’Looking Back – Moving Forward’

Professor Laura Serrant Professor of Community and Public

Heath NursingUniversity of Wolverhampton

Fanny Lou Hamer• In 1964, Fanny Lou Hamer,

an African–American civil rights activist (1917-1978) wrote,

‘All my life I have been sick and tired. Now I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.’

Hamer, F. L. (1964, June 1). Life in Mississippi. In J. DeMuth, "Tired of Being Sick and Tired," The Nation, p.

549.

“Sick and tired of being sick and tired”

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905

US (Spanish-born) philosopher (1863 - 1952)

Aim today

Centralise issues of race and equality in considering indicators of high quality Higher Education

“Professions are constituted through their specific ways of engaging with

Knowledge”

(K. Jensen et al. (eds.), Professional Learning in the Knowledge Society, 27–48.)

How we know what we know…and how we use it

The Challenge of ‘race’

• Issues often difficult to action due to tensions at level of individual, social group and society.

• Planning and provision may be complicated by historical, political and language issues

• Action often avoided or ‘sanitised’ by focus on policy and documentation

Opening Statement

The personal is political…

‘it is not history that immobilizes us [from action] but silence…..and there are so

many silences to be broken’(Audre Lorde 1982)

When I loved myself enough……..

I quit ignoring and tolerating my pain

McMillen 2009

Nurse Training: ‘Insider out’

• “Nurses are white, patients are Black”

• Cultural and ethnic awareness dependant on tutor expertise not professional standardisation

• “Permission to touch”

Equal Chance?..• Equality in Higher education: Statistical report 2014: Students

(snapshot of 2,340,275 students in HE during 2012/13 academic year)

• The proportion of UK Black first degree undergraduates receiving a first or 2:1 degree was lower than for all ethnic groups with rates at 73.2% (white students), 57.1% (UK BME) and 46.8% (UK Black) – accounting for a 26.4% attainment gap between white and Black UK students

• The ethnicity degree attainment gap is lowest since 2003/4

• A higher proportion of UK domiciled BME students studied science, technology and engineering (47.9%) than their White peers (43.7%)

Your Blues….they like mine?• Equality in Higher education: Statistical report 2014: Staff

(snapshot of 185, 585 academics and 196,935 professional and support staff in HE during 2012/13 academic year)

• Proportion of BME staff who were managers, directors and senior academic staff was 2.6% while those in customer service and sales roles was 10.3%

• Largest gender gap is among Black staff with 60.6% women and 39.4% men

• Professors – race and gender gap – 5.8% UK BME Men, 1.3% UK BME women (11.2% and 2.8% respectively for non-UK BME professors)

• Approx 1:5 White, Chinese and other UK academics earn a salary above £56K while among UK Black academics, the number is less than 1:10

Insider Out?

Speaking for ourselves• “it’s word of mouth I never got

through the faculty…[they are] more comfortable with me sweeping the floors than teaching, I’m sure. I see myself as a Pro-vice Chancellor, while they see me as a toilet cleaner, that’s the difference”

• “A term that has been applied to me is ‘work donkey’ but I have seen others overtake me. Yes, they are White, less experienced people have overtaken me, and I have not had that support and have felt [I] was being watched more closely”

Looking forward.......

How we learn, experience and respond to issues personally and professionally shapes the workforce we produce and ultimately the

communities in which we live

Key Messages• Addressing ‘race’ equality and quality in HE is more than

simply considering ‘colour’ or language status• Permeates ALL the contexts in which we live both inside

and outside work• Racism is covert and silent as well as overt and witnessed• Includes responsibilities for self and each other• Requires ACTION at an organisational level to safeguard

our futures

Guiding Principles

• Remember the diversity of BME communities and impact of ‘race’ on life chances

• Diversity in leadership to reflect the diverse learning community

• Prioritising ‘whole systems’ approaches for cultural change rather than ‘deficit model’

• Focus on workforce wellbeing as much as learning delivery

• Educating for Future – ‘hearing the silences’

"I have come to believe over and over again, that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.... My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.... and while we wait in silence

for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us. The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is

an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence.

And there are so many silences to be broken."

Audre Lorde (The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, Sister Outsider).