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Women's History Review

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Out of Place: Black women academics in British universities

Cecile Wright, Sonia Thompson & Yvonne Channer Available online: 03 Apr 2007

To cite this article: Cecile Wright, Sonia Thompson & Yvonne Channer (2007): Out of Place: Black women academics in British universities, Women's History Review, 16:2, 145-162 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09612020601048704

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Womens History Review Vol. 16, No. 2, April 2007, pp. 145162

Out of Place: Black women academics in British universities

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Cecile Wright, Sonia Thompson and Yvonne Channer

This article examines the experience of Black women academics in British universities.1 The background to this is the under-representation of Black people at all levels of academia, particularly in senior posts. Black women in academia can be seen to be occupying a space that has historically been the preserve of the white middle-class male. Within this space Black women are space invaders. The article explores this concept by reporting the findings from a study of Black women academics. The marginalization, tenuous position, lack of a sense of belonging and survivalist strategies are issues explored. Feelings of being excessively scrutinized and marginalized are common amongst the women. Issues of lack of progression, workload management, lack of opportunities, lack of support and access to resources are identified by the women and discussed. The article describes how Black women negotiate their experiences of work in academia and how they feel damaged by their experiences. The article concludes by making the case for institutional change in British universities.
Womens 10.1080/09612020601048704 RWHR_A_204774.sgm 0961-2025 Original Taylor 2007 0 2 16 Professor cecile.wright@ntu.ac.uk 00000April and & Article Francis CecileWright History (print)/1747-583X Francis 2007Review Ltd (online)

Introduction
I think thats a great shame because in a sense [within higher education] they have open doors in terms of widening participation but on the other hand theyre kicking us out [reference to the situation of Black academics] through institutional racism. (Black female lecturer from a prestigious university)

All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men but Some of Us are Brave.2 Although this title can be regarded as somewhat simplistic, the book is still an important commentary on the social and historical issues in Britain. In this respect it
Cecile Wright is Professor of Sociology at Nottingham Trent University, UK. Correspondence to: Cecile Wright, Division of Sociology and Politics, School of Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University, York House, 4062 Mansfield Road, Nottingham NJ1 3JA, UK. Email: cecile.wright@ntu.ac.uk Sonia Thompson is an Evaluation Manager for a regeneration company. Correspondence to: 283 Boulton Lane, Allenton, Derby DE24 8BO, UK. Email: sonia_thompson317@hotmail.com Yvonne Channer is a lecturer in social work at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Correspondence to: City Campus, Sheffield Hallam University, Pond Street, Sheffield, S1 1WB, UK. Email: y.channer@shu.ac.uk ISSN 09612025 (print)/ISSN 1747583X (online)/07/02014518 2007 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09612020601048704

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lies alongside the work of Black female writers such as bell hooks3 and Collins4 in the USA and in Britain, the work of Amos and Parmar5, Mirza6 and Weekes.7 These works point to the tendency for the lives and voices of Black women to be missing from discourses of race and gender. However, these works also suggest that the problems that Black women face do not necessarily relegate them to a victim status.8 There has been increased inclusion of Black female experiences in the academic literature in the past two decades within Britain. However, these inclusions were constructed through what hooks9 has called the male gaze. Within this context, the academic literature on Blackness has been associated primarily with social problems. This reflected the official racial discourse whereby these problems became associated with masculinity. For instance, Black men became racialised agents, and hence, seen as more likely than females to underperform in school.10 In addition, they were feared through perceived acts of public/social disorder. This relationship between Blackness and masculinity therefore served not only to omit the Black female experience, as some Black women writers have suggested,11 but in addition, it also served to impose particular statuses upon them. Thus, women were permitted to appear in the racial discourse as mothers of sons and carers of husbands.12 In the 1980s Black women writers and others began to critique some of this work. In this context, for instance, Bryan et al. (1985)13 highlighted the agency of Black women in their book The Heart of the Race: Black womens lives in Britain. This publication challenged the official narratives and constructions of race, gender and class; in particular, a racial discourse where the subject is male, a gender discourse, where the subject is white and a class discourse which deemed race invisible.14. In recent years living life as a Black woman15 has been increasingly explored, explained and understood in a range of social and public situations. However, even within this debate Black womens experiences are barely mentioned (as either students or staff) in the context of British universities. This is in spite of the shifting cultural terrain in British universities where social localities of race, gender, class and other forms of embodiment have become of growing importance in the student experience. The above is exemplified within recent public policy discourses about widening participation and the saliency of diversity within the student body within higher education. Whilst over the last decade a number of publications have appeared on women academics, these have been wholly or partly about white women.16 An exception to this is a recent edited collection, Identity and Difference in Higher Education: outsiders within,17 which included a few chapters on Black women academics. There appears to be an agenda for giving a voice to white women within academia; however, there has been little attention given to the plight of Black women academics. Indeed, it is argued that white feminist voices over the last three decades have led to improved circumstances for white women academics. This improvement is exemplified by womens increased presence in higher education and also their increased representation at higher levels within universities. Moreover, it is noted that optimism about the transformed situation for white women academics has led some feminist writers to ask whether research on women academics may have run its course.18 Consequently, in recent years, there has been a decline in interest in women academics in feminist

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literature. In part, this is due to what Luke19 notes as younger women, in particular, [being] more attracted to positive and affirming theorization of gender than to the same old tired narratives of oppression, marginalization and disempowered women favoured by older academic feminists. The impetus for this article emanates from an article in the Times Higher Education Supplement (21 October 2004, pp. 1819),20 entitled Distinct Lack of Ebony in the Ivory Tower. This article highlighted the under-representation of Black academics at all levels. Focusing particularly on Black female academics, especially in senior positions, it stated:
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According to the HESA [Higher Education Statistics Agency] figures, there are nine black female professors (out of a total of approximately, 12,000 in the UK)five of whom are in nursing. If you search for black female professors outside medicine, you will find only two in the HESA tally in the humanities and social sciences, disciplines that have produced endless hand-wringing articles about racial and gender issues over the past four decades. Wright [referring to one of the authors of this article] appears to stand alone as the only black female professor. (p. 19)

Representation of Difference within the White Academic Landscape The concept of institutional racism has once again been placed on the social agenda following the McPherson Report (1999) conducted in response to the murder of the Black teenager, Stephen Lawrence. The concept initially came to prominence within the public sphere in Britain following the Scarman Report after the 1980s inner-city riots.21 However, there is no commonly accepted view as to what institutional racism is. This is partly because of its complexities, but also a reflection of the fact that there have been few studies into the processes that constitute institutional racism as well as the dearth of studies on how minority ethnic groups experience their treatment in institutional settings.22 It is, therefore, little wonder that the concept of institutional racism remains strongly contested within and outside the academy.23 It can, however, be viewed as a set of subtle ways in which racism is institutionalized; in particular, the way in which power appears to be naturalized in the body of the white male. It can be argued that through this mechanism, processes are produced in organizations which disadvantage members of minority ethnic groups. In this respect, institutional racism would appear to involve the following: firstly, institutional culture, i.e. a climate of assumptions that are hostile for minority ethnic groups; secondly, routine practices that result in the unfair treatment of members of minority ethnic groups. In addition to the issue of processes associated with institutional racism, is also the matter of how it manifests itself. Institutional racism is thought to include indirect discrimination through the provision (or lack of provision) of services provided for members of minority ethnic groups, inequitable employment practices, an occupational culture that is not ethnically inclusive, senior staff being disproportionately white, the lack of positive action in involving members of minority groups in decision making and a lack of appropriate training,

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Interestingly, Law et al.24 inform us:

In Britain, the overall picture of institutional racism that emerges from the news coverage is wide but selective. Racism in the immigration services, criminal justice organizations, football clubs, health authorities and trusts, the armed forces and schools, churches, but news coverage of debates about racism in higher education institutions is recent and still rare.

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In recognition of this situation, Jones25 aptly reminds us, the national soul-searching that followed in the wake of the Lawrence report appears to have engulfed many social institutions, but there has been noticeable silence emanating from one of Britains oldest institutionsacademia. Indeed, one of the few studies of Black and minority members within higher education conducted by Modood et al.26 pointed to their under-representation in academic posts as indicative of the slow pace of change within the sector. This is in stark contrast to the relatively improved rate of Black and ethnic minority students entering higher education. The gap between student and staff recruitment is especially evident in the new universities, partly because of the racial bias found in the old universities.27 The poor recruitment within the staff ranks was felt to reveal racism and racialised practices. In this regard, Modood highlighted the failure of universities to give serious attention to addressing institutional racism, the disproportionate representation of Black and minority academics in lower grades in the profession and their associated dearth within senior and professorial posts. This continuous institutionalized and inequitable pattern within the staff ranks in British universities can be discerned from recent HESA statistics and other sources. For instance, the apex of the higher education system, which includes Vice and Pro Vice Chancellors, typically remains a white enclave. At professorial level, of the 12,000 professors only 0.02% are black (HESA, 1999/2000).28 Gulam et al. have revealed that white staff are more likely to be senior lecturers17.8% compared to 10.1% Asian staff and 9.3% Black staff.29 Moreover, on the matter of job permanency, relatively few white academic staff are on fixed term contracts39% compared to 42.5% black academic and 65.3% Asian staff (HESA, 1999/2000).30 Theorising Black Women Academics Experiences: racialised, gendered embodiment, difference and space The statistical information outlined above reveals the low numbers of Black academics and the tendency for Black academics to be located in less senior positions. This begs the question, what are the experiences of those Black women who join the ranks of the white academic enclave? How might we explore and understand the plight of Black women as academics? The work of Black women writers, cultural and race theorists has special relevance here. For instance, Collinss31 outside-within, Fusss32 insideout and Saids33 conceptualisation of the other can provide insights for understanding the positioning experienced by Black women academics. Theorising living life as a Black woman34 within the context of British universities, it is also important to connect their location to the institutions current and past narratives, such as the types

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of bodies considered to be the natural occupants of specific spaces or locations.35 Thus, we need to be aware of the historical, cultural, political and institutional practices inherent within higher education as exemplified through the theorizing of the body politic. In this regard, identities within universities are constructed in conditions where white, middle-class cultures (and where particular kinds of masculinities) are represented as universal and the norm. Within this context, it could be argued that Black women are located within a space from which Black people and Black intellectual thought has been historically excluded.36. Interestingly, this context operates against a background where universities are expected to imbue liberal notions concerning individual/social justice. They are perceived as places of reason and neutrality.37The question therefore remains, how might the body politic be understood for Black female academics who are placed within institutional spaces that can be seen as oppositional? Within the body politic, Black individuals and other groups38 have been historically excluded from the somataphobic constructions of the universal individual. Instead, they have been positioned within specific historical discourses which have constructed Black people as psychologically, culturally, intellectually and morally inferior. Black feminists have been aware of the racial dimension of the body politic.39 Charles Mills40 in his exposition of the racial nature of the universal individual explores the intrinsic relationship between the construction of the social contract, the body politic, racism and colonialism, arguing that the white male body is taken as the norm. The universal individual is embodied in both racialized and gendered terms. Gilroy41 similarly argues that the basis for the emergence of the white male sovereign subject is grounded in the colonizing of Black bodies and nation states. He also states that the forced migration and slavery through which Black bodies become enforced commodities is a shared experience of terror that lies at the heart of the Black diasporic communities all across the Atlantic. In the present period white supremacy is no longer constitutionally enshrined but is, rather, a matter of social and economic privilege. Thus, the exclusion of Black people is no longer formal but a legacy of the past. Liberal discourse on equality insists on the sameness of humanity, i.e. being gender free.42 This implies that one sees one gender. Indeed, liberalism assumes that race does not matter.43 This is because it is constructed by white people who have not needed to conceive themselves in racialisable spaces from which they tautologically reify themselves and where whiteness is defined as the norm.44 Whiteness is, and has been, ill conceived as the standard neutral space, and white males are seen to be neutral occupants of spaces and structures.45 It is argued that Black bodies entering spaces not traditionally reserved for them are in a tenuous position. They are space invaders.46 Black bodies that have gone through white civilizing spaces, such as education, can, according to Fanon,47 don a white mask on their Black skins. This mask, it is argued, is acquired slowly through white civilizing spaces and processes. Thus, Black people can only be equal if they attempt to act as if, or be the same as, white people. It would follow that institutional barriers would exist for Black individuals attempting to be rid of those masks, or for whom those masks have slipped. Therefore, the presence of

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more Black bodies in institutions does not necessarily make the institution diverse.48 As we will observe in this article, within the higher educational institutional setting, we assume that the existence, the positioning and experience of Black female academics will both reflect and be shaped by the old norms, old history and old frictions.49 This article focuses on the experiences of Black women who enter academia. It attempts to explore how aspects of gender and race are negotiated within predominantly white patriarchal, hierarchical and Eurocentric higher educational spaces. It also aims to capture the complex reality of the lived experiences of Black women in a sense that analyses structures, culture and agency.50 In doing so, it will also explore what goes on in the gap between the discursive construct of the Black female academic and the affective experience of embodiment. The Study The article is based upon the findings of a qualitative study involving one-to-one interviews conducted in 2004 with eight Black women of African Caribbean origin, all aged between thirty-eight and forty-nine years old. The women were drawn from both old (pre-1992) and new (post-1992) universities across the UK, and they represented a varied mix of universities, in both urban and rural areas. At the time of the interviews, two of the women had left higher education. The semi-structured interviews explored issues related to working in higher education, coping strategies, strategies of empowerment/support structures, aspirations, career progression and so on. Inasmuch as the womens narratives in the article reflect their experience of being an academic, they infuse a theoretical and methodological approach which invokes51 a notion of the centrality of experience as a means of making sense, both symbolically and normatively, as a struggle over material conditions and reconciling meaning. Below we discuss the issues derived from the womens narratives. These concern the tenuous position they faced as academics, which occurred through a lack of sense of belonging, marginalization and being othered; being denied collegiate support, endorsement and patronage; being taken for granted by white academics; devising creative survivalist strategies with which to counter and resist the experiences of racism and sexism; and ultimately, for some women, devising strategies which enabled them to exit academia with their dignity and selfhood intact. Averting the Gaze: marginalization and hyper-visibility/scrutiny The liberal discourse of equality stresses the idea that all humans are alike and therefore inclusiveness can be idealized by imagining that obstacles are removed. In this context, higher education prides itself in comprising institutions which imbue a culture of neutrality, rationality, openness, objectivity and fairness, not just in theory but also in practice. Hence, irrespective of gender, class, or race or other forms of embodiment, academics are neutral individuals, thus providing a faade of sameness and evenness. Below we consider the conditions under which Black women academics work. From

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their narratives it would appear that issues around exclusionary institutional practices, being subjected to excessive scrutiny and anxieties about evaluation shape their everyday lives. Marginal and Exclusionary Positioning These women have managed to enter academia through their qualifications and skills, which indicates that in that sense they are insiders. As such, these women can articulate and perform in the required discourse and skills of their disciplines. Yet they commented on feeling out of place in the whiteness of the academy. This was encountered through a marginal positioning which occurred in relation to the process of representation, racism, sexism and hyper-scrutiny. Racism in the academy was rarely perceived to be blatant. Racism is latent and expresses itself, notably, through a particular embodied academic authority. The women felt that this authority was thought to be misplaced when it is located in a Black woman academic. In other words, they are seen as contradictory to the notion of academic authority. This manifested itself in what Purwar52 describes as the double-take phenomenon. Further, the women felt that this was an issue for both colleagues and students alike. As this respondent from a prestigious university stated:
Because we are dealing with very intelligent people you do not experience overt racism of any sort, what you experience is very tacit, unwitting racism or sexism, it is a structural system used to exclude you from certain opportunities as opposed to people being blatantly racist or sexist I wouldnt say Ive experienced direct racism or sexism here, but its the sort of indirect almost apologetic racism that one experiences, so you know that members of staff think that you are someone from the admin department or students might think that youre not really the lecturer, you might be another student or some other person whos just wandered into the space, so thats the way it manifests itself. (Veronica)

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Another respondent from an equally prestigious university echoes similar sentiments as she describes her experiences of covert racism and sexism. As she pointed out:
Id say that you know the racism and sexism exists because in an institution like [name of the institution] you go to Board meetings and its suits, its men, its white men, white academics, you have the female thing as well, going in there finding a voice. Also, you have the whole thing about Black, the only Black where are the Black faces? then they assumed that I was young because Im small and petite One of the first things people ask you when you go to meetings where did you study? Theyre wanting to know whats your qualifications whats your pedigree? So the racism comes from all different points really I think racism its kind of almost wanting to put you into your place (Hazel)

The women are clearly articulating their experience of institutional racism in that they have highlighted a cultural climate of hostility towards their Black bodies occupying a space set out for white men and the exclusive nature of the academy. The exclusionary marginal positioning that the women talked of was, however, not confined to the space that they occupied but was also extended to their academic specialism; in particular,

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where that specialism is within the fields of race, diversity and equality.53 Some of the women expressed the paradox where their field of scholarship or expertise is, on the one hand, accepted but, on the other, is regarded as embarking on this scholarship because of a committed interest rather than an objective and serious academic pursuit. This not the case when pursued by white academic staff. As a respondent noted:
I think theres an assumption that being Black and being academic somehow dont work very well together, that Black academics are not as academic as white academics, were not as worthy, our work isnt as important. Many of us are working on issues to do with diversity and equality and whilst that is deemed to be high status for some white academics, for Black academics its often seen as a hobby and until academia accepts the fact that it is a serious academic pursuit for all academics Black and white we will always be getting the crumbs from everybody else. (Veronica)

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It is clear from the issues being raised here that whilst academia is uncomfortable with the paradox of Black women in academic roles it is also prepared to make some form of accommodation for their existence within it. Closer analysis reveals that the spaces being marked for Black women academics are not based on merit, but instead are being created and assigned on the grounds of race. The institution has also accordingly ascribed a lower status to this area of work (see the following section on Bourdieus notion of hierarchies of knowledge). It is clear that the issue is not simply that Black women are occupying spaces from which they have politically, historically and socially been excluded. They are more than just a body out of place. They are being actively denied that space and instead some are being offered a newly created and lesser space. Hyper-scrutiny
Apparent from the womens comments were concerns that because they were not the natural bodies for academia, they had to constantly face the burden of doubt from both colleagues and students. This manifested itself in them being the subject of close scrutiny. For instance, one respondent said: theyre watching you, you know whichever meeting you go to, youre being watched youre having to prove yourself, they dont expect you to be any good, and you also doubt yourself a lot. (Hazel)

This womans account concerning being the subject of surveillance resonates with the surveillance that Foucault54 describes as a crucial factor in power networks. Similarly, McLaren55 notes that although surveillance begins as an external practice, Its effectiveness relies on its moving inside through the self-monitoring of the individual being watched. Other respondents also illustrated how the perceived misplacement of academic authority in a Black woman academic is conveyed. Commenting on her encounter with her line manager, this respondent said:
It gets to a point when I began to feel weary and wary of whats going on because its the constant battle, I know Im not rubbish, I know I can teach. But its the feeling that one person is so insecure, racist the only way they feel they can cope with you is to

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bring you down. I mean Ive never worked as hard as I have in my life This constantly being set up to fail Somebody is telling you that you havent met deadlines For example, my manager thinks that the way of managing me is to keep asking me if Ive done tasks and if I havent done them it means that I cant do them, whereas I might be prioritizing something different I find myself in a position now where I am being watched, Im being policed, I have to be seen to be doing things and if I dont show them what Ive done Ive obviously not done it, there is a lack of trust, they dont seem to have the confidence in me even though Ive been appointed It is a race thing because if you deem yourself to be better than another race and actually see that they are better than you, how do you actually cope with that you have to find mechanisms to keep them in their place you actually find fault with them and in your mind by finding fault with them that will actually break them, but if theyre quite a confident person who knows who they are that doesnt work as easily. (Vera)

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Commonly emphasized by the women in our study was the recognition that academics in contemporary British universities face the constant scrutiny of their performance through mechanisms such as academic subject review and the Research Assessment Exercise,56 which placed great pressures on individuals to perform. They also commented that, as Black female academics, they were subjected to additional or special surveillance borne out of issues concerning their academic credentials. These women were further aware of the impact that a constant burden of doubt can have on their career progression. Apparent in the womens comments was recognition of how their presence appeared a threat by having entered institutional spaces that are traditionally the preserve of sovereign white men. They were constantly made to feel uncomfortable and out of place, as outsiders-within or insiders-out. None of them raised the idea of being made to feel welcome or being encouraged to become part of their working establishment. Alongside this, it was also felt by some of the women that, as relative newcomers to academia, they are, as Aisenberg and Harrington57 describe, outsiders in the sacred grove. Thus they are subjected both to a felt need to prove themselves up to the task and to the contradictory and conflicted expectations. Whether or not the actions of the white staff (and students) were intentional, the impact was negatively experienced and the impact was cumulative. It was thus important enough for it to become one of the themes within the study. Indeed, the unintentional nature of some of those actions only serve to highlight the power of the idea that some white people are more able than their Black counterparts to perform particular social tasks, as exemplified by conceptualization and theorizing. In the following section we discuss aspects of conventional academic institutionalized practices and the subsequent survivalist strategies devised by the women to negate experiences of racism and sexism. Accessing Institutional Capital A considerable amount of Bourdieus work58 has been concerned with the matter of the positionality of bodies both as individuals as well as part of social groups in social spaces. Within this context Bourdieus work illustrates the way in which one form of capital, for example, cultural capital, operates within educational

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institutions. Bourdieus concept of cultural capital provides a useful explanation of how cultural distinctions help to define the positions that individuals have in respect of positions of power and privilege. Within cultural capital the social space that individuals occupy is referred to as a field. Within those fields individuals occupy positions of power (defined as capital). Capital, therefore, is a form of power. For example, within the context of formal education, it includes the achievement of qualifications as a result of familiarity with the institutionalized categories of judgement embodied within examinations. Further, cultural capital is embodied in interactions between teachers and students. Interactions between teachers and students represent cultural capital expended by both parties. Knowledge, linguistic behaviour and modes of thought are given differing values. Formal education, particularly schooling, is central to the validation of cultural capital. One of the major ways in which schools reproduce the values of cultural capital is through hierarchies of knowledge. At the same time, it could also be argued that this process represents the means by which individuals are able to access resources through key institutional agents, e.g. teachers. This suggests the idea of institutional capital, which refers to the systems and practices within universities, such as patronage, supports and networks. These are considered to be essential for an individuals career progression. From the womens discussions of workload, mentoring and grooming and career progression, we consider the extent to which the conditions under which the participants work afforded them access to resources and support. Workload Management Struggles with line managers about workload management were a common experience of respondents. In general, respondents felt that being kept busy on mundane tasks was a common management strategy to ensure that Black staff have little or no time for personal development. The following quotations highlight this element of their work experience. As this respondent claimed:
I know Im being kept busy and I find it irritating and I dont know how to not be kept busy really and I havent worked out a strategy for that. (Vera)

Another commented:
Our work loading never seems to be on an even keel, were usually quite low in staff which means that youre doing all the mundane stuff, you know, the admissions and the placement visits and dont really have time to do the thinking and the reading and stuff like that, thats a frustration. (Audrey)

Yvette also comments on what she considers to be excessive responsibilities when she pointed out:
I had two year groups to manage then on top of that I had 10 units that I was unit leader for, I was managing a significant amount of the programme and when I actually confronted this individual, she said it was because she didnt trust the men. Im sorry because if the situation was reversed, where there was no trust of a Black person, that

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Black person would just be allowed to collapse. So basically shes going to load me down like a big Black mule and let me carry white mens work because she doesnt trust them from her feminist analysis. (Yvette)

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These quotations draw attention to workload issues, which in general shows that these women were expected to work more than and harder than their peers. Indeed, it further highlights the isolation of Black women that resulted in additional workloads and pressures with the unofficial reallocation of work from privileged white men to a single African-Caribbean woman. Thus, even when opportunities to analyse the notion of white men as neutral occupants of spaces and structures arose, the white woman colleague singularly missed the opportunity to consider lots of other staff as racialised beings. The following respondent appears to have had the opposite experience in that she was allocated fewer teaching hours than her peers. Interestingly, the Black woman in this instance was being paid on an hourly rate and thus was again disadvantaged:
All staff were hourly paid between the periods from September 95 to September 02. The section leader made the decision to allocate number of hours per staff and the area of teaching. Generally, I was given the least number of hours, the least challenging work and the lower levels to teach. (Rose)

Despite one group of women complaining about too much work and a few complaining about having too little work, the ways in which Black womens workload was managed shared one underpinning principlethat of unequal treatment with their peers. Fundamentally, the arrangements were not in the interest of these Black women. Those who were kept busy and overworked understood the limits on opportunities and time for self-development. The only full-time respondent who felt that she was underworked was also aware of her exclusion from routes to cultural capital such as additional qualifications and career progression. As she claimed:
The Head of Academic English did not want me to become a module leader because I feel she wanted her friends to have the opportunity to become one. I had to go through an appraisal system to secure the position. The Academic English leader said to me well see how the year goes. That made feel as though I am under pressure to perform. (June)

If we accept Purwars proposition that academia is not based on merit but on power relationships, we can see that the white head of English was only mirroring what she has seen elsewhere and offering patronage to her friend. Thus, if white men are opening doors for other white men and white women are opening doors for each other, where is the patronage, the support for Black women? Who is opening doors for them? Indeed, the womens comments on workloads are only one element of significance. Line managers have power to allocate tasks and some evidently carry more privilege whilst others are more mundane. As the research assessment exercise (RAE) continues to grow in significance, being involved in research activities is deemed to be an indicator of academic success. However, many of the respondents commented that they experienced being denied research opportunities because their area of scholarship was considered to be ineligible for the RAE. This finding needs to be placed within the

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context of a hierarchy of knowledge and what we know about Black staff being encouraged into areas to do with race:
My manager sort of said, well, how come I didnt know that you were doing this research and by the end of the meeting she offered me more responsibility which took priority over research, so although I can technically get on with those sort of things, in reality Im being blocked, they dont want me to be involved in research. (Vera)

Further, the following quotation explains how previously agreed access to developmental opportunities was later denied:
So I said, well all right if Im going to become a lecturer, then it will have to be on terms that are equivalent to what Ive done before. I was previously a Senior Lecturer at the University of the West Indies in Law. Secondly, I would have to be allowed to, you know, carry on doing what I was doing, i.e. pursuing my Ll.M., which is a Masters in Law, and thirdly Id have to be given the opportunity to develop my practice as a Barrister at the Bar. Orally she agreed to all of these things, it wasnt a problem, and I duly started. So at the inception in my mind there was no bar to progression, One day I bumped into her coincidentally coming from Court one day, I was prosecuting, and I had my bag, we all carry bags, blue bags, if we are you know ordinary Counsel, red bags if weve been nominated for QC, and I was carrying my blue bag and she said, where are you coming from with your blue bag? So I said, Court, so she said, you havent asked me if you could go to Court. I said, with all due respect, Dean, I do refer back to our conversation when you and I agreed on the terms on which I would teach, anyway to cut a long story short, she hauled me up over the coals. (Mayra)

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The respondent went on to describe the difference between her treatment and that of her white peers who were also undertaking similar work as ordinary counsels. What was at play here was institutional racism at the level of being denied access to the same opportunities as her white peers. Mentoring and Grooming A high percentage of respondents were apparently aware of white colleagues who were given opportunities which were inexplicably unavailable to Black staff:
I can say that quite confidently there are examples of white females in my school who are undertaking study and who are given the opportunity to undertake that study by not being asked to do very much. So they are given a timetable that is conducive to being able to write yourself out of their diary for three working days that are consecutive for instance. (Veronica)

Respondents understood the significance of being excluded from professional development opportunities. They were prepared to invest the required energy to achieve the goals but were frustrated at the lack of clarity about how to achieve their goals:
My expectation was that I would be able to achieve what I put into it. If I worked hard and I used my abilities, that opportunities would arise, that I would be able to compete for those opportunities fairly and that thered be a prospect of progression and its just not true. OK, you may be fodder in terms of teaching, still, there should still be a route, because if I decided, as I did, to actually start producing these pieces of work in

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my own time, you would expect that there would be some sort of recognition for it somewhere, for somebody to say, you produced X number of this, that should go to refereed journals and this is what your outcome will be. Well, I tried to find outthe bloody route is so obscure; its a waste of time. Its a waste of time, you know, and its just the same thing over and over again, to them that have they will get more and to those that have not. (June)

This respondent commented:

Im frustrated sometimes because the structures within organizations seem almost impenetrable that no matter how much effort you expend, no matter how much commitment you demonstrate, no matter how much publications you have, no matter how much your students think you are wonderful, it comes to very little, I just get an overwhelming sense of being undervalued, not appreciated, and in a sense being used. (Vera)

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Crace (2004)59 confirms the experiences reported by the Black women who participated in the interviews when he raises the interesting question of why white staff appeared unsupportive when Black staff are given extra responsibilities. One respondent spoke positively of her relationship with her research mentor. She was optimistic about the assistance that her mentor offered in relation to her scholarship:
I think that I have a lot of support from my research mentor who, Ive met with him twice, he said he would read my papers once theyre written he would help me provide actual support with developing myself and what I want to be involved in. (Hazel)

However, this level of grooming and mentoring in order to access cultural capital was not typical among the Black women academics in the study. The following experiences were more common:
There are very few opportunities that are available for people to progress either through research or through administration, and where these are achieved they tend to be people who have worked here for a very long time and if that is not the case they tend to be people who have links with people who are established here and they are groomed and therefore offered opportunities to come and make rapid progress when they come into the organisation. (June)

Another woman stated:

If you want to make it to the top level, a career path has to be developed for you. Black female academics do not have career paths that are developed for them, we have to create them ourselves and this sometimes takes years and years and only very few of us will get to those top levels of academic institutions because along our way we have met people who have been willing to support us, to help us develop academically and professionally, that is not the norm for Black women. Black women do not get groomed for positions. Concerning Black women Im often told how brilliant they are and what good work they are doing, but they are not afforded the opportunities to develop the full range and so what we have to do is to find out what those things are that we need to do and then literally jump from one post to another to ensure that we get that range of experience. (Veronica)

Black women are no different from white women in that they shoulder the burden of family responsibilities. Leaping from job to job in search of career success and trailing

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themselves and their families around the country is no more of an option than it is for white women academics. One would even go so far as to say that the climate of hostility in the form of institutional racism in academia is such that the prospect of a senior position in the white hinterlands is one that fills many with dread. Experiencing racism in a place that you know where you have friends and family in the community is quite different from facing those issues in a remote part of the country. The similarity of these womens observations and experiences reported are remarkable given the variety of institutions, departments and subject areas involved. Moreover, the processes and practices discussed with respect to institutional racism, such as culture of the exclusion, discrimination and the behaviour on the part of staff in positions of authority, are clearly reflected in the accounts of the Black women academics.

Empowerment and Strategies Despite the tautology of the argument, the general consensus was that Black women have a future and role in higher education. This is surprising given the accounts of the participants and the inevitable difficulty in attracting or encouraging contemporaries into such a hostile environment. It is axiomatic that the women in this study felt generally overlooked and devalued. Nevertheless, they took their presence in higher education as a right and accordingly employed a range of tactics that drew upon a praxis of Black female survival within a liberal, non-reflective, white patriarchal academy which allowed them to remain there as long as possible. It was recognized that the daily racial humiliations were a huge drain on personal resources, and women weighed up the pros and cons of how, when and whether they challenged and confronted those racisms. For instance, some chose to take some time out from confrontations and funnel much of that energy into meeting their own academic needs. The following contributor gave instances of other women lecturers she had supported through racist episodes, and her particular survival technique meant that:
I am too feisty to recognize it as racism as such. I am not saying that it isnt racism. I just see everything that goes against me as intolerable. I dont stop to deal with it. If I focus on it and call it racism, then I will have to spend time and energy having to deal with it. (Carmen)

Several women ensured that they were conversant with their rights and made use of existing systems and structures such as the university policies and procedures with or without the support of the trade union. One woman chose to change her employment status at the university to part-time and embarked on other forms of employment which allowed her to feel centred. Several other women draw from their own spirituality and religious backgrounds. These were considered to provide them with the strength and healing power to cope with the hyper-scrutiny and intensity of the gaze in the marginalized and racialized space which has been carved out for them. Ultimately, two of the women have chosen to leave higher education altogether. Indeed, the study makes clear that merely being within the establishment was a challenge to the status quo.

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[Just being there] everyday I serve a purpose, I challenge assumptions, question peoples thinking. (Pamela)

Through the process of resistance the Black women academics in the study strived to both secure a legitimate place in academia, and assure the legitimacy of Black womens intellectual thought.60 However, it was also recognized that just being there was often at a high personal cost. Essential to surviving what was considered to be an alien and hostile environment was the creation of support structures, whether inside or outside of the institution:
I only survived in [X institution] as long as I did because of the friends I had from [name of the city] who supported me, thats the only way of surviving. (Hazel)

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Conclusion This article exemplifies how Black women in academia experience marginalization. Highly educated, deeply committed, hardworking and reflective, the women in this study continue to experience myriad forms of institutional and gendered racism whilst creating and adapting mechanisms to ensure the continuation of the principles in which they believe. They have entered academia employing Fanons white mask or Bourdieus cultural capital in the form of qualifications. Barriers stop or slow down their progress, stressing that a white mask can never be anything but a substandard substitute for the capital (power) which is embodied in the white face. White supremacy as exemplified in the social and economic privilege of the white male academic is demonstrated in the myriad acts which suppress the Black women academics in this study. To continue to profess neutrality is to support the continuation of white supremacy and to leave the institution unaffected. Gendered racism is consequently negotiated by Black women academics within a Eurocentricity and a white patriarchal hierarchy, and this work highlights their outsider status, marginalization, isolation and lack of patronagean area which is sadly lacking in academic literature. They claim, as of right, a space within the UKs higher education institutions for Black women academics and Black female intellectual thought, despite being historically excluded from it. The relationship between the theories and practices of living life as a Black woman in British universities was, and remains, an intimate part of their day-to-day lives. They have created a repertoire of survivalist skills without which it is likely that many of them would perish. Despite, and indeed because of, these problems, they continue to argue for the need to bring other Black women into academia. They confront, reflect, make use of existing systems and structures. They create, seek out and provide support systems to others. However, they do not accept being othered. By their very existence the respondents found themselves in opposition to the institution. This study has demonstrated how Black women navigate their ways through UK universities unforgiving structures and are increasingly damaged by them. There can, as a result, be little question of the need for institutional change. It is no longer acceptable to suggest that the organization as a whole is unaware of what is happening; British

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universities have been buoyed up by the millions of pounds they have attracted to investigate and theorize the very phenomenon which these women affirm. The time has come to move beyond personal strategy and towards institutional racism and that action must make use of the latest knowledge available on anti-oppressive action rather than the current liberal model essentially based on negative freedom. It needs to acknowledge that the efforts placed on bringing Black students into universities and the assistance provided through student services falls far short from what is desired because the Black student experience remains a negative one. Moreover, the Black staff experience has many similarities with it whilst also highlighting that they are picking up the gaps left by the institution.61 The Race Relations Amendments Act (2000) places new responsibilities on universities to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination and promote equality of opportunity and good race relations in carrying out their functions. Even if universities fail to do so the government has seen beyond universities projections as liberal impartial institutions and made it clear that they, along with a range of other public bodies, have responsibilities as key employers and deliverers of services to ensure that their practices comply with the law. The sooner British universities accept that they are not neutral liberal establishments and that they are institutions like any other, the easier it will be to engage them in a debate about their institutionally racist practices and the impact they have on the racialized bodies that occupy spaces within them. It is for universities to locate themselves within the UKs racist history and the current social context which they have researched and theorized and take action on what they find there. For, if nothing else, this study is about more than theorizing about what is happening in the university context; it is about making changes. Acknowledgements We would like to express our immense gratitude to the women who contributed to this study. We wish them every success. Notes
1

[1] An intended outcome of the study on which this article is based was the opportunity which it provided for the participants to reflect on their experiences in academia. Participants regarded the opportunity to discuss their experiences as therapeutic and cathartic. However, a number of the women whom we approached as possible participants were unable to take part in the study because they had been legally gagged. We were unable to unravel the specifics of these gagging orders; however, those who were unable to take part were seeking other routes through which they could explore their own ordeal. The names used in the article are pseudonyms. [2] G. Hull, P. Scott & B. Smith (Eds) (1982) All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, but Some of Us are Brave: black women studies (New York: Feminist Press). [3] Bell Hooks (1991) Yearning: race, gender and cultural politics (Boston: South End Press). [4] Patricia Hill Collins (1991) Black Feminist Thought: knowledge consciousness and the politics of empowerment (London: Routledge). [5] Valeria Amos & Pratibha Parmar (1984) Challenging Imperialist Feminism, Feminist Review, 17, pp. 319.

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[6] Heidi Safia Mirza (Ed.) (1997) Black British Feminism (London: Routledge). [7] Debbie Weekes (1997) Understanding Young Female Subjectivity: theorising the interrelationship of race and gender (unpublished PhD thesis, Nottingham Trent University), p. 6. [8] Ibid. [9] Hooks, Yearning. [10] Geoffrey Driver (1979) Sex Differences in Secondary School Performance. Report to the Commission for Racial Equality. London: Commission for Racial Equality. [11] Hooks, Yearning; Michele Wallace (1978) Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (London: Calder). [12] Valerie Amos & Pratribha Parmar (1984) Challenging Imperialist Feminism, Feminist Review, 17, pp. 319. [13] Beverley Bryan, Stella Dadzie & Suzanne Scafe (1985) The Heart of the Race: Black womens lives in Britain (London: Virago). [14] Mirza, Black British Feminism, p. 4. [15] Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, p. 12. [16] Barbara Bagilhole (1994) Being Different is a Very Difficult Row to Hoe: survival strategies of women academics, in S. Davies, C. Lubelska & S. Davies (Eds) Changing the Subject: women in higher education (London: Taylor & Francis); Miriam David & Diane Woodward (Eds) (1998) Negotiating the Glass Ceiling: careers of senior women in the academic world (London: Falmer Press). [17] Pauline Anderson & Jenny Williams (Eds) (2001) Identity and Differences in Higher Education: outsider within (Aldershot: Ashgate). [18] Sandra Acker & Carmen Armenti (2004) Sleepless in Academia, Gender and Education, 16(1), p. 6. [19] C. Luke (1999) Feminism in New Times, in I. Christin-Smith & K. Kellor (Eds) Everyday Knowledge and Uncommon Truths: women of the academy (Boulder, Westview Press), pp. 115. [20] Times Higher Education Supplement (2004) Distinct Lack of Ebony in the Ivory Towers, 21 October, pp. 1819; British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Radio 4, The Learning Curve, 8 March 2005. [21] David Mason (1982) After Scarman: note on the concept of institutional racism, New Community, 10, pp. 3845. [22] William McPherson (1999) The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (London: The Stationery Office); John Solomos (1999) Social Research and the Steven Lawrence Inquiry, Sociological Research Online, 4(1). [23] David Green (Ed.) (2000) Institutional Racism and the Police (London: Civitas); Bikhu Parekh (2000) The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (London: Profile). [24] Ian Law, Deborah Philips & Laura Turney (Eds) (2004) Institutional Racism in Higher Education (Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books), p. ix. [25] Cecely Jones (2001) Storming the Ivory Tower, in Anderson & Williams (Eds), Identity and Differences in Higher Education, p. 150. [26] Tariq Moodod, J. Carter & Steve Fenton (1999) Ethnicity and Employment in Higher Education (London: Policy Studies Institute). [27] Anderson & Williams (Eds), Identity and Differences in Higher Education. [28] HESA (1999/2000) statistics obtained by E. Halvorsen of the London AUT research unit and collated with statistics from PCEF, UAP, Clinical, CSCRC and locally determined sources. [29] William, Gulam (2004) Black and White Paradigms in Higher Education, in I. Law et al. (Eds), Institutional Racism in Higher Education. [30] HESA (1999/2000) Statistics obtained by E. Halvorsen of the London AUT research unit and collated with statistics from PCEF, UAP, Clinical, CSCRC and locally determined sources. [31] Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought. [32] D. Fuss (1989) Essentially Speaking: feminism, nature and difference (London: Routledge). [33] Edward Said (1978) Orientalism: western conceptions of the orient (London: Penguin).
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[34] Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought. [35] Elizabeth Grosz (1995) Space, Time and Perversion: essays on the politics of bodies (London: Routledge). [36] Jones, Storming the Ivory Tower. [37] Nirmal Purwar (2004) Space Invaders: race, gender and bodies out of place (Oxford: Berg). [38] Carole Pateman (1989) The Disorder of Women: democracy, feminism and political theory (Cambridge: Polity). [39] Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought; hooks, Yearning. [40] Charles Mills (1997) The Racial Contract (Ithaca: Cornell University Press). [41] Paul Gilroy (1993) The Black Atlantic: modernity and double consciousness (London: Verso), p. 53. [42] M. Gatens (1996) Imaginary Bodies: ethics, power and corporeality (London: Routledge). [43] Patricia Williams (1997) Reith Lecture. BBC Radio 4. [44] Mills, The Racial Contract. [45] Ibid. [46] Nirmal Purwar (2004) Fish in and out of Water: a theoretical framework for race and the space of academia, in I. Law et al. (Eds), Institutional Racism in Higher Education, pp. 4958. [47] Franz Fanon (1986) Black Skin, White Masks (London: Pluto). [48] Purwar, Fish in and out of Water. [49] Acker & Armenti, Sleepless in Academia; Felly Nkweko Simmonds [1997] My Body, My Self: how does a black women do sociology? in Mirza, Black British Feminism, p. 229. [50] Avtar Brah (1992) Difference, Diversity and Differentiation, in J. Donald & A. Rattansi (Eds) Race, Culture and Difference (London: Open University/Sage). [51] Ibid. [52] Purwar, Fish in and Out of Water. [53] Yvonne Channer & Anita Franklin (1995) A Race Curriculum and HE: black lecturers reflections, Journal of Further and Higher Education, 19(3), pp. 3246. [54] Michel Foucault (1995) Discipline and Punishment (New York: Vintage). [55] M. McLaren (2002) Feminism, Foucault and Embodied Subjectivity (Albany: State University of New York Press), p. 108. [56] The research assessment exercise (RAE) is a peer review method of assessing the quality of research in higher education in the UK. The exercise is conducted on a six-yearly cycle and it seeks to make prospective judgements about the quality of research by assessing the quality of research conducted in the past. The exercise is used as a basis for funding research in higher education. L. Morley & V. Walsh (Eds) (1995) Feminist Academics: creative agents for change (London: Taylor & Francis). [57] N. Aisenberg & M. Harrington (1988) Women of Academia: outsiders in the sacred grove (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press). [58] Pierre Bourdieu (1997) Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); P. Bourdieu & J. C. Passeron (1977) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (London: Sage); P. Bourdieu & L. Wacquant (1992) An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Cambridge: Polity Press). [59] John Crace (2004) We Remain Almost Invisible, Education Guardian, 14 December, p. 20. [60] Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought. [61] H. Connor, C. Tyers, S. Davis, N. Tackey & T. Mood (2003) Minority Ethnic Students in Higher Education: interim report. Report No. 448 (London: Institute for Employment Studies).
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