Should Universities stop making Strategic Anti-racism commitments?

Just a quick rant to say that Universities should really stop making anti-racist commitments until they know what that commitment means. Sector bodies that support these declarations through accreditations and signing of anti-racism statements have created an opportunity for reflection, but also equally created a vacuous reporting mechanism. Universities can spend a lot of money doing things with numbers that rarely ever result in positive affirmative action for people of colour. You do not become an anti-racist ally without listening to, engaging with, and seeking to constantly understand the experiences of people of colour. This includes the great ones: our beautiful, colourful, musical, dynamic culture. This also includes the difficult experiences: marginalisation, oppression, inequity, microaggressions, confusion, and fear.

1. Listen to your staff and students of colour: Create institutionalised, ongoing feedback mechanisms for us to share our concerns, but make sure there are clear actions set against these fora. Otherwise, we will stop attending. Do not have these fora lead and orchestrated by white people. This is ingenuine and feeds into unsafe and ignorant listening spaces. If there are none in your University (a whole other conversation), then there are more than enough people of colour in the sector that you can pay to facilitate this work.

2. Put your money where your mouth is: too many Universities have created 1-3 person EDI units with no budget, having black women (because its usually a black woman), begging department heads, PVC's and DVC's for financial support for their initiatives. Do not create an EDI unit without a substantial budget, and clear performance outcomes from all staff on EDI.

3. Do it swiftly: belabouring and debating the optics, politics, etc., of why things cannot be done contributes to a lack of staff and student of colour confidence in the organisation. When we lose confidence, we stop trying to work with you.

4. Go beyond unconscious bias training: the conversation has moved from training to reflective practice. Engage in meaningful programmes of reflection, evaluation, and monitoring to ensure that there is positive cultural shift toward racial equity. This includes not only educating those who do not know, but empowering those of us who do. The APP is not enough for Evaluation and monitoring.

5. Stop putting grand actions in university wide strategies without having a clear flowchart of how these outcomes will be accounted for at every level of the hierarchy of staff in your organisation. Outcomes should be attached to performance.

Stop making empty anti-racist commitments. Start making meainingful ones.