understanding of the present; like the statue, its objectivity rises above the emotional, hand-wringing rabble, who are declared intellectually unfit to participate in the process of its production. What this demonstrates so clearly, is that the construction of a curriculum at any education level is the product of a power struggle; however, it is not perceived as such. Rather, it appears as a 'natural' process, in which disciplinary canons and narrative framings come into being through apolitical, 'rational' means that do not themselves need to be scrutinised; indeed, the very claim to apolitical greatness is itself the defining feature of the canon.

It was this assumption that RMFO threw into question. It asked: what is omitted from curricula in all disciplines, and what does this tell us about the purpose of education as we see it? Any curriculum must, by definition, exclude - the question is what is excluded and why, and whether the purpose of our education system should be to perpetuate existing power structures and norms, or equip students with the critical tools to question them. Furthermore, RMFO made connections between these knowledge gaps, and the structural, material inequalities they engender both within the academy and, most importantly, beyond the academy. As this volume will elaborate, these interrogations are not just relevant in history departments - although their importance comes to light with particular starkness here. The significance of Empire in shaping institutions of knowledge production and disciplinary canons spans the entire academy; every discipline carries with it colonial modalities of thinking that have eluded adequate scrutiny.

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Decolonising the University edited by Gurminder K. Bhambra, Dalia Gebrial and Kerem Nişancıoğlu is available from Pluto Press.

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Dalia Gebrial is a PhD candidate at LSE, University of London, editor at Novara Media and the editor of a special issue of the Historical Materialism journal on identity politics.

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What does it mean for Rhodes to fall? Education and the British Empire

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Here, 'history' is not the ongoing and deeply contested process of narrative building around the past; a process over which the present has agency, and which is often - in its most mainstream form - shaped in the image of dominant ideological frameworks.

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'Ten Simple Rules for Building an Anti-Racist Lab'

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'Ten Simple Rules for Building an Anti-Racist Lab'

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V. B. Chaudhary, A. A. Berhe, PLOS Computational Biology.
Many of us are looking for direct ways to tackle racism, both individually and structurally. However, for those who are new to considering racism and inclusion, there can be a lack of direction which leads to unhelpful or even harmful practices. In this “10 Simple Rules…” paper, part of a PLOS Computational Biology series, Chaudhary and Berhe give a starting ground for those looking to make changes in their own research practices. A particular focus on ensuring safety in field work (following a well-publicised incident involving American bird-watcher Christian Cooper) reminds us that POC scientists exist both inside and outside the lab, and creating inclusive research spaces must not be limited to particular environments.

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Abstract

Demographics of the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) workforce and student body in the U.S. and Europe continue to show severe underrepresentation of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). Among the documented causes of the persistent lack of diversity in STEM include bias, discrimination, and harassment of members of underrepresented minority groups (URMs). These issues persist due to continued marginalization, power imbalances, and lack of adequate policies against misconduct in academic and other scientific institutions. All scientists can play important roles in reversing this trend by shifting the culture of academic workplaces to intentionally implement equitable and inclusive policies, set norms for acceptable workplace conduct, and provide opportunities for mentorship and networking. As scientists are increasingly acknowledging the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in science, there is a need for clear direction on how to take anti-racist action. Here we present 10 rules to help labs develop anti-racists policies and action in an effort to promote racial and ethnic diversity, equity, and inclusion in science.

License

CC-By Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

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Ten simple rules for building an anti-racist lab

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Demographics of the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) workforce and student body in the U.S. and Europe continue to show severe underrepresentation of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). Among the documented causes of the persistent lack of diversity in STEM include bias, discrimination, and harassment of members of underrepresented minority groups (URMs).

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Tony Platt, Social Justice, 2014.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24361660

Angela Davis is an American political activist, author, and abolitionist. She has, throughout her career, been professor of philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles (twice!), professor of ethnic studies at San Francisco State University, and department director of feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She campaigns actively on the topics of race, class, and prison abolition. Tony Platt is another academic who deals primarily with the topic of social justice and the carceral state, and currently an affiliate scholar at the UC Berkeley Law School. This interview was conducted in 2012 as a joint class between San Jose State University and UC Berkeley’s Law School.

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Sapphire Lally
Doctoral College Blog, June 2020

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A quote you have probably heard over the last few months is "In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist. We must be anti-racist." Said by Angela Davis, this message is the kick I needed to stop feeling complacent about being non-racist, and start doing my best to be anti-racist.

Just deciding to be anti-racist doesn't really cut it, though - and it can be hard to know where to start. That's why physicists Brian Nord and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, along with others, set up the website Particles for Justice ( particlesforjustice.org) and organised the Strike for Black Lives on June 10th. This was a single day for all academics to step back and recognise the ways in which racism is manifest in the academy - especially in my own field, physics. I was very enthusiastic to get involved, and together with some people from my research group (the Quantum Biology Doctoral Training Centre), I set up a day of reading and discussion - taking the resources shared by Particles for Justice as a starting point.

We discussed a variety of topics, many of them deeply sobering and eye-opening. One particularly awful topic is the history of racism in medical ethics. In the Tuskegee study, Black men were led to believe they were receiving treatment for syphilis, when in fact the study was to observe the long-term effects of the disease, and they were only given placebos. Henrietta Lacks was a Black woman with cancer whose cells were taken without consent to develop the ubiquitous HeLa cell line - almost every lab in the country has a supply of HeLa cells. The father of modern gynaecology, J. Marion Sims, developed many ground-breaking procedures by experimenting on enslaved women who had not been given anaesthetic. Knowing the history of this subject is sickening but necessary, but the follow-up question has to be: what about the present day? What needs to change? Black men and women are still under-represented in medical trials, Black women commonly report that their medical complaints are not taken seriously, and Black people are dying from coronavirus in the UK at around twice the rate of white people.

I've been asked several times how racism can be present in physics - surely physics is an objective science, and so there is no room for bias - unlike sociology, psychology or biomedical science. Dr Prescod-Weinstein has previously written about "the racialization of epistemology", focusing on the question: who do we consider to be an objective scientist? She argues that while physics itself is independent of human behaviour, the biases of those who practice it are a fundamental and inescapable part of being a physicist. We grant white male physicists an objectivity which we deny to Black people who speak out about racism, or women who speak out about sexism. A Black woman who speaks out about discrimination is therefore considered a less reliable scientist, and so via racial bias we construct a self-supporting system of white male objectivity.

One day of reading is also not enough to become anti-racist. I am right at the beginning of my development as an anti-racism advocate, but already the Doctoral College has expressed interest in supporting long-term action. I'm in the process of setting up an anti-racism reading club, which would open the floor for a discussion session once a month and help foster a culture of anti-racism. The DC is looking at setting up workshops, with speakers ranging from academic experts to community activists. I can't wait to see what ideas others come up with and realise, and I'm going to continue to learn, continue to be challenged, and hopefully take active steps to improve the academy.
Anti-Racism Reading Group
Starting Friday 24th July at 11am on Zoom. Joining information will be circulated nearer the time.

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A quote you have probably heard over the last few months is "In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist. We must be anti-racist." Said by Angela Davis, this message is the kick I needed to stop feeling complacent about being non-racist, and start doing my best to be anti-racist.

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Kimberly Fain
(JSTOR Daily, July 2017)
The Tulsa 1921 “Race Riots” are an important part of Black American history, and they can also offer important context for the unrest that is widespread throughout the US. This article gives an overview of the pre-existing conditions, the hostility between Black and white Americans, and the role the media played in exacerbating violence. While much of the language used has changed, the similarity to today’s protests, and the reaction to them, is striking. The article also explores how racist tensions among poor white communities can be used to entrench existing class hierarchies - again, something that we still see today.

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In 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma's Greenwood District, known as Black Wall Street, was one of the most prosperous African-American communities in the United States. But on May 31 of that year, the Tulsa Tribune reported that a black man, Dick Rowland, attempted to rape a white woman, Sarah Page. Whites in the area refused to wait for the investigative process to play out, sparking two days of unprecedented racial violence. Thirty-five city blocks went up in flames, 300 people died, and 800 were injured. Defense of white female virtue was the expressed motivation for the collective racial violence.

Accounts vary on what happened between Page and Rowland in the elevator of the Drexel Building. Yet as a result of the Tulsa Tribune 's racially inflammatory report, black and white armed mobs arrived at the courthouse. Scuffles broke out, and shots were fired. Since the blacks were outnumbered, they headed back to Greenwood. But the enraged whites were not far behind, looting and burning businesses and homes along the way.

The state of Oklahoma had only two airports, yet six black families owned their own planes.

Nine thousand people became homeless, Josie Pickens writes in Ebony. This "modern, majestic, sophisticated, and unapologetically black" community boasted of "banks, hotels, cafés, clothiers, movie theaters, and contemporary homes." Not to mention luxuries, such as "indoor plumbing and a remarkable school system that superiorly educated black children." Undoubtedly, less fortunate white neighbors resented their upper-class lifestyle. As a result of a jealous desire "to put progressive, high-achieving African-Americans in their place," a wave of domestic white terrorism caused black dispossession.

The creation of the powerful black community known as Black Wall Street was intentional. "In 1906, O.W. Gurley, a wealthy African-American from Arkansas, moved to Tulsa and purchased over 40 acres of land that he made sure was only sold to other African-Americans," writes Christina Montford in the Atlanta Black Star. Gurley provided an opportunity for those migrating "from the harsh oppression of Mississippi." The average income of black families in the area exceeded "what minimum wage is today." As a result of segregation, a "dollar circulated 36 to 100 times" and remained in Greenwood "almost a year before leaving." Even more impressive, at that time, the "state of Oklahoma had only two airports," yet "six black families owned their own planes."

These African-Americans' economic status could not save them from the racial hostility of their day. Greenwood survivors recount disturbing details about what really happened that night. Eyewitnesses claim "the area was bombed with kerosene and/or nitroglycerin," causing the inferno to rage more aggressively. Official accounts state that private planes "were on reconnaissance missions, they were surveying the area to see what happened."

Despite all of the economic damage, Hannibal Johnson, author of Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa's Historic Greenwood District, explains that neither the survivors nor their families ever received the reparations suggested by the Tulsa Race Riot Commission. The commission recommended reparations for "people who lost property" and proposed "the establishment of a scholarship fund-that did happen, for a limited time." The commission also proposed initiatives for the economic revitalization of the Greenwood community. Despite the tragic events, these grand ideas never manifested into a tangible reality.

Underlying Causes of the Massacre

In "The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921: Toward an Integrative Theory of Collective Violence," the sociologist Chris M. Messer explores the underlying causes of the massacre. As a result of mass migrations to the area, driven in part by increased job opportunities, Tulsa became the city with the most African-Americans in the state. With a boom in the black population and their demands for equality, "perceptions of discrimination and shared experience among African-Americans...allowed for little time for adaptation among whites." Tulsa's rapid change in racial demographics made the city ripe for a riot motivated by white animosity against black economic progress. Whites of the era equated improvements in "wages and working conditions" as communistic threats. In essence, whites were resentful that blacks no longer passively accepted second-class citizenship in their own homeland.

Another structural factor that played a vital role in the Tulsa race riot was segregation. Ironically, black businesses benefited from self-sufficiency, which held both benefits and drawbacks for entrepreneurship. "Through maintenance of the legal separation of race in sociality, business, education, and residential areas, the structure of segregation encouraged initiative, but also placed parameters by restricting African-American opportunities," Messer writes. In other words, since it was against the law for blacks to shop at white-owned stores, black businesses flourished. However, even though black businesses profited from how segregation reduced competition for black patrons, segregation also limited blacks' mobility and opportunities to achieve outside their community.

The police disregarded due process, arresting blacks and interning them in detention camps; meanwhile, no whites were arrested.

According to Messer, the police force also contributed to the riot. Due to their ineffective leadership, they allowed mobs to gather at the courthouse for hours before seeking additional assistance. Furthermore, they actively participated in the riot by deputizing whites without discretion, arming them with guns to multiply the police force overnight. The police disregarded due process, arresting blacks and interning them in detention camps; meanwhile, no whites were arrested during the riot.

Both politicians and the media falsely framed the Tulsa riot as an uprising started by lawless blacks. Tulsa newspapers regularly referred to the Greenwood district as "Little Africa" and "n--town." African-Americans in the district were labeled "bad n--s" who drank booze, took dope, and ran around with guns. Perhaps as a result of government officials' stereotyping rhetoric and the media's biased reporting, whites and blacks interpreted the racial violence differently. Generally, white politicians and residents perceived the black community "as predisposed to crime and in need of social control," Messer explains. In other words, due to assumptions of black criminality, whites justified deadly violence on Black Wall Street, because blacks needed to be subjugated.

The Tulsa World newspaper inflamed the tensions between blacks and whites by suggesting that the Ku Klux Klan could "restore order in the community." Since the KKK asserted white superiority with terroristic acts, such as lynchings, the mere suggestion from a mainstream newspaper that the KKK should intervene demonstrates how white supremacy was not only legitimized but also promoted with legal impunity. In the early 1900s, there was a rise in Black Nationalist organizations that refused to cower in the face of KKK violence or submit to societal subordination.

Whites responded to black pride and demands for equality with "social control, including segregation, lynchings, and pogroms," Messer writes. In "Mass Media and Governmental Framing of Riots: The Case of Tulsa, 1921," Messer and his colleague Patricia A. Bell offer further detail about how the media framed the riot, igniting tensions. In essence, blacks' desire for socioeconomic progress and assertion of their rights was seen as a grave threat to white hegemony. Portraying all blacks as criminals served the black inferiority narrative, maintained Jim Crow segregation, and promoted the violent enforcement of racist ideology.

For instance, the racial framing of blacks as criminals legitimized whites' congregation "at the courthouse and the subsequent destruction of the Greenwood area." Consequently, it's no surprise that blacks perceived the riot started by whites "as a massacre of their community." The massacre of Black Wall Street primarily occurred due to whites "generalized perception that African-Americans were 'out of line'" and needed to be put "back in their place."

The Greenwood district offered proof that black entrepreneurs were capable of creating vast wealth.

Despite racial discrimination and Jim Crow segregation, the Greenwood district offered proof that black entrepreneurs were capable of creating vast wealth. Based on critical analysis of the events, Messer asserts "there is evidence that whites perceived African-Americans as an economic threat to the city." For those who supported black subjugation, witnessing blacks thrive and defy the stereotypes of black inferiority was too much.

Soon after the riot, Walter F. White of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) visited Tulsa. According to him, black economic prosperity contributed to the destruction of the Greenwood District. White reported in The Nation how the city prospered under the oil boom. He stated that the town had grown from a population of 18,182 in 1910 to somewhere "between 90,000 to 100,000" residents by 1920. White claimed that the sudden wealth of the townspeople rivaled the "forty-niners" in California. However, when blacks experienced wealth, lower-class whites resented their success.

Many whites believed they were "members of a divinely ordered superior race." Despite their inflated perceptions of themselves, there were three blacks in Oklahoma "worth a million dollars each." A man named J.W. Thompson was worth $500,000. There were "a number of men and women worth $100,000; and many whose possessions" were "valued at $25,000 and $50,000 each. This was particularly true of Tulsa, where there were two colored men worth $150,000 each; two worth $100,000; three $50,000; and four who were assessed at $25,000."

White concluded that many of the white pioneers in Oklahoma were former residents of "Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, [and] Texas." Unfortunately, they failed to leave their "anti-Negro prejudices" behind in the Deep South. White had no positive words for Oklahoman whites. He considered them "[l]ethargic and unprogressive by nature, it sorely irks them to see Negroes making greater progress than they themselves are achieving." In one instance, a white worker burned and demolished his black boss's "printing plant with $25,000 worth of printing machinery in it." In the process of leading the destructive mob, this disgruntled white employee was killed at the site.

The government and private industry worked in concert to bring down land prices and maintain white dominance in the Tulsa area.

The destruction of this successful African-American community was no accident. Messer asserts that "[t]he destruction of the community was rationalized as a necessary and natural response to put them back in their place." Evidently, private industry and the state stood to benefit economically from the destruction. Two days after the riot, the mayor wasted no time in establishing the Reconstruction Committee to redesign the Greenwood District for industrial purposes. Blacks were offered below market value for their property. White men who offered "almost any price for their property" perceived survivors as desperate and destitute.

In essence, African-Americans posed a "geographical problem because their community was situated in an ideal location for business expansion." The government and private industry worked in concert to bring down land prices and maintain white dominance in the Tulsa area. Poor whites' resentment of successful, landowning blacks allowed elite whites to use them as pawns to obtain more land, wealth, and prosperity. Judging by the legal impunity granted to whites by law enforcement, the state endorsed and, in fact, supported the Tulsa riot for self-serving, capitalistic gains.

Historically, American capitalism has thrived with an elite few maintaining power and wealth. When blacks gain a strong foothold in a community or industry, they have the power to effect meaningful change. Thus, the socioeconomic progress of African-Americans on Black Wall Street threatened the power structure of white-dominated American capitalism. When white people destroyed black business establishments and homes, the façade of white superiority was maintained.

By the 1940s, the Greenwood District was rebuilt, but due to integration during the Civil Rights era, never regained as much prominence. The fate of Black Wall Street illustrates that as long as power remains in the hands of elite, mainly white families, America's socioeconomic system can be marshalled to support and advance the tenets of white supremacy. Regardless of the progress made by prominent African-Americans, American capitalism is structured to keep a white segment of society ahead of the remaining marginalized many.
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The Devastation of Black Wall Street - JSTOR Daily

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In 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma's Greenwood District, known as Black Wall Street, was one of the most prosperous African-American communities in the United States. But on May 31 of that year, the Tulsa Tribune reported that a black man, Dick Rowland, attempted to rape a white woman, Sarah Page.

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'The Lost Connection Between the Filipino People and Our Past - the Effects of Colonialism in this Generation'  

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'The Lost Connection Between the Filipino People and Our Past - the Effects of Colonialism in this Generation'  

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Isaiah Ting & Hazel Ting
(The Stag, July 2020)
This article by Surrey postgraduate researcher Isaiah Ting and his sister, law student Hazel, explores the turbulent relationship many Filipino people have with their identity. Laying out the colonial history of the country, they describe the systematic destruction of pre-colonial religion, language, and culture. Although the Philippines are now independent, there are lasting effects from the centuries of colonisation, and many Filipino people today struggle to define their national identity. This article looks at the history of the Philippines, as well as collecting interviews with Filipino people (both those who live in the Philippines and those who live elsewhere), to show that we really cannot leave the effects of colonialism in the past.

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The Lost Connection Between the Filipino People and our Past - the Effects of Colonialism in this Generation - The Stag Surrey

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Isaiah Ting and Hazel Ting research into the effects of colonialism in Filipino culture today.

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'White Privilege: The Myth of a Post-Racial Society'

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'White Privilege: The Myth of a Post-Racial Society'

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Khalwant Bhopal, Policy Press (2018)
This book aims to challenge the idea that racism is “over” by highlighting some of the many ways it manifests in the UK - from the narrow construction of acceptable whiteness, to the unfair punishments given to BAME children in schools. It also focusses on the ways neoliberalism, a political ideology prominent amongst UK MPs which promotes free-market capitalism and socially liberal policies, furthers racial inequality. The first of the two selected chapters give an introduction to the ways in which non-whiteness positions people as outsiders, and the second focusses on this effect within higher education institutions.

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Stonewall 50: Whose Movement is it Anyway? 

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Stonewall 50: Whose Movement is it Anyway? 

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Intersectionality Matters! Podcast, hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw, episode 5.
Intersectionality is a term referring to the combinations of positionality, such as race and sexuality, that form unique forms of either discrimination or privilege. The term was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, who hosts this podcast, initially to explore the discrimination experiences by black women. In this episode of the podcast, Crenshaw discusses the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality with Barbara Smith, creator of a Black feminist lesbian collective, and Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, director of UK Black Pride.

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Kim Crenshaw:
June 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, widely regarded as the convulsive beginning of the gay rights movement. Now the celebration of this historic event will bring to a head divergent and sometimes controversial questions, questions about how, when and where the movement grapples with its own intersectional history and how it deals with current intersectional politics. Some of the issues this year will range from whether leading figures of the movement's origin such as Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera will be lifted up to whether the current celebration of same-sex marriage reflects an agenda that has been authorized by the many or by the few.

We were fortunate enough to sit down with Lady Sill just as she was transitioning to her new job as the executive director of Kaleidoscope Trust. We were in London a few weeks ago. We look forward to highlighting her work in the future and on hearing about how her hangout with Billy Porter and the cast of Pose as co grand marshals of Wold Pride work, Lady Sill. And just as we were finishing up our last podcast on apologies, the New York City Police Department issued one for their actions that led to the Stonewall Uprising 50 years ago.

Two weeks ago, Commissioner James O'Neil issued a short, maybe not so sweet statement calling the actions of the police discriminatory and oppressive. He made assurances that something like this would never happen in 2019. Now this comes after decades of the NYPD resisting demands for an apology. In fact, just two years ago, O'Neil himself declined apologizing for the raid, saying that, well, the past was the past. Now some see this as a step in the right direction, and I have to acknowledge that, unlike some of the bystander apologies discussed In the last episode, Joe Biden's non-apology, for example, this one at least acknowledged past wrongdoing on the part of the police. But critics of the apology aren't so impressed. They say it says nothing about harm being done today, right now against LBTQ-plus people by the NYPD. The Reclaim Pride Coalition, for example, stated, "The NYPD's vice squad is still in business, busting sex workers and others while its own members run their own brothels." They pointed out that the NYPD arrested a trans woman in the Bronx and held her in custody, in handcuffs for 24 hours. Her crime, walking to work while trans.

Now apologies aren't nothing, but they aren't quite the it's-all-good-now blanket for contemporary harassment. I'll say that again. Apologies aren't nothing, but they aren't an it's-all-good blanket disclaimer for contemporary harassment. Some see the apology as a further softening of the violent history between the police and queer people. Now for some, this is a welcome rapprochement, while for others it's just another step in the de-politicizing and corporatizing of the movement. The incorporation of uniformed officers in ... The incorporation of uniformed officers in the parade has been a particular point of contention. It leads some critics like Reclaim Pride to organize the Queer Liberation March.

Now that's an alternative march to retain more of the radical elements of Pride, especially its resistance to unjust domination. We'll hear a little bit more from them in a minute. Now that's something that Barbara Smith knows all about. On June 19th she penned an op-ed entitled "Why I Left the Mainstream Queer Rights Movement." In her iconic and no-nonsense way, she explains why she, one of the key figures in the history of queer freedom, has become isolated from the current gay rights movement.

Now to any reader of black feminism, lesbian writing or intellectual history of intersectionality ideas, Barbara Smith needs no introduction. But to the newbies, I'm going to tell you just a little bit about Barbara Smith, lesbian, feminist author, activist, independent scholar and co-founder of the Combahee River Collective. Barbara Smith has been in the driver's seat of the literary and political vehicles carrying black feminism into the public square for a half century. The titles she has edited and the projects she's co-founded tell it all. All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave, Black Women's Studies, Home Girls, A Black Feminist Anthology, This Bridge Called My Back, I am Your Sister, Black Women Organizing Across Sexuality, Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press, The Combahee River Collective, Conditioned Spies, The Black Women's Issue.

Now these were like stops on the underground railroad for us black feminists who were all coming of age in the late '70s and the early '80s. Let me tell you, by the time I was in grad school in the mid '80s, Conditioned Spies, now that was like Prince's The Black Album. You'd heard about it. You wanted to get it, but it virtually sold out almost immediately when it was published. So my little study group at the University of Wisconsin had one copy of it. And this is a shout out to you, Judy and Ryan, we'd steal it from each other every chance we'd get. We were so thirsty for the work that would amplify what we were seeing, what we were experiencing and what we were trying to think and write about. And Barbara Smith led the way in quenching that thirst nurturing an entire generation of black feminists.

That's why, in addition to the Stonewall Award for Service to the Lesbian and Gay Community in 1994 and her nomination to the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, the African American Policy Forum awarded Barbara the Harriette Tubman Lifetime Achievement Award. We call her the OG of black feminism. Barbara, welcome to the podcast.

Barbara Smith:
Thank you so much, Kim. I'm so happy to be with you.
So this year is a big anniversary for queer rights, he movement, and it looks like all stops are being pulled out, so here in New York, the NYPD, as I mentioned, has apologized. The New York Times has published a series reflecting life after Stonewall. And your contribution to that theory, "Why I Left the Mainstream Queer Rights Movement" pulled no punches about some of the continuing problems of the movement. And for that, it's so much of the piece that you wrote and then of course the piece that you wrote in 1993 in The Nation, "Where's the Revolution?" Actually gives a trajectory that in many ways informs some part of even the contemporary critique of the movement. Walk us back to that trajectory- what do you remember about the first March?

Barbara Smith:
Well it was exhilarating. Everything in those days was exhilarating, because we were making it up from scratch. We were making it up as we were going along. One of the members of the Combahee River Collective, Demita Frazier said something I've never forgotten and have quoted many, many times. She said, "This is not a mixed cake. We are making this from scratch." And what she was talking about was building Black feminism and the feminism of women of color and a space for out, queer people of color to be. There were no givens. So as I said, it was exhilarating during those years. It was certainly exhilarating to go the national march, and I may get the exact title incorrect, but the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979, because there had never been anything like that before.

One of the things about that period is that there was not the incredible divide or the incredible chasm between establishment gay rights and liberation movements plural. There was not that level of chasm, because we were absolutely stigmatized and that included white, gay men, if you see what I'm saying. I don't mean that we all had the same politics or that we, as women of color, were universally respected and seen as equals in the movement. We were not. But at a time when we were absolutely anathema and viewed as anathema to not even polite society, but just society. But as I said, at a time when we were so ostracized, so marginalized, so scapegoated, there was not, as I said, that chasm. There was this feeling of we're all in this together. This was pre the AIDS epidemic, '79. So the difference between the '79 march and the '87 march were worlds apart.

Kim Crenshaw:
Now as you pointed out, when '87 march came around, you were one of the speakers. So the group was now not 100,000, it was like a million-plus people. You were one of eight speakers. Do you remember what your message was at that march?

Barbara Smith:
I think, I haven't looked at that speech for quite some time. I actually had to shorten my speech, because there were more than eight speakers. We were considered the eight major speakers that were given somewhat more time. But because of how things had unfolded, like at most events like that, by the time it got to me, I was in the very difficult position of having to cut my speech on the biggest stage I've ever been on. That was my biggest audience to date, and I'm up there trying to cut my speech as it happened.

But the full speech was published in Gay Community News, which was Boston's fabulous newspaper for our community. And so the complete speech is there, and so I will go home and read that after the fact. And if I'm wrong about what I talked about, I will let you know. But I suspect that I focused a lot on issues of racism and probably also economic oppression, probably also talked about some of the international issues that were happening at the time. I'm just kind of supposing, because there was a lot going on in Central and Latin America at that time with the US government doing its usual kinds of negative interventions. So who knows? I'll let you know if I talked about fashion trends. I'll get back to you on that.

Kim Crenshaw:
That would be shocking. Well it's so interesting that you mentioned that they listed in the 1993 march a quote from your earlier speech, because the 1993 march seemed to in some ways be a turning point, or at least the recognition that things on the ground had shifted, because that one was much more about the military. It seemed to be at some distance from where the earlier two marches had come. At some point then as we moved to 1999, you said you got to the last straw.

Barbara Smith:
Right, indeed.

Kim Crenshaw:
Do you recall some of the moments when you decided, okay, you know what? I'm done with this.

Barbara Smith: Yes At a certain point I said, "No, this is not for me. I need to put my energy elsewhere." And that's really because of the kind of politics and theoretical understanding that you have brought to the world around intersectionality, that I've always done work that would be defined as intersectional. And at a certain point it was very clear that that's not what the flourishing and growing LGBTQIA movement was about.

We had not just been involved in one vector of addressing and challenging oppression. We had been in the movement to end the war in Vietnam. We had been involved in Black liberation. We were involved in solidarity with Cuba, all kinds of things that really affected and influenced how did we understand freedom, how did we understand organizing, what did we think was liberation. There was a split between people who wanted that multi-issued intersectional understanding of what gay liberation looked like and people who only wanted to focus on so-called gay issues. And this was organizational. There was a gay liberation front that started right out of Stonewall, and then there was a gay activist alliance which decided that it only wished to focus on gay issues and not on carnage in Vietnam. So those splits have always existed.

Kim Crenshaw:
And so that's when you were done. You didn't go to the 1999 march.

Barbara Smith:
No, I did not. I haven't been to one since 1993.

Kim Crenshaw:
So '93 was it as far as the mainstream movement. So this gives us a sort of historical trajectory of, as you pointed out, there were always these tensions. But at some point the side that says, "We're only going to focus on gay issues," actually is on the ascendancy and then becomes the center of the mainstream movement. And it's important for us to think about this, as this is the celebration of Stonewall, so Stonewall is a multiracial, gender-diverse insurgency. That's what's being celebrated, against the police. Now we're in a moment where the broader set of issues that might have been seeded by that movement have more or less been marginalized. The police are actually being brought in as partners in ways that were probably unimaginable 50 years ago.

Barbara Smith:
Yes.

Kim Crenshaw:
And people like you don't even go anymore. So what is it that allowed this ascendancy to happen? What is it that allows this exclusivity, or dare I say elitism to continue to now be at the center of setting the agenda?

Barbara Smith:
I think the answers are complex. However, one of the hallmarks of homophobia and transphobia and of LGBTQIA oppression is a lack of acceptance. I think because of this push for acceptance, I'm thinking about it in comparison to what Black people were fighting for during the civil rights era. We weren't necessarily fighting for acceptance. We were fighting for rights, basic rights, the right to go to schools, signally the right to vote, the right to employment. It's kind of like I don't care if you like us or not. I don't care if you like me or not. I don't like you, so we're even on that. But I would like to be able to, for example, get a mortgage.

Kim Crenshaw:
Feed my kids.

Barbara Smith:
Yes. And the thing is that it's not that there was none of that or none of those impulses and none of those goals within the LGBTQIA movement. There definitely were. But that thing of acceptance I think was a stronger kind of motivator than it was with Black people, because we had no expectations around ever being accepted or acceptable, at least those of us who were functioning in a reality-based way. And I hope that no one who's listening things that what I'm saying is that it's not possible for people of color, including people who are Black, of African heritage and people who are of European heritage to have genuine and sincere relationships. That's not what I'm saying at all. That's absolutely possible, history bears it out. I'm not talking about that whatsoever. I'm talking about what was the trajectory of the political movement as far as its goals were concerned.

So as I said, this push for acceptance quickly and easily turned into a push for assimilation. We're just like you. We have 2.5 children, a picket fence, and we do whatever people do on weekends. We have a lawnmower, and you know. You know what I'm saying? It's just like, but the thing is, see, that had validity, because they painted people who were queer as being somehow from some other species or just ... We were vilified. And then there's also the fact that if you only have one thing that is a problem for you in a society where everything else is a privilege and a plus, then that's really all you need or want. With white, cisgendered males who demographically have the possibility of having more class privilege, and they already have white skin privilege, if the only thing that's messing up their world is the fact that they are ostracized and discriminated against because they're gay, then there's only one thing that needs to be fixed. And of course for us as women of color, that's never been the case, so there are a lot of reasons.

Kim Crenshaw:
Absolutely, and when I thought about this in the context of anti-discrimination law, I thought about it in terms of like a pyramid. And if you have only one thing to complain about or one thing that pushes you sort of down in the basement, then all you really want is a little escape hatch, right? So that you can crawl through the basement to get to the upper floor, and for the most part, anti-discrimination law is sort of about that. It's like if but for your sexuality, you'd be heterosexual, then we'll acknowledge that. You get one pass or one way to climb up. But you can't fit all this stuff together, right? You just got to be one thing or another, and it seems as though some, in a number of ways, that logic took precedence over the formation and the ideology that you identified as one of the other possibilities that had been opened up by Stonewall.

And just to encourage readers to read your New York Times op-ed, you point out that a quarter of the LGBTQIA community experience food insecurity. 24% of lesbians and bisexual women live in poverty. Black men who have sex with men, among the highest rates of HIV. And transgender women, of color in particular, experience, as you say, appalling levels of violence.

Now here's something I hear, and I wonder whether you hear it as well. It feels like a contradiction. So what typically gets said, and you've written about this, is, well, those aren't our issues. Those aren't gay issues, even those these are people who are claim to be part of the queer community, the issues that they face aren't their issues. So that gets said, but then here's the other thing that's really interesting. I've been in conversations lately where the argument has been made that, because marriage equality was successful, all of the other movements can learn something from it. So racial justice advocates, advocates for women, the idea is that now we can be tutored by the leaders of the marriage quality movement because they did it and it was successful, so we can learn a lesson from them.

And I always thought that was interesting, because within that movement itself, they're not really that capable of incorporating issues of race and in some of the other movements that are currently in need of rebooting. So within this space, these populations aren't well served. But outside the space, we're supposed to think that there is, I guess, knowledge that can be shaped around the experience around marriage equality. What should we make of that? Is this parallelism the lesson that we can learn from, or should we be concerned about the fact that the mainstream gay rights movement hasn't figured out how to do race and class and other issues very well?

Barbara Smith:
Well we should definitely be concerned. Any movement that doesn't do those things well and doesn't have that kind of inclusive perspective is not genuinely a movement for profound change. I am frankly shaking my head about this concept of other movements should look at the marriage equality successes as a model. A model for what? I mean, I believe that people of all sexual orientations and gender identities should have the right to marry, I think that it is a basic human right. This idea, though, that we should model other kinds of liberation struggles, how would you, what would you learn from the fight for marriage equality if you're involved in the fight for 15, for a $15 minimum wage? I can't. What would you get from the successful fight for marriage equality around the ongoing egregious exploitation of women and violence against women? What would you get from that? Because that point that I was making, I can always argue with myself, the point I was making about how maybe people could deal with the concept of marriage, because they had kids and relatives and cousins and whomever who were gay, and they were all right with them, and they wanted them to have nice lives too. But women are embedded in all of these networks and families, and yet violence against women crosses every single class and race identity. So how would we use the successful fight for marriage equality to eradicate violence against women? I'm waiting. What's the answer. To that. Maybe you know, Kim.

Kim Crenshaw:
We can't let you go without talking about Combahee. But before we talk about the differences in the trajectory, the vision that's reflected in Combahee and the neoliberalization of some mainstream dynamics, like in the parade, the corporate sponsorship, and as we've been talking about, there's the police presence. I read somewhere that after one city had disinvited the police, the New York Pride invited the police. We want you here.

Barbara Smith:
And what does that tell you about the people who are making the decisions?

Kim Crenshaw:
Exactly, exactly.

Barbara Smith:
Have they ever heard of Eric Garner? Good grief.

Kim Crenshaw:
This is the question. This is the question. So again, one could say on the other side, well, you're naïve to think that a movement can exist without resources. A celebration of this magnitude can't actually happen without having to incorporate sort of a corporate space to it. What should we think about that, like we need the money in order to make something like Pride happen year after year?

Barbara Smith:
I don't know if you hear me sucking my teeth, because I am. Reclaim Pride is having a queer liberation march on next Sunday, June the 30th in New York City. And I'm delighted that this is the case. They're trying to get back to our roots, and I think it will be a really dynamic march. They're not trying to entertain people. It's not going to be the biggest party, extravaganza that anyone has ever seen. It's going to be about issues. It's going to be about community. It's going to be about solidarity, and that's what's happening. And I would suggest that people find out about Reclaim Pride, easy enough to do on Facebook, Twitter, online, and find out about an alternative. They have a wonderful statement about how they're ... a statement of principles about why they decided to do this. And they grappled with Heritage of Pride to try to get them to be more open to a different perspective about this celebration and what this commemoration should look like. They were not successful, so they created their own, and I think that's terrific.

About the money, that you have to have a certain level of money in order to be effective, one of the questions that people have asked me throughout the years about Combahee is, "Where did you get your funding from?" And I just start laughing hysterically. It's like, really, are you kidding? We had no funding, but of course it was the '70s and going into the early 1980s. But this idea that you cannot be politically effective unless you have lots and lots of bank, lots and lots of money, I don't think it's true. I think we live in an age of celebrity. We live in an age of glamor. It's a different kind of world, but is that liberation? I don't really think that that's liberation. But if what you think is important is how you look and how you look on a lavish level, not on a level of being presentable, if your whole thing is, I want to have the most expensive outfit, I have to drive this kind of car. I have to eat in this kind of a restaurant and live in this kind of a place. Then your priorities get shaped by that. And if what you're concerned about is I just want to be able to be safe and pay my bills and to make sure that the children at the border who don't have changes of clothes, who don't have soap, who don't have toothbrushes, that's more important to me than whether I have the last word in consumer objects.

Kim Crenshaw:
Well on the note that you mention about Reclaim Pride, how they tried to negotiate and tried to broaden and refocus. And when they weren't able to, they created their own space. That seems to be, I think, a powerful modality of articulating what the dominant frame does not allow you to. And in some ways that's exactly what seems to have happened in your decision collectively to create Combahee. So first of all, tell us. I think a lot of people don't know where the name came from.

Barbara Smith:
Well the Combahee River, which I have recently discovered is actually pronounced "Cumbee" not three syllables but only two. I say, "We pronounce it as Northeastern Black women of the 1970s would pronounce it." And we were wrong, we were completely wrong. Be that as it may, the Combahee or "Cumbee" River is a river, an existing river in South Carolina, where Harriet Tubman, who was a scout for the Union Army, organized a military action that freed over 750 enslaved Africans. So that's where the name of the Combahee River Collective comes from, from that militant action.

Kim Crenshaw:
And why did you all call it that?

Barbara Smith:
Well because it was an intervention for freeing Black people. It exemplified courage, a Black woman's courage toward freedom, and that's what we were trying to build. We did Black feminist organizing in Boston from the mid 70s until around 1980, 1981. And we're most known for having written the Combahee River Collective Statement, which people are still dealing with and using to this day.

Kim Crenshaw:
To this day.

Kim Crenshaw:
When people read it, and I reread it every so often. Not that often, but when I have had the opportunity to reread it in recent days, it's not old. It is not old.

Kim Crenshaw:
At all. It's enduring.

Barbara Smith:
It could have been written last week. And the reason it's not old is because we had this analysis that was applicable to realities of oppression at the time, but also going forward.I always say that the reason that Combahee was as meaningful as it was is because we were part of the left. We identified as socialists, and we actually understood that freedom under capitalism was not really feasible. So we were democratic socialists, of course, but we had an understanding, a material condition. It was not just about identity. Some people, we use the term identity politics in the statement, so we might be the people at fault for everything that's been laid at the feet of identity politics as being so wrong and so negative. But when we said identity politics, what we meant is that we are allowed, as Black women, it is legitimate for us to create our own political agendas and to follow them, to implement those political agendas. That's what we meant. We didn't mean that we hated other people who didn't have the same identities. It didn't mean that we were dismissing other people's realities. It did not mean that we though that just being a certain thing was enough. It was about practice, or praxis. It was about getting the work done.

Kim Crenshaw:
And one of the things in rereading the statement, and I agree, it could've been written this morning, that people who engage this critique of identity politics seem to miss is that the statement is thoroughly about structures, of disempowerment, structures of subordination and how those structures shape the lives of people who are caught within them. So no one who reads the statement can come away with an idea of identity politics just being about, hey, recognize my identity, and it's all good. I also think there's an intentional misreading of the statement, an intentional misreading of Black feminism and everything that's come out of Black feminism, including intersectionality. There's sort of this ... We know what they're about, and we can completely dismiss and disregard them without actually having to engage in the thinking and the politicizing what Black women have actually produced.

Barbara Smith:
Well I think that people are alarmed when the subject people, that is people who are subjugated and who are considered to be inferior, they get very alarmed when we rise up and speak up. They don't like that. That has been my experience, that that makes them very nervous, when we act as if we're just as empowered as they to determine the conditions of our lives. They don't like that, because that makes them think, maybe I'm going to lose something. Or maybe I'm not a part of the master race, or whatever their thinking is. That alarms them, so there's a significant segment of white people in the United States at this time who think that white people are undergoing and are being subjected to discrimination and oppression. Where did they get that idea from?

Kim Crenshaw:
My colleague and co-founder of AAPF Luke Harris talks about that the diminished overrepresentation of basically white men everywhere is the crisis of the moment, diminishment of their over representation. You started Kitchen Table Press as a way of diminishing the overrepresentation of voices that get published. What did you hope to achieve when you resolved to create Kitchen Table Press?

Barbara Smith:
We co-founded Kitchen Table Women of Color Press, we started the discussions in 1980. It was really a conversation with Audre Lorde and I that the seed was planted. And this was at a time when women of color ... You know how people, comedians say, "I couldn't get arrested in New York. I couldn't get any kind of attention at all." Well we can get arrested all the time, so that's not exactly the right metaphor. But this was at a time that nobody was interested at all in literary work, political analysis, you name it, poetry, fiction, nonfiction. They weren't interested in anything by or about women of color. And so we realized that we needed to do that ourselves.

Some of the white women's presses at the time were indeed making efforts to be sincerely inclusive, but we just knew, as Virginia Woolf had said, we needed to have a press of our own. She talked about a room of our own. We knew we needed to have a press of our own. But in stark kind of political science terms, the Kitchen Table Women of Color Press was our propaganda arm. We created a mechanism for producing our own propaganda, although nothing that we ever published was propagandistic, because we were very unique. We were both a literary press and a political press, high literary standards and very, very hard-hitting political writing. So that's what we did, and it still has impact I believe, even though it's not active. Even though it's not active as a press and hasn't been for many years, that model I think inspires people to this day.

Kim Crenshaw:
So as someone who's been in the struggle for a long time, what advice do you give to younger queer activists, younger Black feminists, younger radicals?

Barbara Smith:
I don't know how this is going to sound, but I think it's so important that younger generations who don't necessarily find their information through reading and reading articles and books, my major suggestion is that we bring back the study group, and that we read work together and discuss it. And as I said, that can be articles and that can be books. But there is a real kind of disconnect with the historical roots of what it even means to be political. People think that being political means that you tell someone very effectively to get lost on Twitter. That's not political work, I mean not per se. They may be completely wrong. I mean, I'm not saying that they don't need to be made aware, but that's not political work. Political work is day after day, so strategic, so thoughtful. And we need to know, all of us need to know, how did people before us get it done? How were people doing it previously? How did these things evolve? What was the civil rights movement like before the Montgomery Bus Boycott? What were people, Black people and other people doing towards Black freedom before those iconic years of the mid 20th century, all those stories that we think we know?

And then I think also to really understand that we have to treat each other how we would wish to be treated in all contexts, that this is, the motivation, the bottom line of it should be our love for ourselves, for each other and for humanity. And we have to function in that way. It's not about being the most important person in the room. It's not about being able to dictate to others what they're supposed to do or how they're supposed to think. It's about being able to meet people where they are, particularly those who are most affected by oppression, and try to figure out solutions to that.

Kim Crenshaw:
And there we have it, from the OG of Black feminism, Ms. Barbara Smith. Thank you so much for spending so much time with us. As always, I walk away re-energized, renewed and with a reading list. Thank you so much.

Barbara Smith:
Thank you so much, Kim, such a pleasure.

Kim Crenshaw:
Intersectionality reveals that movements are defined as much by their fault lines as their in-group ties. Corporate floats and police presence don't jibe with everybody's sense of what a pride march should look like. Joining the ranks of longstanding community-held marches like the NYC Dyke March and the Trans Day of Empowerment March, Reclaim Pride aims to repoliticize the movement starting with the march. Here from the Reclaim Pride Coalition are Colin Ashley, Robert Baez and Francesca Barjon talking about what it means for them to reclaim pride and recenter intersectional, multi-issue organizing in the fight for liberation. The Reclaim Pride Coalition is a coalition of LGBT groups and individuals committed to restoring the Queer Liberation Movement to its radical, anti-oppressive roots.

Colin Ashley:
Reclaiming pride is about the radical legacy of the Stonewall uprising. It's about remembering that that legacy began in a tradition of anti-state violence, specifically anti-police brutality.

Robert Baez:
Reclaiming pride means both honoring the legacies of movement work that have come before us, and understanding that there's still so much more work to be done.

Colin Ashley:
Intersectionality is fundamental to queer liberation.

Fran Barjon:
People come from such different backgrounds, from different races, classes.

Colin Ashley:
When we separate out our politics into single-issue politics, we fail.

Fran Barjon:
We need to consider the ways in which a black trans woman is affected in ways that a white, cis gay man will never be affected

Robert Baez:
As the mainstream movement would like to have you think marriage equality was the final destination, this was and is not the primary concern for many queers.

Colin Ashley:
When we understand an issue like police brutality from an intersectional view, we are allowed to see how housing precarious Black trans and queer youth face issues of continual forms of stop and frisk, racial profiling, and the overpolicing of sex work.

Robert Baez:
Access to resources like housing, steady income, medical care and food are queer issues.

Colin Ashley:
Starting from a place of intersectionality shows us how interrelated systems of power are.

Robert Baez:
Our upcoming Queer Liberation March rejects alliances with oppressive institutions such as police and corporations as a way to repoliticize queer struggles.

Colin Ashley:
Reclaiming pride is about rebuilding an intersectional and a coalitional movement.

Robert Baez:
And we hope to see you on June 30th.

Kim Crenshaw:
That was Colin Ashley, Robert Baez, Francesca Barjon of the Reclaim Pride Coalition, talking about what it means for them to recenter intersectional, multi-issue organizing in the fight for LGBT liberation.

I met London-based LGBT activist Lady Phyll last year when we were both interviewed for a conversation in Them magazine. When we spoke, she passed along a quote she'd heard: "my fellow Black woman, when I see her, she is my road atlas." Just as Barbara Smith's work as an activist, writer and publisher served as a kind of compass for me, Lady Phyll is an increasingly visible lodestar for LGBT people of color in the UK. The first Black woman to head a major LGBT organization worldwide, Lady Phyll is also the co-founder and director of UK Black Pride, Europe's largest celebration of LGBT people of African, Asian, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, and Latin American descent. Phyll is also the editor of Sista! an anthology of writings by LGBT women of African/Caribbean descent with a connection to the UK. This Sunday June 30th, Phyll will serve as a grand marshal of World Pride in NYC, alongside Billy Porter and the cast of Pose.

As an admirer of Lady Phyll and her exploits from afar, I had to ask her about the story of how she became a lady by defying the Empire. In 2016, Phyll was awarded the prestigious MBE, given for an outstanding achievement or service to the community for her accomplishments in LGBT activism.

However, she declined, citing the ongoing persecution, torture and even murder of queer people across the world due in part to laws put in place by the British Empire. Embodying real nobility by rejecting colonialism, Phyll joined the ranks of other queer and POC figures like Honor Blackman, David Bowie and Benjamin Zephaniah who also refused the award. She is known as Lady Phyll partially in reference to her choice.

Kim Crenshaw:
First of all, I have a confession to make in just describing how blown away I was by something that you did. So, I'm going to confess, as an American, I'm kind of fascinated with all this royal stuff, right? So, click bait for me, if I am doing my work, and something pops up about Meghan Markle, I'll try to ignore it, and it's like, "Oh! I gotta read it right now." So, when I saw that you were being given the MBE award, the Medal of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, and, you turned it down. You said, "Thanks, but no thanks. I'm not going to be meeting the Queen. I'm not going to go get this award." That was huge.

Lady Phyll:
Are you starting trouble again? They gave me hell for this.

Kim Crenshaw:
So why did you do it, Phyll? Why did you do it?

Lady Phyll:
I think the title alone, British Empire, says an awful lot. We have countries around the Commonwealth that the Queen is still responsible for, that continue to practice, penalize, criminalize, LGBT people around the world. I don't want to accept anything that elevates itself over the people I set out to serve.

Kim Crenshaw:
Well, and your reading about that prompted me to look. And my team found that 71 countries around the world in which same sex sexual relations are illegal- of 71, more than half are former British colonies or protectorates.

Lady Phyll:
The British went everywhere.

Kim Crenshaw:
There's this frame that there's the West, it's enlightened. And then there's the African continent, and other places in the south, and we have to go and rescue them from their backward homophobia.

Lady Phyll:
Right. But, who placed it there?

Kim Crenshaw:
Yes. That's completely missing from the political discourse.

Lady Phyll:
I mean, there's this mentality that we from the global north parachute into the global south and tell them that this is bad, it's an oppressive regime. You're criminalizing, torturing, persecuting, even in some countries, death sentence for being LGBTQ. But, let's unpack that a bit more. Where and who left that there? The British went in and they took the Bible in one hand. They were talking about all different sorts of things, and saying that, "Actually, the relationship between a man and a man, and a woman and a woman was wrong in the eyes of the Lord." Being gay, being queer is not un-African. We have to do something about claiming back our narrative, and I think that part of that work is all very much intersectional. It is very much about looking at the real barriers of oppression that have steeped in what colonialism did.

Kim Crenshaw:
Was it hard to take this stand, this principled stand?

Lady Phyll:
No. As a Black queer woman, there is no other response to that than, "Thank you but no thank you, Queen."

Kim Crenshaw:
So, I guess with that as one of the stories about Lady Phyll, it can't be a surprise to anyone that you are the moving force behind UK Black Pride. Now, I think what is interesting about the story of origin is the initial reaction to your effort to create a support network among the existing pride organizations.

So, I asked you about this at an event that we did on May 28th, called Mythbusting Intersectionality. And, here's what you said:

Lady Phyll: In 2005, well 2004 I was running an organization with some sisters called BLUK, Black Lesbians in the UK. And Black Lesbians in the UK went out on a trip, and we were talking about, "My gosh, this feels so amazing!" We were sharing space, we were eating jerk chicken, playing domineos, we were playing volleyball, well, I wasn't but. So beautiful, we've come back, and in 20015 when we're like, "How do we create this safe space for us as Black and brown queer people to not just celebrate ourselves, but talk about our lived experience, have that shared commonality with one another?" So I went to what was the then London Pride, and we sat down with some people an deveryone in that room was white, and there were two women, apart from the three of us, three Black women who walked in there. And I said, "Well, this is what we want to do, and we want to set up a Black Pride because we recognize that we are often on teh sidelines or the peripherals when it comes to pride. The wider mainstream LGBT activities... you know what we got told? "How dare you. why don't you fuck off and go back to where you came from." And excuse the language, but I kid you not. So those are people who are supposed to be- and this is a long time ago, but, these are people who are supposed to understand margianlzaition, discrimination to greater or lesser degree, right? Because they're LGBT+ people. They're supposed to be the ones who'll stand at the forefront alongside us because they were the ones marching around Section 28. They're supposed to be the same ones that stand in solidarity because they understand the need for equality. They understand the need for justice, they understand the need for safe spaces. But when it came to three Black women, standing in front of them, they told us to F off and go back to where we came from. I'm from Islington, so."

Kim Crenshaw:
That was Lady Phyll. Brought down the house. A story that was a direct, clear-eyed illustration of one of the main problems that intersectionality is trying to draw attention to, how a narrow conception of what our social justice politics actually looks at and responds to. So, these were leaders of the LGBTQ movement here basically telling you to fuck off.

Lady Phyll:
Yeah, that's what it was.

Kim Crenshaw:
So first of all, what was your reaction to it? What did you do? And how do you analyze it? What did you tell yourself this was about? Where you surprised when they did that?

Lady Phyll:
Firstly yeah, absolutely surprised. I don't think that the leaders in the community, the LGBTQ community could fathom or grapple with the fact that Black people, people of color who are queer, required space, required a place which felt safe. They felt, "Why can't you just join the regular pride, the normal pride?"

Kim Crenshaw:
The regular, the normal. The white pride.

Lady Phyll:
Yeah. You're going to get me into trouble. But, yes.

Kim Crenshaw:
I kind of stay in trouble.

Lady Phyll:
But, that's what's been said, it's the white pride. White pride comes with the white supremacy feel to it. But actually, when you are disregarding us, and not understanding that as queer people, we are also Black and POC, and our issues around fighting homophobia, biphobia, transphobia- we'ree are also fighting against racing, xenophobia, Islamophobia.They didn't see it as important. They felt, "We've already got a pride that talks about being LGBT, and the issues we face. Why on earth do you want to come and muddy up the waters, and try and bring race dimension into this?" And, that's because they didn't want to understand. And I think there's a natural distrust whenever we're talking about race, or Black matters. People start losing their shit when you talk about Black lives not mattering. We've seen it in America. Why is it so difficult for you to understand that our Black lives don't matter when we cannot have a Black pride in this country. It cuts so deep. You question are they really your tribe? Are they your people?

Kim Crenshaw:
While projecting you as the ones that are actually cutting yourselves off from the tribe. Why didn't it stop you?

Lady Phyll:
My ancestors didn't come this far, and I know they live through me. They speak through me. Speak around me. They orbit around me. So "no" is not an option. Staying silent, that's not an option, because it's not about us just in the here and now. It's about what happens in the future, when that next generation of young queer people who are people of color start to say, "Where's our space? Where are we? We don't see ourselves as leaders in the LGBTQ movement." So, no is not an option when it's about our lives and our lived experience.

Kim Crenshaw:
And, when you talk about our lives and our lived experience, one has to wonder where that sentiment that was expressed to you finds expression when the issue is, so what are the political priorities of this political formation? Who gets to set the agenda? Whose interests are being served? So over the last decade, marriage equality has been a centerpiece of the LGBTQ agenda. I'll just say the LGB agenda. Let's put it that way. Is it your sense that if Black and brown queer people, trans people, non-binary people, had a full seat at the table, would marriage equality have come out at the top of the list, the number one priority?

Lady Phyll:
Having been a Trustee of Stonewall, Stonewall was set up in the hope of fighting for justice but also equal marriage. We have equal marriage, but has that changed the issues around racism even within our own LGBTQI community? It hasn't. Marriage equality is important. And, I get it. And, I'm glad that in most places people have the right to get married. But, if we don't have the right to be seen, to be heard, to be understood, to have the same rights as anybody else, then there's no equality in marriage, there's no equality in anything that we're doing.

Kim Crenshaw:
And the upshot seems to be, "Okay, Black queer people. You can get married, if you can get yourself to the chapel. Now, you might not be able to make it there because you could be pulled over and killed by the police on the way. Or you might be incarcerated for some BS, or any number of the other things that you will be deprived of on the basis of race. But, if you manage to jump all those obstacles, if you can hurdle all of those things, then at the end of the day, you get to be married. Now, whether you can find a place to live, work, survive, that's not our issue."

Lady Phyll:
And, that's what I mean by, "Do Black lives really matter?"

Kim Crenshaw:
Do they. I mean, if you were to look at the mainstream LGBTQ agenda, in the way that, for example, right now there are debates about police presence in pride parades. That's a big issue. I suspect it will be a significant issue in this 50th anniversary of Stonewall. So what are you seeing and anticipating and hoping might come out of this very important year?

I mean, the Stonewall uprisings are significant and huge for us. And that story is not often told in the right context. For those who have watched Stonewall the film, it wasn't little Danny, the lovely white guy that threw the brick. It was our queer people of color, gender nonconforming, trans siblings who were at the forefront of the uprising because of all the persecution faced.

Kim Crenshaw:
So if our sisters, queer, trans sisters of color, were at the forefront, and now we're 50 years later, would we say that there is a huge gap between the leadership, what made this possible, and how the "it" is now being defined?

Lady Phyll:
The disconnect, from a UK perspective, is about the power dynamics that play out. You mentioned earlier about that seat around the table- I will boot down every single door. I will attend meetings I haven't been invited to, because if we're not present, then we don't get heard. When you don't get heard, you're dismissed, erased, not thought about. So we have to occupy spaces.

Kim Crenshaw:
So let's talk a little bit about the controversy about the flag. Amber Hikes has, I think brilliantly, added a brown and black stripe to the rainbow flag. And a controversy erupted. You supported her. What was the objective of the new stripes? And, what was the objection to the new stripes?

Lady Phyll:
So, I had the pleasure of meeting Amber Hikes when she came to the UK. And, she brought the flag to me. And, I'm like, "Absolutely. We'll be using this for UK Black Pride." I think ... not I think, I know the objective to having the flag is about inclusion. When you've got so many flags that represent trans people, that represent bears, that represent asexual, pansexual, that represent bisexual people, what is wrong in having a flag that represents Black and brown bodies?

Kim Crenshaw:
What was wrong with it?

Lady Phyll:
We're talking about race again, remember? It's always going to be so controversial for some. But why should it be, when all we're trying to do is give voice and agency to who we are as queer people of color. I absolutely support her. And I said, "Did you speak to the family of the, I think it was Gilbert, who originated the original flag?" And she said, "Yes, I spoke to the family. And, they were absolutely in awe of the additional stripes." So let's look beyond the stripes, but let's think about how Black and brown bodies are in the space of LGBT narratives that are shaped for us, but not by us.

Kim Crenshaw:
Right. And just to make it clear that the critique is also a critique of Black spaces that haven't been hospitable to queer bodies. We recognize that there's a huge controversy that went on under the rubric of Black Lives Matter. A lot of people questioning whether it was legitimate that women, queer women, queer Black women had a leadership role in that. So, it's sort of like, where can you be where one's inclusion in leadership is actually wholly held by everyone in the respective movement. That seems to be a challenge.

Lady Phyll:
It is. But I take great responsibility in making sure that I show solidarity. I look at the collective action, and hold Amber up when she needs holding, because as a Black woman, a Black queer woman, she took some real shit for just talking about real meaningful inclusion.

Kim Crenshaw:
Yes. So, the good news is Lady Phyll is going to be?

Phyll O.: A grand marshall.

Lady Phyll:
World Pride in New York.

Kim Crenshaw:
Yeah.

Lady Phyll:
So, I'm so excited.

Kim Crenshaw:
Not only is that important as part of the globalization of pride, but putting Black bodies in the center of that

Lady Phyll:
At this particular time-

Kim Crenshaw:
This time-

Lady Phyll:
50 years-

Kim Crenshaw:
50 years. So it's a big deal. It's an important moment.

Lady Phyll:
I also, the next week after that, will be finalizing the plans for UK Black Pride, which talks about-

Kim Crenshaw:
Which is when?

Lady Phyll:
The 7th of July.

Kim Crenshaw:
Where?

Lady Phyll:
At Haggerston Park.

Kim Crenshaw:
All right. And, where can people find information about it?

Lady Phyll:
Ukblackpride.org.uk.

Kim Crenshaw:
All right.

Lady Phyll:
Yeah. And, it's going to be brilliant, because we are always talking about centering who we are, putting the politics back in pride, ensuring that it's about people over profits. And not profit over people. But I will be front and center of World Pride, and excited to be there. But, many don't feel that the politics are in the pride, and feel that it's lost the essence and the roots and the origins of where it's come from. But, what I would say to any pride, is never ever forget the reason why you set up the pride in the first place. And if you lose centering the people it's supposed to serve and support, then you haven't got a pride.

Kim Crenshaw:
And with you in the mix, there's no way we lose sight of that. Lady Phyll, thank you so much for spending this time with us. It's always such a pleasure to talk to you.

Lady Phyll:
It's a pleasure to speak to you, and I'm truly honored and humbled to be on this podcast. And I hope that your listeners enjoy it as much as I've enjoyed being in this space with you.

Kim Crenshaw:
Both the Queer Liberation March and the the World Pride Parade will take place Sunday June 30th in New York City. The NYC Trans Day of Action takes place Friday June 28th; The NYC Dyke March will take place Saturday, June 29th. UK Black Pride will take place on July 7th in London. You can learn more about all these events in our episode notes.

Keep listening and support us on our Patreon page for bonus content from all of our interviews. You can find us at Intersectionality Matters on social media, at aapf.org and everywhere podcasts are available. Intersectionality Matters is produced and edited by Julia Sharpe-Levine. This episode was recorded by Elizabeth Press and the Sanctuary for Independent Media, and by Michael Kramer. Additional support was provided by G'Ra Asim, Naimah Hakim, Peter Gaber, Ezra Young, and Madeline Cameron Wardleworth. Special thanks to guests Lady Phyll, Barbara Smith, and the Reclaim Pride coalition. I'm your host Kimberlé Crenshaw and this is Intersectionality Matters.

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Kim Crenshaw: June 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, widely regarded as the convulsive beginning of the gay rights movement. Now the celebration of this historic event will bring to a head divergent and sometimes controversial questions, questions about how, when and where the movement grapples with its own intersectional history and how it deals with current intersectional politics.

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Christina Sharpe, The New Inquiry, 2016
A short essay written in the aftermath of the 2016 election that raised Donald Trump to the position of “leader of the free world”, which frames white kinship as a political construction and highlights the ways in which it shapes criminal, professional, and familial interactions.

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White people must refuse reconciliation to ongoing brutality; they must rend the fabric of the kinship narrative

"SLAVERY is the ghost in the machine of kinship." Saidiya Hartman's concise articulation gets to the heart of the ways that chattel slavery continues to animate the present: transatlantic chattel slavery's constitution of domestic relations made kin in one direction, and in the other, property that could be passed between and among those kin. This is the ghost in the machine of contemporary U.S. life and politics.

We can trace this through the examples of U.S. Senator James Henry Hammond (1807-1864) and U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond (1902-2003) and into the present. Hammond claimed ownership over other people of what he called that "inferior race," and Thurmond, a Dixiecrat, declared: "All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the army cannot force [...] the southern people to break down segregation and admit the Negro race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.'' Both were residents of Edgefield, South Carolina and both "fathers" of Black women, slave and free, whom they never claimed as kin in the ways that they would claim their white children. The laws of U.S. chattel slavery and Jim Crow made white kinship (legally, familially, and politically). These modes of recognizing white kinship and refusing to recognize Black personhood endure into the present; they make and unmake persons and families, and assign human beings value in and of themselves, or not. Thurmond's declaration encompasses not only Black people, but Latinx, Muslim Americans and more. White kin in one direction, "property" in another.

Whiteness, then, is a political project. It is distinct from, but often acts in concert with, the political projects of making and sustaining nation, ethnicity, and ethnic nationalisms. Whiteness is a political project and it is also a logic, by which I mean it is a calculus, a way of sorting oneself and others into categories of those who must be protected and those who are, or soon will be, expendable.

It is this calculus that allowed Dylan Roof to sit, for one hour or more with the welcoming members of a Bible study and prayer group at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal in South Carolina (the oldest AME church in the South), and then to show them his gun, to rise from his seat, to slaughter most of them, and to spare three so that they could "tell everyone what happened."

It is this logic that allowed Dylan Roof's friends to say nothing. Those friends noted that he seemed changed and "angry" but they asked him no questions when he repeatedly broadcast his homicidal intentions in the weeks before he massacred six Black women and three Black men. The logics of whiteness allowed him to be captured alive (by kin) and then taken to a Burger King and fed because he said he was tired and hungry. That whiteness and white supremacy are logics of making the human also means that it is expected that the survivors of the massacre will offer Roof their forgiveness.

White supremacists are angry; those who claim that title and those who do not but who act in the interests of white supremacy. Not only are they angry, but also "we" are told that their anger must be understood-that "we" must make room for it.

This "we" is across race, sex, class, gender, and geography.

This unmoral, unethical anger has the full support of the state. It is the only anger that the state recognizes; the only anger not criminalized or met with deadly brutal force. It is the anger of Ryan and Ammon Bundy and the understanding of the jury of their all-white peers that found them not guilty of the illegal occupation and armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. It is an unmoral anger that hits in the register and the grammar of violence, in the logics of law and order, in electoral victories and the grammar of reconciliation with kin by any means.

Many white people are struggling to figure out if they should speak and what they might say to their white kin now, in this moment. (Kin here means, all of those recognized by the self-in some fundamental, indelible way-as being like the self.) They are wondering if they should be silent or if they should broach the election with their intimates, with the people who are closest to them and who occupy different points of view, who voted differently, who apprehend the world in ways they self-report as deeply antithetical or inimical to their own. They acknowledge that the lives of people, not them, are at stake. They take to the streets to protest, and yet some speak this fear of potential loss of kin into the same ether as their co-workers, friends, and colleagues who are marked (as Black/Muslim/refugee/Latinx/immigrant/LGBTQI/differently abled/Asian and Native American/undocumented) and are in imminent danger. They equivocate at the thought and reality of losing kin, and at probable discomfort and pain; and in that interjacent space of equivocation, they reconstitute and re-enflesh that ghost of a past that is not yet past.

White people are searching for ways to show solidarity to people of color and some have landed on the performative symbol of wearing a safety pin. Symbols are important and a safety pin is not enough. A safety pin is a temporary fix for a rend in the fabric. One must be willing to say this is abhorrent. One must be willing to be more than uncomfortable. One must be willing to be on the outside. One must refuse to repair a familial rift on the bodies cast out as not kin.

Slavery is the ghost in the machine of kinship. Kinship relations structure the nation. Capitulation to their current configurations is the continued enfleshment of that ghost.

Refuse reconciliation to ongoing brutality. Refuse to feast on the corpse of others. Rend the fabric of the kinship narrative. Imagine otherwise. Remake the world. Some of us have never had any other choice.

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White people must refuse reconciliation to ongoing brutality; they must rend the fabric of the kinship narrative "SLAVERY is the ghost in the machine of kinship." Saidiya Hartman's concise articulation gets to the heart of the ways that chattel slavery continues to animate the present: transatlantic chattel slavery's constitution of domestic relations made kin in one direction, and in the other, property that could be passed between and among those kin.

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Decolonization and the Collapse of the British Empire, David Pierce,  Inquiries Journal 1.10 (2009).

How Important is the Notion of the Civilizing Mission to our Understanding of British Imperialism Before 1939?, Thanapat Pekanen, Inquiries Journal 2015/2016.3 (2016).

Pierce provides a short summary of the collapse of the British Empire, specifically considering the effect of Gandhi’s political activism in India. Gandhi’s promotion of non-violent protest was particularly effective in framing the British presence in India as crude and violent, which is in stark contrast to the Empire’s self-image as a civilising mission. Pekanen presents the “civilizing mission” as an expression of white supremacy, typically promoted by Liberalism, and used to justify Imperial expansion.

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The University of Surrey Researchers Anti-Racism Reading Group

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The University of Surrey Researchers Anti-Racism Reading Group

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The Anti-Racism Reading Group is a monthly discussion group aimed at getting PGRs and ECRs involved in the difficult questions of race, colonialism, and equality. It invites people from as many backgrounds as possible to attend, freely share their perspective, and take part in meaningful discussions about race in the modern world. Each month, the reading list will be in the form of a few articles spanning topics from anti-Blackness, the construction of racial identity, the history of British colonialism, the current realities of being BAME in academia, and many others. This is not a group of experts, this is a group of people who want to widen their horizons, share new perspectives, and become better anti-racists.

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11/11/20: Professor Peter Hegarty - Beyond Bias: Psychology as a White Space

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11/11/20: Professor Peter Hegarty - Beyond Bias: Psychology as a White Space

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Peter Hegarty is a professor of psychology who recently left the University of Surrey to join the Open University. Much of his research focuses on the psychology of discrimination, and he has published extensively on the construction of social norms and explanations of group differences.

Peter has spent over 20 years in research and teaching, and has won numerous awards including the British Psychological Society Award for Promoting Equality of Opportunity in Psychology in 2017, and the University of Surrey Prize for Teaching Excellence in 2004. He has contributed to the Psychology’s Feminist Voices project, and has been quoted in the media for his research on assumed whiteness.

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Professor Sir Geoff Palmer
blackhistorymonth.org.uk, 2020
Professor Sir Geoff Palmer is a Professor Emeritus in Life Sciences at Heriot-Watt University. His research focussed on “grain science”, which has important consequences for the brewing industry. In this article, he discusses his journey to the UK from Jamaica as a child and pays tribute to his mother’s life as a member of the Windrush Generation.

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The article said that it took 13 years for the victim to be recognised as a legal citizen. During this period, the victim's mother had passed away in the Caribbean and with great sadness the victim said, "The worst thing that has happened to me in my entire life was that my mother passed away and I wasn't with her. She worked in factories, she saved to bring me over. She taught me to read and write, when I was in trouble at school, she did everything for me. I haven't been by her graveside." In London, my mother also worked in factories and saved to bring me over.

My father was a shoemaker. He left us and went to America when I was about ten years old. My mother never saw him again. She took my younger brother and I to live with her grand-aunt (Auntie) and eight sisters in Allman Town, Kingston. She had difficulties earning a living as a dressmaker. In early November 1951, when I was eleven years old, about the age my mother left school, one of my aunts woke me and said, "Your mother is going to England, get up and see her get the ship..." We dismounted from Mr Green's truck at Port Antonio. I remember waving to her as the ship sailed away. She waved back from the top deck of the ship which was loaded down with people and green bananas. Recent research by a friend, Marjorie Morgan, has informed me that my mother sailed on the Ariguani in 1951, not the Mauritania as I was told as a child. Her passenger status was British.

I did not see my mother again until 1955. I was fourteen years and eleven months old. It took her four years to save my fare to 'bring me over'. The fare was £86. I disembarked from the Ascania at Liverpool and took a train to Paddington. I wormed my way along a platform full of people until a 'woman' grabbed me by the shoulder and said, "I am your mother, come with me." I would not have recognised her but when I looked into the mirror, we resembled each other. She took me home to a house in North London. Every room contained a family of at least two people. Marjorie's research also shows that my mother had registered me on the passenger list of my ship as a Scholar.

However, after arriving on the 2nd March 1955, my mother woke me early on the 3rd March and told me she had secured me a job working in a grocer's shop which delivered lunches. My mother needed help with the rent. Her wages were less than £5 per week and the rent for her single room was about half this sum.

As we were about to leave the house at about 7.45 am, a man stopped us and asked my mother where we were going, my mother said that we were going to work. The man said to my mother, "You can go to work but he cannot. He is not yet fifteen years of age...the school leaving age in this country is fifteen" My mother stated that she could keep me at home until I was fifteen years of age...my fifteenth birthday was on the 9th April 1955. My mother argued that one month should not keep me away from work but the man was adamant, "I don't make the rules, he has to go to school." My mother relented and took me to a local Comprehensive School. The school concluded that I was ESN (Educationally Sub-Normal) and sent me to Shelburne Road Secondary Modern School. The great irony was that, unknown to me, my mother had registered me on the ship's passenger list as a "Scholar". Inadvertently, her actions started my 'scholarly career' outside her front door on the 3rd March 1955.

The Headmaster at Highbury Grammar School effected my transfer from Shelburne School to Highbury in September 1955. The Headmaster was interested in my cricketing skills. My mother was still keen on me working but agreed to the school transfer. She could not afford to pay for new uniforms and was pleased when Highbury Grammar offered her a few pounds. I shared my paper-round wages with her. She rented a larger room but after about two years the landlord give us notice to leave. We fought him in the magistrate's court and won. We lived in the shadow of Pentonville Prison but not far from the Islington Library. I used the Library to keep warm and do my homework. The landlord turned our kitchen into a room and rented it. He locked the bathroom and my mother and I had to travel to a friend's house to have a bath on Sundays. She cooked in our room on a paraffin heater and lost a job because she missed work after an operation. She never took her annual holiday and worked during this holiday period to double her income with her 'holiday pay'.

I left Highbury Grammar in 1958, worked at Queen Elizabeth College as a technician and after a few rejections, I entered Leicester University in 1961. In 1964, when the only job I could find with an Honours degree in Botany was peeling potatoes in a nearby restaurant at Nags Head, my mother encouraged me to be patient. In December 1964 I was accepted for a PhD in Edinburgh, at the Heriot Watt University/Edinburgh University. I completed the PhD in 1967. My mother always knew where I was during my research-academic career...from 1968 to 2003, the year she passed away. She was the primary part of my sense of belonging. Although she never saw my father again after he left for America, when he died, she insisted that I should "go and bury him" in New York. I returned to the Heriot Watt University as a staff member in 1977. She used to ring the University and say, "Tell my son to call me, Miss Pennycook needs his advice". Miss Pennycook was her Jamaican friend. Incidentally, there is a small town in Scotland called Penicuik...the old spelling was Pennycook! In passing, please note that this Scottish-Jamaican connection also extends to family names...for example, my mother's surname was Larmond. The Scottish equivalent is Lamond. My cousin's Scottish surname is Mowatt and another cousin was called, Gladstone Wood. Indeed, there are more Scottish Campbell surnames in the Jamaica telephone directory than are in the telephone directory of Edinburgh and surrounding areas.

When I gained my Doctor of Science degree my mother came to Edinburgh and powdered my face 'to remove the shine' before the photographs were taken . Later when I told her that the University had awarded me a Professorial Chair...she replied jokingly, "You have enough chairs in the house, tell them to give you more money!" Although most people called me Geoff, she called me Godfrey which is my real name. However, she would have been delighted to call me, Honorary Consul for Jamaica in Scotland. Her religious view regarding my 'achievements' was simple, "My son is just a vehicle..."

Family links were very important to my mother. She kept a notebook of the addresses of all members of the family. They called her Aunt Ivy. Friends called her, Miss Ivy. Grandchildren called her Nana or Grandma and I called her Mama. When she was very ill, I asked her to come to Scotland to live with me but she refused. She said that my brother needed her more. She was also aware that I had an interest in the history of British slavery in the West Indies. One day she told me that my middle name, Henry, came from our slavery ancestor whose only name was, Henry. Her father's Christian name was Henry and she was pleased when I used my grain-research and teaching skills in Africa.

On the 23rd August 2019, I was given the great honour by Glasgow University of unveiling a plaque in the Chapel of the University to British enslaved people.

The marble plaque reads... " Near this site stood the house of Robert Bogle (d 1821). A wealthy West India merchant and owner of enslaved people. During the 18th and 19th centuries this University benefited from gifts made to individuals who had profited from slavery.

This Plaque commemorates the lives of all those who suffered enslavement". Although this 'reparative justice' will benefit Caribbean and African students, this plaque is symbolic of the hopes of our ancestors come true. Paul Bogle (Morant Bay Rebellion, 1865) is a National Hero of Jamaica...both white Robert Bogle and black Paul Bogle have historical links with St Thomas, Jamaica...this coming together of history is important. Therefore, the action of Glasgow University is a first light which others should follow to help repair the consequences of chattel slavery which was the most profitable evil the world has known.

In the late 1990s my mother received a letter from the Home Office stating that if she did not apply to register, she would be deported. She threw the letter into the bin with disdain but I filled in the form and paid the fee. Like many of the 'Windrush Generation', she always treated racism with disdain...neither Enoch Powell nor Oswald Mosley bothered her. My mother was aware of her Jamaican-British historical connections. She was also aware that she and her ancestors had contributed 'twice' to Britain significantly...during slavery and during the Windrush period. She was too ill to accompany me to Buckingham Palace to receive my OBE (Order of the British Empire) award in 2003. However, she said, " You go get it for us...we made the Empire, and remember, wear your marina (vest) because 'them places' can be cold."

Depending on how tired she was, she attended the church (black or white) that was closest to her home. She would sit reading her Bible. One day ladies from the local Greek Orthodox Church in Haringey asked me, "Is that dark lady your mother?" I nodded. They then asked, "Does she speak Greek?" I smiled and they smiled and said, "She is welcomed." Before she sadly passed away in 2003, she said, smiling, "Make sure I am buried at home in Jamaica...it is too cold here."

If we had a disagreement she would jokingly say, "Give mi back, what you can't give mi back, mi £86!" She would then smile and say, "You see what a little hard work and the goodness of people can do." Indeed, it was her love and support, a little hard work and the goodness of people that turned a 'grocery boy' into a 'Scholar'. A sense of belonging and education go together to help people to give their best to society.

Some people say I was lucky but people's lives should not be dependent on luck. To celebrate my mother's life a plaque was placed in the George Square Garden of Edinburgh University. I often watch students and other people as they stand in front of my mother's plaque and wonder why a mother called Mrs Ivy Georgina Larmond-Palmer, at rest in Jamaica, would be associated with the view that, 'People are not just 'races', named and ranked by man, people are people'. For a distance I can hear my dear mother saying, 'my son wrote that for everybody'.

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My Mother, Jamaica, Windrush and Me - Black History Month 2020

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The article said that it took 13 years for the victim to be recognised as a legal citizen. During this period, the victim's mother had passed away in the Caribbean and with great sadness the victim said, "The worst thing that has happened to me in my entire life was that my mother passed away and I wasn't with her.

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Race Matters? Examining and Rethinking Race Portrayal in Preclinical Medical Education

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Race Matters? Examining and Rethinking Race Portrayal in Preclinical Medical Education

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Tsai J, Ucik L, Baldwin N, Hasslinger C, George P. Academic Medicine. 2016 Jul 1;91(7):916-20.
An article describing the difficulties of teaching medical students about racial health disparities without entrenching the false notion that race constitutes an immutable biological characteristic.

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Embedding skin tone diversity into undergraduate nurse education: Through the lens of pressure injury

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Embedding skin tone diversity into undergraduate nurse education: Through the lens of pressure injury

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Oozageer Gunowa N, Brooke J, Hutchinson M, Jackson D. Journal of clinical nursing. 2020 Nov;29(21-22):4358-67.
This journal article identifies a source of healthcare disparity via the examination of teaching of skin-based symptoms in undergraduate nursing courses. The authors find that, although symptoms for a particular kind of injury can present differently in patients with different skin tones, the teaching material overwhelmingly focusses on the example of a Caucasian patient with light skin.

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Neesha Oozageer Gunowa MSc, PGCert, BSc, SPT, DN, RN, QN.

Corresponding Author

Faculty of Health & Life Sciences, Oxford Institute of Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Research (OxINMAHR), Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK
Correspondence
Neesha Oozageer Gunowa, Oxford Brookes University, Faculty of Health & Life Sciences ‐ Oxford Institute of Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Research (OxINMAHR) HQ ‐ MR1/43, Jack Straws Lane, Marston, Oxford OX3 0FL, UK.

Email: 15129387@brookes.ac.uk
Search for more papers by this author

First published:

Abstract

Objective

To explore health disparity in on‐campus undergraduate nurse education through the analysis of teaching and teaching material exploring pressure injuries.

Background

As a discipline, nursing espouses ideologies of inclusion, equity and valuing diversity. However, little is known about how these ideologies translate into clinical care. Pressure injury prevention is a routine aspect of nursing care; yet, there is evidence of inequity in relation to clinical care and patient assessment, as people with darker skin tones have a higher prevalence of severe pressure injuries before detection of damage occurs. Despite limited literature being available surrounding the topic of pressure injuries and skin tone diversity, it remains the responsibility of nurse educators to address contemporary issues and health disparity within the nursing curriculum.

Design

A multiple method collective case study. The STROBE checklist was followed in reporting this study.

Methods

Documentary and observational data of lectures regarding pressure injuries were collected during 2017 and 2018 from five Higher Education Institutes in England delivering approved nursing undergraduate programmes.

Results

Documentary analysis confirmed all Higher Education Institutes overwhelmingly directed teaching and learning activities about pressure injury towards people with Caucasian skin tones. Observation of teaching indicated all teaching sessions only contained brief, separate and superficial information on people with pressure injuries and darker skin tones. There was no discursive language or awareness of colour or colour blindness.

Conclusion

Radical critique of all teaching and learning activities needs to occur, to help explore, improve and meaningfully and authentically include diversity and inclusivity in nurse education, and in particular, how people across the skin tone spectrum are included and represented in teaching and learning activities.

Relevance to clinical practice

Critical examination of current teaching practice is crucial to address disparity and ensure care for people with darker skin tones is optimised.

Nurse educators have a responsibility to educate for the care needs of all, as the quality of nurse education has a direct impact on care delivery and health disparity.

This paper highlights the importance of addressing skin tone diversity and offers the opportunity for reflective practice, not just in formal education, but in clinical settings by preceptors and senior staff.

1 INTRODUCTION

2 BACKGROUND

Nursing knowledge directly impacts on the incidence of pressure injuries (El Enein & Zaghloul, 2011) and is a key factor in reducing patient harm caused by pressure damage (Greenwood & McGinnis, 2016). However, nurses continue to be exposed to reactive pressure injury teaching as part of case reviews by wound care specialist nurses due to time restraints, staff shortages, system processes, organisational priorities and quality improvement requirements (Bungeroth, Fennell, & Aiken, 2018). To reduce variability of knowledge surrounding pressure injuries, we argue that nurses need to have quality and relevant information from the beginning of their nursing careers as student nurses. Currently, contemporary researchers (Usher et al., 2017) suggest that nursing students may have knowledge deficits and lack confidence in addressing patient safety concerns particularly relating to pressure injuries.

To ensure equitable health care for all, especially relating to pressure injuries, it is important to acknowledge variation and recognise that not all service users are the same. People with darker skin tones have a higher prevalence of severe pressure injuries before detection occurs, which correlates with the lack of early identification (Baker, 2016). The language used in nurse education guidelines, campaigns and assessment tools (NHS England, 2019ngland, 2019; NHS Improvements, 2018; Waterlow, 2005) often refers to redness, discoloration and nonblanching skin as indicators of early‐stage pressure injury. The use of these terms as sole indicators of early‐stage pressure injury creates a level of disparity in risk assessment for people with darker skin tones as these indicators may not be apparent in this group, even in the presence of pressure damage. Despite limited literature and guidance being available surrounding the topic of pressure injuries and skin tone diversity, it remains the responsibility of nurse educators to inform students of this lack of insight; by addressing contemporary issues and health disparity within the nursing curriculum, nurse educators enable students to consider care for all and identify people who are more at risk of developing more severe pressure injuries (Oozageer, Hutchinson, Brooke, & Jackson, 2017). Therefore, further exploration of nurse education content is required to help identify if and understand how the topic of pressure injuries and skin tone diversity is incorporated into student teaching and learning.

2.1 Aim

This paper is drawn from a larger mixed‐methods doctoral study that examined the teaching of undergraduate student nurses in Higher Education Institutions in England, in relation to skin tone variation and pressure injury identification and assessment. The aim of this current paper was to explore health disparity in on‐campus undergraduate nurse education through the use of multiple methods. The analysis of documentary and observational teaching and learning material exploring pressure injuries.

2.2 Design

A multiple method collective case study design was used to address the research aim across the multisite cases. Case study research is a recognised method within a variety of subject areas, including educational, nursing and health research. Collective case research, despite often establishing tension through competing demands often referred to as "case‐quaintain dilemma" (Stake, 2005, p. 39), is considered more robust as it contains more than one single case (Herriott & Firestone, 1983). Various investigators (Cowley, Bergen, Young, & Kavanagh, 2000; McDonell et al., 2012) have used cases to acknowledge potential differences amongst groups. Mixed methods and multiple methods designs compliment the case study approach and the exploration of nurse education as there is no inclination to lean towards a particular type of data collection, classification or analysis as they are both seen as opportunistic and evolving towards a research problem (Grbich, 2012; Jones & Lyons, 2004).

3 METHODS

In this study, five different Higher Education Institutions each representing a "case" were used. Initially, quantitative documentary analysis was undertaken and analysed, followed by a structured teaching observation at each of the five Higher Education Institutions. Integration of these multiple sources of data enabled various elements within each case to be scrutinised and new insights uncovered providing depth and breadth in the examination of the educational content delivered (Stake, 2005). The Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) Statement: guidelines for reporting observational studies checklist was followed in reporting this study (See File S1; Institute of Social & Preventive Medicine, 2009).

3.1 Sample

A purposive sampling strategy was applied. The Head of School and Programme Lead for undergraduate 3‐year nursing programmes (Bachelor in Nursing) at ten Higher Education Institutions were initially approached via email between August 2017-March 2018. Three Higher Education Institutions did not respond, and the following reasons for not participating were provided by the other two Higher Education Institutions, including undergoing a curriculum review, the use of guest speakers to deliver the teaching or unavailability of staff and staff shortages. The remaining five Higher Education Institutions were included as "cases" and consisted of modern universities, established post‐1992 (Further Education Act, 1992) delivering approved education programmes (NMC, 2019). The Higher Education Institutions were of a similar size and positioned in demographically different regions across England where the diversity of both service users and students varied (Office of National Statistics, 2011).

3.2 Data collection

3.2.1 Instrumentation

A Diversity Observation Teaching Tool, drawing on Stolley and Hill's ( 1996) original content analysis framework, was applied to record teaching material content and delivery mode, using a tick box system. The sections of the Diversity Observation Teaching Tool have a range of questions which address duration devoted to the subject, context, when the subject is presented and visual representation of the subject. Two forms of data were gathered (a) written teaching material and (b) observation of classroom teaching. Written teaching material: Nurse educators enrolled in the study provided the relevant teaching materials, including PowerPoint presentations, workbooks, lesson plans, and lecturer notes from each Higher Education Institutions. Observation of classroom teaching: Observation occurred after the documentary analysis using the same tool. The location and timings of the teaching sessions observed during the academic year 2017/18 were arranged with the nurse educators delivering the sessions. The observed sessions were the operationalisation of the teaching material. Six structured observation sessions were completed with the use of the Diversity Observation Teaching Tool equating to a total 700 min. In one case, two teaching sessions were observed at one Higher Education Institution, and this was amalgamated to represent one overall teaching session delivered to undergraduate student nurses at that Higher Education Institution.

3.2.2 Ethical considerations

This study was approved by the relevant University Research Ethics Committee (171077). Informed consent was obtained from the Head of school or programme lead from each Higher Education Institutions as well as each nurse educator being observed. After provision of the participant information sheet of the study, nurse educators provided informed consent to participate and identified the relevant teaching sessions that focused on pressure injuries in year one of the undergraduate nursing programme. Participation of the nurse educators was voluntary, and their personal data were encrypted to maintain confidentiality. The teaching sessions observed did not involve collecting data from students or educators but focused on the teaching content and material.

3.3 Data analysis

The analysis commenced with understanding the four domains of duration, context subject, timing and visual representation of the subject recorded in each section of the tool (Dressel & Avant, 1978). The four domains remained the key focus with frequency being the dominant analysis. Frequency calculations took place through the use of a tally system with tick boxes in the adapted tool. Similarly, to Mckintosh‐Franklin's ( 2017) work, exploring the inclusion of pressure injuries and skin tones within teaching was important. However, due to the lack of language and terminological variances relating to people with darker skin tones, content analysis was used to analyse the field notes. Following the accuracy checks to ensure all components were complete, the data were entered manually into Excel software. Tabulation and descriptive statistics were completed to explore the teaching delivery modes and content of the teaching sessions used by each Higher Education Institutions focusing on pressure injuries in relation to skin tone diversity.

3.3.1 Validity and rigour

The Diversity Observation Teaching Tool was reviewed by two tissue viability nurses and two nurse educators providing usability feedback and face validity (Redshell, Lennon, Hastings, & Fraser, 2004). Then, the tool was piloted in a Higher Education Institution delivering undergraduate nurse education approved by the Nursing and Midwifery Council [NMC] ( 2018). After completion of the content analysis from both the teaching documents and observational data, the information was cross‐checked for accuracy by the research team. Furthermore, the mixed‐methods data gained from the larger doctoral study reaffirmed the results presented in this paper as students and nurse educators confirmed that there was a lack of inclusion of people with darker skin tones in teaching and learning material.

4 RESULTS

4.1 Demographical characteristics

The Higher Education Institutions all had a range of student numbers attending the timetabled sessions, varying from small groups of 20 students to large groups of over 100 students. All sessions observed were in year one of the undergraduate nursing programme, and three were prior to student nurses first clinical practice placement. Three teaching sessions had more than one nurse educator leading the session all of which were in a skills laboratory designed for nursing programmes. Four teaching sessions were delivered by nurse educators employed by the Higher Education Institution and one was delivered by a tissue viability specialist nurse based in a local hospital.

4.2 Professional knowledge on pressure injury

A total of five different terms to explain pressure injuries was identified from both the observation and documentary analysis: pressure injury, pressure sore, pressure ulcer, bedsore, pressure damage. All documents analysed across the five cases used the term "pressure ulcer." During the teaching observation, the nurse educator across four cases used the term "pressure sore" with only two mentioning the term "pressure injury." The Braden scale risk factors, which focus on overall risk, were addressed in 100% of observed classroom teaching. In all five cases, classroom teaching referred to the Waterlow Score, one of which highlighted erythema as "redness" or as a "dusky presentation" and another as "red in colour" which is was historically linked to the Waterlow assessment tool and visual inspection of risk areas (Waterlow, 1985).

4.3 Skin tone variance and diversity

In all five cases, both in the observation and in the documentary analysis, identification of skin tone diversity in relation to pressure injuries was made. However, the terminology varied, and no specific categorisation of skin tone was made.

All nurse educators presented information regarding people with darker skin tones during the observed classroom teaching either as a question or as the content of a slide in a PowerPoint presentation. In one case, in relation to early skin damage, the phrase "whatever the colour of the skin" was used. In another case, cultural variance was loosely associated with diversity after a student asked a question surrounding language barriers and self‐reporting. In this instance, the nurse educator referred the student to a television programme regarding culture; however, the details provided were not clear. Four out of the five Higher Education Institutions included information on people with darker skin tones within the teaching material and used the terms "darkly pigmented skin" and "dark pigmented skin."

4.4 Content

The titles of all the sessions were broad and included various aspects of nursing knowledge such as (a) anatomy and physiology across the lifespan and (b) care, compassion and communication. Only three Higher Education Institutions used terms associated with pressure injuries within the title of the teaching session. Documentary analysis of the sessions highlighted that lessons that focused upon skin integrity and wound care did not always include learning outcomes on pressure injuries.

Upon completion of the documentary analysis, the teaching material surrounding skin tone diversity was very superficial and not explored in depth as the terms "darkly pigmented skin" and "dark pigmented skin" only appeared on one PowerPoint slide, comment or question in each session. Pictures and photographs of patients with pressure injuries were included in four cases; Figure 1 presents frequency of content types in these images. In total, 158 images were reviewed in the gathered teaching materials. The vast majority of these materials (percentage n = 96) depicted people from a Caucasian background. The visual pictorial content of the teaching material shows a high proportion of images relating to people with a light skin tone. The category "other" represented 4% ( n = 7) of images and included a range of pictures of patients and pressure injuries that depicted people from an Afro Caribbean and Mediterranean background.

4.5 Learning resources

Analysis of the teaching material revealed four of the cases included a PowerPoint presentation. Other forms of teaching included videos, completion of an assessment tool, group work, a quiz, a workbook as well as practical examples of students lying in one position and reporting on the pain they felt when lying still. Mannequins were used as teaching props in two cases. In one of the case studies, one mannequin was as per the manufacturer description defined as "white;" in the same session, a plastic model displaying presentation of pressure injuries on both light skin tone and darker skin tone was presented; however, the presentation on darker skin tones was not discussed. In the other case, all four mannequins were used to help students learn to grade and practise grading pressure injuries and all four were described in the manufacturer descriptions as "white" ( n = 100%).

4.6 Instructional delivery

Three out of the five Higher Education Institutions delivered a 1‐ to 2‐hr session which included content on pressure injury; however, as illustrated in Table 1, the length of time spent on topics surrounding people with darker skin tones within the sessions was minimal. Overall, only very limited time was allocated to talking about diversity across all the cases.

Case number

Minutes spent teaching pressure injury specifically

Teaching minutes spent on cultural issues, ethnicity, skin variations

5 DISCUSSION

The study explored the content of on‐campus undergraduate nurse education relating to skin tone diversity and pressure injuries. From the data gathered across five Higher Education Institutions in England, limited inclusion of information around skin tone diversity relating to pressure injury was evident. There was no specific introduction of the risk factors for people with darker skin tones, or the fact damage may be more severe before detection occurs (Matas et al., 2001; Oozageer et al., 2017).

Across the cases, learning outcomes were not specific and did not include information on the complexities of early‐stage pressure injury visibility. It could be suggested that students were not fully informed of the teaching content (Tinto, 2017). In keeping with Rowan et al.'s ( 2013) study, uncertainties of knowledge acquisition from nurse education sessions may lead to students becoming disengaged and therefore not optimally prepared for the clinical environment. The lack of diversity in teaching could be associated with nurse educator apprehension or their lack of knowledge of how to address different population groups relating to skin tone diversity (Lyder et al., 1998; Ranzijin et al., 2008; National League of Nurses, 2016). According to Coates ( 2008), this pattern of ignorance by educators can be system‐wide as well as generational. The absence of diversity in teaching can be interpreted through the lens of covert racism in particular systemic racism. Covert racism is often seen as hidden, ritualistic, unintentional and unconscious due to dominant socialisation processes and can take many forms (Coates, 2008).

Colour blindness and colourism particularly resonate with the lack of diverse skin tones in education. Colour blindness is associated with the idea of treating everyone the same regardless of ethnicity and was initially seen as positive; however, further exploration particularly in relation to health care indicates a link with white hegemony (Neville, 2000). In the case of colourism, discrimination takes place based on a person's perceived race and because of their darker skin tone (Neville, 2000). Coates ( 2008), Cunningham and Scarlato ( 2018) and Hilario et al. (2018) highlight the power and harm associated with colour blindness are far more difficult to deal with than more overt forms of racism. Colour blindness is often described as a subtle form of racism which is incorrect (Plaut, Thomas, Hurd, & Romano, 2018); it initiates significant health inequities, can lead to direct physical harm to patients due to clinicians being less attuned to individual service user requirements and creates an assumption that equality is of a higher value that equity.

Our study has shown that in the absence of a diversity discourse, nurse educators, regardless of their own cultural background, constantly reconstitute the conditions that ensure perpetuation of racial inequities. This means that even if organisations recruit people from an often excluded group, this would not necessarily lead to real change at the point of teaching and learning. Furthermore, this reconstitution mainly transmits rather than creates knowledge (Davies, 2000; Link & Phelan, 1995). The language evident in the lexicon of nurse educators in this study focused on words such as pinkness, redness, blanching, discoloration and mottling. These terms are very Caucasian‐centric and there was no language evident that communicated an understanding of skin tone diversity. Despite access to the Internet, imagery surrounding people with darker skin tones was limited within the classroom.

Higher Education Institutions are committed to delivering education that will help bridge the gap between theory and practice (Wall, Andrus, & Morrison, 2014). In this study, three sessions were delivered in the clinical skills laboratory. Winters and Echeverri ( 2012) highlights that the use of a range of teaching strategies is more likely to help students engage in the teaching session, retain information and as a result have a direct impact on clinical practice. According to Herrmann‐Werner et al. ( 2013), there are no clear guidelines suggesting which clinical skills sessions need to be based in a skills laboratory environment. Though there is the suggestion in line with the kinaesthetic learning strategy (Fleming, 1995), that skills learnt through touch and experiences improve student engagement and clinical application. In four out of the five cases (despite three being in a clinical skills laboratory), traditional didactic teaching occurred at some point in the observed session where prewritten presentations were delivered. In two of the sessions which were based in the clinical skills, laboratory students were provided with some theoretical knowledge and then had the opportunity to look at mannequins and visually explore pressure injury presentation. With all teaching props being described as white by the manufacturer, students were not exposed to diverse skin tones within the classroom or clinical skills laboratory setting. This is strong reinforcement of white being the norm, so nurse educators need to be inclusive when selecting teaching resources to ensure representation of population diversity. Interestingly, all sessions despite some being in the traditional lecture form used different teaching strategies to engage students; however, these did not relate or include people with darker skin tones.

5.1 Limitations

A limitation of this study is that the observation was not covert, the participant information sheet disclosed the nature of the information being gathered; therefore, nurse educators being observed despite not being aware of the specific questions in the observational tool were aware of the focus towards skin tone diversity and pressure injuries. This insight allowed nurse educators to include material not usually included, which could explain the brevity and superficiality. Also, due to the participants having prior knowledge of the study aims the exploration of individual nurse educator demographics including teaching experience, age, race, ethnicity were not included. The teaching sessions observed took place in year one of the nursing undergraduate programme and the whole curriculum was not explored as skincare teaching and learning, a fundamental of care occurs at the beginning of undergraduate nursing programmes.

The sample size was too small in this study to perform psychometric analysis. Similarly, only one observer undertook the data collection, and so inter‐rater reliability not established in this study. However, this as a further step that could be undertaken in subsequent research.

6 CONCLUSIONS

The study findings highlight the need for undergraduate nurse education to adequately include comprehensive information to safeguard all service users. Nursing holds onto values and it fully embraces values such as equity and if nurse educators are going to be true to that they have to engage in processes of rigorous self and peer critique. Teaching sessions need to be observed and mapped out not only for variation of teaching strategies but also for the most recent evidence‐based guidelines and contemporary issues. With limited research and educators being overly cautious of political correctness and topic sensitivity, diversity may be brushed over in the classroom.

7 RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE

There are currently no specific regulations on how to include diversity within the nursing curricula. Teaching content remains heavily dependent on the views and experiences of the actual nurse educators who are working directly with students. With white privilege being powerful, embedded, and enculturated, but also subtle, nurse educators can unwittingly transmit colour blindness to students. This contributes to creating another generation of nurses who practice in a colour‐blind way. An improved understanding of pressure injury assessment across the skin tone spectrum through the use of reflective practice will enable colour blindness to be taken out of the margins and placed in the limelight. Creating spaces for conversations to occur in the open and allowing the formation of self‐knowledge. This power of knowledge, and ability to look back at one's actions through the use of reflective practice, offers the permission for nurse educators, clinicians, senior staff and students to have a voice, a language for conversation and structural change within clinical practice.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The first author Neesha Oozageer Gunowa has been awarded the Professor Nigel Groome Studentship at Oxford Brookes University.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The editor‐in‐chief is a co‐author.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

All authors: conception and design of the study, analysis of the study, and critical revision and manuscript writing; NOG: collection of the data.

ETHICAL APPROVAL

This study was approved by the relevant University Research Ethics Committee (171077).

Abstract

Objective

To explore health disparity in on‐campus undergraduate nurse education through the analysis of teaching and teaching material exploring pressure injuries.

Background

As a discipline, nursing espouses ideologies of inclusion, equity and valuing diversity. However, little is known about how these ideologies translate into clinical care. Pressure injury prevention is a routine aspect of nursing care; yet, there is evidence of inequity in relation to clinical care and patient assessment, as people with darker skin tones have a higher prevalence of severe pressure injuries before detection of damage occurs. Despite limited literature being available surrounding the topic of pressure injuries and skin tone diversity, it remains the responsibility of nurse educators to address contemporary issues and health disparity within the nursing curriculum.

Design

A multiple method collective case study. The STROBE checklist was followed in reporting this study.

Methods

Documentary and observational data of lectures regarding pressure injuries were collected during 2017 and 2018 from five Higher Education Institutes in England delivering approved nursing undergraduate programmes.

Results

Documentary analysis confirmed all Higher Education Institutes overwhelmingly directed teaching and learning activities about pressure injury towards people with Caucasian skin tones. Observation of teaching indicated all teaching sessions only contained brief, separate and superficial information on people with pressure injuries and darker skin tones. There was no discursive language or awareness of colour or colour blindness.

Conclusion

Radical critique of all teaching and learning activities needs to occur, to help explore, improve and meaningfully and authentically include diversity and inclusivity in nurse education, and in particular, how people across the skin tone spectrum are included and represented in teaching and learning activities.

Relevance to clinical practice

Critical examination of current teaching practice is crucial to address disparity and ensure care for people with darker skin tones is optimised.

Nurse educators have a responsibility to educate for the care needs of all, as the quality of nurse education has a direct impact on care delivery and health disparity.

This paper highlights the importance of addressing skin tone diversity and offers the opportunity for reflective practice, not just in formal education, but in clinical settings by preceptors and senior staff.

1 INTRODUCTION

2 BACKGROUND

Nursing knowledge directly impacts on the incidence of pressure injuries (El Enein & Zaghloul, 2011) and is a key factor in reducing patient harm caused by pressure damage (Greenwood & McGinnis, 2016). However, nurses continue to be exposed to reactive pressure injury teaching as part of case reviews by wound care specialist nurses due to time restraints, staff shortages, system processes, organisational priorities and quality improvement requirements (Bungeroth, Fennell, & Aiken, 2018). To reduce variability of knowledge surrounding pressure injuries, we argue that nurses need to have quality and relevant information from the beginning of their nursing careers as student nurses. Currently, contemporary researchers (Usher et al., 2017) suggest that nursing students may have knowledge deficits and lack confidence in addressing patient safety concerns particularly relating to pressure injuries.

To ensure equitable health care for all, especially relating to pressure injuries, it is important to acknowledge variation and recognise that not all service users are the same. People with darker skin tones have a higher prevalence of severe pressure injuries before detection occurs, which correlates with the lack of early identification (Baker, 2016). The language used in nurse education guidelines, campaigns and assessment tools (NHS England, 2019ngland, 2019; NHS Improvements, 2018; Waterlow, 2005) often refers to redness, discoloration and nonblanching skin as indicators of early‐stage pressure injury. The use of these terms as sole indicators of early‐stage pressure injury creates a level of disparity in risk assessment for people with darker skin tones as these indicators may not be apparent in this group, even in the presence of pressure damage. Despite limited literature and guidance being available surrounding the topic of pressure injuries and skin tone diversity, it remains the responsibility of nurse educators to inform students of this lack of insight; by addressing contemporary issues and health disparity within the nursing curriculum, nurse educators enable students to consider care for all and identify people who are more at risk of developing more severe pressure injuries (Oozageer, Hutchinson, Brooke, & Jackson, 2017). Therefore, further exploration of nurse education content is required to help identify if and understand how the topic of pressure injuries and skin tone diversity is incorporated into student teaching and learning.

2.1 Aim

This paper is drawn from a larger mixed‐methods doctoral study that examined the teaching of undergraduate student nurses in Higher Education Institutions in England, in relation to skin tone variation and pressure injury identification and assessment. The aim of this current paper was to explore health disparity in on‐campus undergraduate nurse education through the use of multiple methods. The analysis of documentary and observational teaching and learning material exploring pressure injuries.

2.2 Design

A multiple method collective case study design was used to address the research aim across the multisite cases. Case study research is a recognised method within a variety of subject areas, including educational, nursing and health research. Collective case research, despite often establishing tension through competing demands often referred to as "case‐quaintain dilemma" (Stake, 2005, p. 39), is considered more robust as it contains more than one single case (Herriott & Firestone, 1983). Various investigators (Cowley, Bergen, Young, & Kavanagh, 2000; McDonell et al., 2012) have used cases to acknowledge potential differences amongst groups. Mixed methods and multiple methods designs compliment the case study approach and the exploration of nurse education as there is no inclination to lean towards a particular type of data collection, classification or analysis as they are both seen as opportunistic and evolving towards a research problem (Grbich, 2012; Jones & Lyons, 2004).

3 METHODS

In this study, five different Higher Education Institutions each representing a "case" were used. Initially, quantitative documentary analysis was undertaken and analysed, followed by a structured teaching observation at each of the five Higher Education Institutions. Integration of these multiple sources of data enabled various elements within each case to be scrutinised and new insights uncovered providing depth and breadth in the examination of the educational content delivered (Stake, 2005). The Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) Statement: guidelines for reporting observational studies checklist was followed in reporting this study (See File S1; Institute of Social & Preventive Medicine, 2009).

3.1 Sample

A purposive sampling strategy was applied. The Head of School and Programme Lead for undergraduate 3‐year nursing programmes (Bachelor in Nursing) at ten Higher Education Institutions were initially approached via email between August 2017-March 2018. Three Higher Education Institutions did not respond, and the following reasons for not participating were provided by the other two Higher Education Institutions, including undergoing a curriculum review, the use of guest speakers to deliver the teaching or unavailability of staff and staff shortages. The remaining five Higher Education Institutions were included as "cases" and consisted of modern universities, established post‐1992 (Further Education Act, 1992) delivering approved education programmes (NMC, 2019). The Higher Education Institutions were of a similar size and positioned in demographically different regions across England where the diversity of both service users and students varied (Office of National Statistics, 2011).

3.2 Data collection

3.2.1 Instrumentation

A Diversity Observation Teaching Tool, drawing on Stolley and Hill's ( 1996) original content analysis framework, was applied to record teaching material content and delivery mode, using a tick box system. The sections of the Diversity Observation Teaching Tool have a range of questions which address duration devoted to the subject, context, when the subject is presented and visual representation of the subject. Two forms of data were gathered (a) written teaching material and (b) observation of classroom teaching. Written teaching material: Nurse educators enrolled in the study provided the relevant teaching materials, including PowerPoint presentations, workbooks, lesson plans, and lecturer notes from each Higher Education Institutions. Observation of classroom teaching: Observation occurred after the documentary analysis using the same tool. The location and timings of the teaching sessions observed during the academic year 2017/18 were arranged with the nurse educators delivering the sessions. The observed sessions were the operationalisation of the teaching material. Six structured observation sessions were completed with the use of the Diversity Observation Teaching Tool equating to a total 700 min. In one case, two teaching sessions were observed at one Higher Education Institution, and this was amalgamated to represent one overall teaching session delivered to undergraduate student nurses at that Higher Education Institution.

3.2.2 Ethical considerations

This study was approved by the relevant University Research Ethics Committee (171077). Informed consent was obtained from the Head of school or programme lead from each Higher Education Institutions as well as each nurse educator being observed. After provision of the participant information sheet of the study, nurse educators provided informed consent to participate and identified the relevant teaching sessions that focused on pressure injuries in year one of the undergraduate nursing programme. Participation of the nurse educators was voluntary, and their personal data were encrypted to maintain confidentiality. The teaching sessions observed did not involve collecting data from students or educators but focused on the teaching content and material.

3.3 Data analysis

The analysis commenced with understanding the four domains of duration, context subject, timing and visual representation of the subject recorded in each section of the tool (Dressel & Avant, 1978). The four domains remained the key focus with frequency being the dominant analysis. Frequency calculations took place through the use of a tally system with tick boxes in the adapted tool. Similarly, to Mckintosh‐Franklin's ( 2017) work, exploring the inclusion of pressure injuries and skin tones within teaching was important. However, due to the lack of language and terminological variances relating to people with darker skin tones, content analysis was used to analyse the field notes. Following the accuracy checks to ensure all components were complete, the data were entered manually into Excel software. Tabulation and descriptive statistics were completed to explore the teaching delivery modes and content of the teaching sessions used by each Higher Education Institutions focusing on pressure injuries in relation to skin tone diversity.

3.3.1 Validity and rigour

The Diversity Observation Teaching Tool was reviewed by two tissue viability nurses and two nurse educators providing usability feedback and face validity (Redshell, Lennon, Hastings, & Fraser, 2004). Then, the tool was piloted in a Higher Education Institution delivering undergraduate nurse education approved by the Nursing and Midwifery Council [NMC] ( 2018). After completion of the content analysis from both the teaching documents and observational data, the information was cross‐checked for accuracy by the research team. Furthermore, the mixed‐methods data gained from the larger doctoral study reaffirmed the results presented in this paper as students and nurse educators confirmed that there was a lack of inclusion of people with darker skin tones in teaching and learning material.

4 RESULTS

4.1 Demographical characteristics

The Higher Education Institutions all had a range of student numbers attending the timetabled sessions, varying from small groups of 20 students to large groups of over 100 students. All sessions observed were in year one of the undergraduate nursing programme, and three were prior to student nurses first clinical practice placement. Three teaching sessions had more than one nurse educator leading the session all of which were in a skills laboratory designed for nursing programmes. Four teaching sessions were delivered by nurse educators employed by the Higher Education Institution and one was delivered by a tissue viability specialist nurse based in a local hospital.

4.2 Professional knowledge on pressure injury

A total of five different terms to explain pressure injuries was identified from both the observation and documentary analysis: pressure injury, pressure sore, pressure ulcer, bedsore, pressure damage. All documents analysed across the five cases used the term "pressure ulcer." During the teaching observation, the nurse educator across four cases used the term "pressure sore" with only two mentioning the term "pressure injury." The Braden scale risk factors, which focus on overall risk, were addressed in 100% of observed classroom teaching. In all five cases, classroom teaching referred to the Waterlow Score, one of which highlighted erythema as "redness" or as a "dusky presentation" and another as "red in colour" which is was historically linked to the Waterlow assessment tool and visual inspection of risk areas (Waterlow, 1985).

4.3 Skin tone variance and diversity

In all five cases, both in the observation and in the documentary analysis, identification of skin tone diversity in relation to pressure injuries was made. However, the terminology varied, and no specific categorisation of skin tone was made.

All nurse educators presented information regarding people with darker skin tones during the observed classroom teaching either as a question or as the content of a slide in a PowerPoint presentation. In one case, in relation to early skin damage, the phrase "whatever the colour of the skin" was used. In another case, cultural variance was loosely associated with diversity after a student asked a question surrounding language barriers and self‐reporting. In this instance, the nurse educator referred the student to a television programme regarding culture; however, the details provided were not clear. Four out of the five Higher Education Institutions included information on people with darker skin tones within the teaching material and used the terms "darkly pigmented skin" and "dark pigmented skin."

4.4 Content

The titles of all the sessions were broad and included various aspects of nursing knowledge such as (a) anatomy and physiology across the lifespan and (b) care, compassion and communication. Only three Higher Education Institutions used terms associated with pressure injuries within the title of the teaching session. Documentary analysis of the sessions highlighted that lessons that focused upon skin integrity and wound care did not always include learning outcomes on pressure injuries.

Upon completion of the documentary analysis, the teaching material surrounding skin tone diversity was very superficial and not explored in depth as the terms "darkly pigmented skin" and "dark pigmented skin" only appeared on one PowerPoint slide, comment or question in each session. Pictures and photographs of patients with pressure injuries were included in four cases; Figure 1 presents frequency of content types in these images. In total, 158 images were reviewed in the gathered teaching materials. The vast majority of these materials (percentage n = 96) depicted people from a Caucasian background. The visual pictorial content of the teaching material shows a high proportion of images relating to people with a light skin tone. The category "other" represented 4% ( n = 7) of images and included a range of pictures of patients and pressure injuries that depicted people from an Afro Caribbean and Mediterranean background.

4.5 Learning resources

Analysis of the teaching material revealed four of the cases included a PowerPoint presentation. Other forms of teaching included videos, completion of an assessment tool, group work, a quiz, a workbook as well as practical examples of students lying in one position and reporting on the pain they felt when lying still. Mannequins were used as teaching props in two cases. In one of the case studies, one mannequin was as per the manufacturer description defined as "white;" in the same session, a plastic model displaying presentation of pressure injuries on both light skin tone and darker skin tone was presented; however, the presentation on darker skin tones was not discussed. In the other case, all four mannequins were used to help students learn to grade and practise grading pressure injuries and all four were described in the manufacturer descriptions as "white" ( n = 100%).

4.6 Instructional delivery

Three out of the five Higher Education Institutions delivered a 1‐ to 2‐hr session which included content on pressure injury; however, as illustrated in Table 1, the length of time spent on topics surrounding people with darker skin tones within the sessions was minimal. Overall, only very limited time was allocated to talking about diversity across all the cases.

Case number

Minutes spent teaching pressure injury specifically

Teaching minutes spent on cultural issues, ethnicity, skin variations

5 DISCUSSION

The study explored the content of on‐campus undergraduate nurse education relating to skin tone diversity and pressure injuries. From the data gathered across five Higher Education Institutions in England, limited inclusion of information around skin tone diversity relating to pressure injury was evident. There was no specific introduction of the risk factors for people with darker skin tones, or the fact damage may be more severe before detection occurs (Matas et al., 2001; Oozageer et al., 2017).

Across the cases, learning outcomes were not specific and did not include information on the complexities of early‐stage pressure injury visibility. It could be suggested that students were not fully informed of the teaching content (Tinto, 2017). In keeping with Rowan et al.'s ( 2013) study, uncertainties of knowledge acquisition from nurse education sessions may lead to students becoming disengaged and therefore not optimally prepared for the clinical environment. The lack of diversity in teaching could be associated with nurse educator apprehension or their lack of knowledge of how to address different population groups relating to skin tone diversity (Lyder et al., 1998; Ranzijin et al., 2008; National League of Nurses, 2016). According to Coates ( 2008), this pattern of ignorance by educators can be system‐wide as well as generational. The absence of diversity in teaching can be interpreted through the lens of covert racism in particular systemic racism. Covert racism is often seen as hidden, ritualistic, unintentional and unconscious due to dominant socialisation processes and can take many forms (Coates, 2008).

Colour blindness and colourism particularly resonate with the lack of diverse skin tones in education. Colour blindness is associated with the idea of treating everyone the same regardless of ethnicity and was initially seen as positive; however, further exploration particularly in relation to health care indicates a link with white hegemony (Neville, 2000). In the case of colourism, discrimination takes place based on a person's perceived race and because of their darker skin tone (Neville, 2000). Coates ( 2008), Cunningham and Scarlato ( 2018) and Hilario et al. (2018) highlight the power and harm associated with colour blindness are far more difficult to deal with than more overt forms of racism. Colour blindness is often described as a subtle form of racism which is incorrect (Plaut, Thomas, Hurd, & Romano, 2018); it initiates significant health inequities, can lead to direct physical harm to patients due to clinicians being less attuned to individual service user requirements and creates an assumption that equality is of a higher value that equity.

Our study has shown that in the absence of a diversity discourse, nurse educators, regardless of their own cultural background, constantly reconstitute the conditions that ensure perpetuation of racial inequities. This means that even if organisations recruit people from an often excluded group, this would not necessarily lead to real change at the point of teaching and learning. Furthermore, this reconstitution mainly transmits rather than creates knowledge (Davies, 2000; Link & Phelan, 1995). The language evident in the lexicon of nurse educators in this study focused on words such as pinkness, redness, blanching, discoloration and mottling. These terms are very Caucasian‐centric and there was no language evident that communicated an understanding of skin tone diversity. Despite access to the Internet, imagery surrounding people with darker skin tones was limited within the classroom.

Higher Education Institutions are committed to delivering education that will help bridge the gap between theory and practice (Wall, Andrus, & Morrison, 2014). In this study, three sessions were delivered in the clinical skills laboratory. Winters and Echeverri ( 2012) highlights that the use of a range of teaching strategies is more likely to help students engage in the teaching session, retain information and as a result have a direct impact on clinical practice. According to Herrmann‐Werner et al. ( 2013), there are no clear guidelines suggesting which clinical skills sessions need to be based in a skills laboratory environment. Though there is the suggestion in line with the kinaesthetic learning strategy (Fleming, 1995), that skills learnt through touch and experiences improve student engagement and clinical application. In four out of the five cases (despite three being in a clinical skills laboratory), traditional didactic teaching occurred at some point in the observed session where prewritten presentations were delivered. In two of the sessions which were based in the clinical skills, laboratory students were provided with some theoretical knowledge and then had the opportunity to look at mannequins and visually explore pressure injury presentation. With all teaching props being described as white by the manufacturer, students were not exposed to diverse skin tones within the classroom or clinical skills laboratory setting. This is strong reinforcement of white being the norm, so nurse educators need to be inclusive when selecting teaching resources to ensure representation of population diversity. Interestingly, all sessions despite some being in the traditional lecture form used different teaching strategies to engage students; however, these did not relate or include people with darker skin tones.

5.1 Limitations

A limitation of this study is that the observation was not covert, the participant information sheet disclosed the nature of the information being gathered; therefore, nurse educators being observed despite not being aware of the specific questions in the observational tool were aware of the focus towards skin tone diversity and pressure injuries. This insight allowed nurse educators to include material not usually included, which could explain the brevity and superficiality. Also, due to the participants having prior knowledge of the study aims the exploration of individual nurse educator demographics including teaching experience, age, race, ethnicity were not included. The teaching sessions observed took place in year one of the nursing undergraduate programme and the whole curriculum was not explored as skincare teaching and learning, a fundamental of care occurs at the beginning of undergraduate nursing programmes.

The sample size was too small in this study to perform psychometric analysis. Similarly, only one observer undertook the data collection, and so inter‐rater reliability not established in this study. However, this as a further step that could be undertaken in subsequent research.

6 CONCLUSIONS

The study findings highlight the need for undergraduate nurse education to adequately include comprehensive information to safeguard all service users. Nursing holds onto values and it fully embraces values such as equity and if nurse educators are going to be true to that they have to engage in processes of rigorous self and peer critique. Teaching sessions need to be observed and mapped out not only for variation of teaching strategies but also for the most recent evidence‐based guidelines and contemporary issues. With limited research and educators being overly cautious of political correctness and topic sensitivity, diversity may be brushed over in the classroom.

7 RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE

There are currently no specific regulations on how to include diversity within the nursing curricula. Teaching content remains heavily dependent on the views and experiences of the actual nurse educators who are working directly with students. With white privilege being powerful, embedded, and enculturated, but also subtle, nurse educators can unwittingly transmit colour blindness to students. This contributes to creating another generation of nurses who practice in a colour‐blind way. An improved understanding of pressure injury assessment across the skin tone spectrum through the use of reflective practice will enable colour blindness to be taken out of the margins and placed in the limelight. Creating spaces for conversations to occur in the open and allowing the formation of self‐knowledge. This power of knowledge, and ability to look back at one's actions through the use of reflective practice, offers the permission for nurse educators, clinicians, senior staff and students to have a voice, a language for conversation and structural change within clinical practice.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The first author Neesha Oozageer Gunowa has been awarded the Professor Nigel Groome Studentship at Oxford Brookes University.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The editor‐in‐chief is a co‐author.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

All authors: conception and design of the study, analysis of the study, and critical revision and manuscript writing; NOG: collection of the data.

ETHICAL APPROVAL

This study was approved by the relevant University Research Ethics Committee (171077).

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Embedding skin tone diversity into undergraduate nurse education: Through the lens of pressure injury

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Neesha Oozageer Gunowa MSc, PGCert, BSc, SPT, DN, RN, QN. Corresponding Author Faculty of Health & Life Sciences, Oxford Institute of Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Research (OxINMAHR), Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK Correspondence Neesha Oozageer Gunowa, Oxford Brookes University, Faculty of Health & Life Sciences ‐ Oxford Institute of Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Research (OxINMAHR) HQ ‐ MR1/43, Jack Straws Lane, Marston, Oxford OX3 0FL, UK.