A reflexive response to Aaron J. Hahn Tapper’s article A Pedagogy of Social Justice Education: Social Identity Theory, Intersectionality, and Empowerment.

The article is documentation, archive, and perhaps a reflexive examination of programs that the writer has led since 2005. The programs are situated within a US-based intergroup educational organisation that draws from distinctive theories, delineated, and evidenced using case studies, interviews, and surveys.

From the outset, the writer establishes his positionality within the context of the work; an exercise that appears to happen, also amongst students in the different programs the organisation offers.

By doing so, Hahn Tapper becomes more aware of his bias, declaring his values, etc making a shift within that relational position to the work, so that the research is impartial. This introspection at the outset also reveals any exploitative relationships but cannot remove them (England, 1994). Evidently, he states that the article is not to evaluate the organisation’s success in terms of its pedagogy but rather to “describe the institution’s approach to social justice education in both theory and practice” (Tapper, 2013)

The three main theories that form the pillar and critical elements of their programs are

1. Paulo Freire’s approach to education and social justice
2. Social Identity Theory
3. Intersectionality.

One of the synonymous threads, that runs through these three pillars is a practice that considers students’ realities and their situation in the world, not to simply commiserate with students but as an opportunity to ensure transformational change, a quality of education for all, identifying specific needs to remove barriers, and sharing openly my personal experiences in instances where I relate with their situation. For example, I notice that a first-year student may be absent in class and handing in their work (often rushed) late. In conversation with the student, I find out that they must work a full-time job because they also have caring responsibilities. Undoubtedly, this student’s financial situation directly impacts their learning, and by paying attention to their reality, I can proceed to discuss ways in which we can support the student to ensure that they are able to manage their time properly. I can signpost them to Academic Support and the Students’ union Advice Service, who may support them with ECs, time management skills, and perhaps other jobs that may not take up all their time. As someone from a working-class background with similar experiences, I can also be open about my experience, not as a way out, but as a form of guidance.

Another scenario could be where one of my students is always late and inattentive in my 9am class. Following discussions with the student, I find out that the student is late because they live 2 hours away from college and must walk about 15 minutes from their last stop to campus. The student has a chronic spinal injury and is fatigued by the time they arrive at class and cannot concentrate. When I probe further, the student was not supported with finding accommodation closer to campus, or even worse, cannot afford the hostels close to campus. The student is disabled. So, when we are aware of students’ situations, and reality in the world, we can probe further, with practical questions, to ensure tailored measures are put in place to support their needs.

Social Identity Theory

In the first pillar, Hahn Tapper describes Social Identity Theory as one that posits that in many social situations, people think of themselves and others as group members rather than as unique individuals. This consideration asserts that this situation influences a member’s behaviour (what he refers to as intergroup behaviour). In Social Identity Theory interpersonal behaviour differs from intergroup behaviour. It differs because the theory acknowledges the macro realities and individual identities outside their social identities. It is at this point, that we begin to see notions of intersectionality emerge. However, in the context of conflict resolution, it still contends that when individuals relate to one another, actions are firstly perceived as being representative of the social group which they identify with, rather than individual behaviour. “In a social situation, it identifies how social identities are important and even become a factor in social perceptions and social behaviours”. As such, social groups/social identities are an entry point for individuals to relate to each other and an entry point to impose stereotypes; and where stereotypes emerge, injustice lurks.  These identities are in essence signifiers that people use as entry points into discrimination or bias. Such that the presence/visibility of a black body signifies a threat. For example, if Derek Chauvin was to identify as a black man, perhaps the sight of him kneeling on George Floyd’s neck (assuming Floyd was a white man), would have never been photographed. There might have been a different outcome. Instead of a spectator photographing the horrific incidence, their first reaction might have been to…

In her Ted Talk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says that power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person”. These signifiers and identities that have been burdened with histories are still the reality for many marginalised groups.

“The proponent of the theory suggests that groups favour their own frequently at the expense of the other” – this is an exposé of a moment where power, privilege, and prejudice are at play.

Intersectionality.

Social Identity Theory really focuses on social /group identities. The author begins to critique these power relations at play, and within the context of conflict resolution, aims to guide the participants in awareness of these complexities.

Hahn delineates that oppression primarily exists in terms of structures and those structures are the same ones linked to social identities. With the notion of intersectionality drawing our attention to how someone belonging to a marginalised social group can face multiple forms of oppression simultaneously, this text also addresses how oppression that emerges because of belonging to a particular group is linked to oppression that emerges in different facets.

It also begins to shift the “blame” to a singular “they” or a singular oppressor and draws to attention a structure, which acts like a machine. Hahn highlights that it prevents students from internalising the binary; that they are the victims and other groups are the “oppressors”, and that by attacking the oppressive structure (that is linked to the structure of social identities) at work, justice might be attained for all. “There is no hierarchy of oppressions” – Audre Lorde.

In the same breath, it is difficult to swallow when “change” is made for one social identity and not the other. For example, an increase in employing white middle-class womxn academics, but not black academics. It is not an easy pill to swallow, because you know that structural “work” has not been done and you are at the disadvantaged end compared to others.

“Intersectionality focuses on intergroup and intragroup dynamics, structures of oppression and collective social identities”. It acknowledges the poetics of identity, the manifold, and the productive organ. Different from, amongst many, all the while a distinct identity because there are patterns “of subjugation and inter/intragroup dissonance”

Wherever we find ourselves. Whatever the learning environment is, students, educators, and participants need to be aware of the social identities at play, or those we belong to so that we do not perpetuate oppressive actions, we understand relations at play, and consciously confront internalised bias/stereotypes.

A response to the video “Witness: Unconscious Bias”

Dr Josephine Kwhali is an academic, and Senior Lecturer in Social Work (Coventry University) whose work informs anti-racist social work. Dr. Kwhali has written many papers on care and child protection. In 2015, she co-authored with Dr. Gurnam Singh, a paper titled “How can we make not break black and minority ethnic leaders in higher education”, addressing the underrepresentation of BME academics/ staff in UK higher education, our experiences, and issues, suggesting practical ways of developing of BME leadership, indicating best practices and “advances in BME leadership in the United States”.

BME: I have directly picked the term BME from Dr. Kwhali’s paper. In the paper, she describes BME as “The term black and minority ethnic (BME) is widely recognised and used to identify patterns of marginalisation and segregation caused by an individual’s ethnicity. The term ‘black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) or ‘visible minority are also sometimes used in the literature.

The video is titled “Witness: unconscious bias”. The title alone speaks to the longevity of this issue and discourse– the several decades we have witnessed underrepresentation of academic staff despite our multicultural milieu. “After years of anti-racist debate, policies, strategies, …increasing diversity, race equality charter marks, and goodness knows what … if it is still unconscious, then there is something very worrying about what it will take for the unconscious to become conscious”. The prevalence of this discourse, expressed by staff and students, is more reason to compare this term “unconscious bias” to a “get out of jail card” as Dr. Kwhali puts it. Synonymous to Professor Shirley Anne Tate, “it is an alibi to diminish the recognition, analysis and salient of white supremacy, in order to maintain it”.

“I became conscious of racism when I was about 4, and I hadn’t read a book on racism, I hadn’t been to a lecture on racism…but I knew at the age of 4 what racism was” – Dr. Kwhali. We cannot ignore that we have internalised and institutionalised many signifiers associated with identities, that make us discriminate, judge, assume, behave inappropriately, etc. If we pretend that we don’t have these biases and stereotypes constantly and consciously in effect (e.g., because of media representation and a lack thereof, media portrayal and a lack thereof, image making / black bodies in art history and lack thereof…) how can we confront and challenge them? Signifiers and their meanings can change, and always do over time, so we must continue to challenge them. And, perhaps confronting why we choose to think of bias as unconscious is also another challenge.

I am a black woman from a working-class background who is on an intentional journey/ career as an educator. Throughout my first degree, with a course size close to or surpassing 100 students, I knew of only one male lecturer of colour, who I was always eager to have tutorials with, whenever the opportunity came. In my first year, in 2015, I could count how many students of colour were in my pathway on one hand. I was never encouraged by any of my white tutors to consider being an academic in my field. As big of a task, we have at hand to improve the underrepresentation of BAME staff at our institution, there are also small yet transformational actions to be taken. If educators are intentional about making this change, their students should be brought along in that same discourse.

How can I challenge myself and others to do more?

It sometimes feels like this conversation has been going on for so long that, the applaud/reaction to new strategies put in place are viewed from a skeptical lens.

Four Point One

On Cultural Capital …in Art and Design Pedagogy.

Retention and attainment in the disciplines: Art and Design is a report written by Aisha Richards and Terry Finnigan. The report is written in the context of higher education, and more specifically on the discipline of Art and Design. It outlines, documents, and probes the curricula and emerging initiatives made to diversify the student body, in relation to retention and attainment. The paper also includes case studies of activities that “have begun to intervene and make attempts to enhance pedagogy, the curriculum, student experience and/or destinations to employment” (Richards & Finnigan, 2016)

Section Four Point One delves into cultural capital.

In section 4.1, Aisha and Finnigan assert the importance of understanding the “type” (i.e., social identification/ group, class, etc) of students who pursue Art and Design courses in higher education and what the admission process/practice looks like within the context of the widening participation policy.

Widening participation policies and strategies exist to support underrepresented groups to access further education and other life skills. “The traditional focus of Widening Participation is on socioeconomic disadvantage. However, at their heart, both WP and equality and diversity are concerned with advancing equality of opportunity for disadvantaged groups throughout the student lifecycle. They both seek to address issues of access, retention, or success for protected groups” (HE, n.d.)

I am really fascinated by Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital especially as it relates to my discipline and pedagogy. “For Bourdieu, it is an obvious truth, that art (education) is implicated in the reproduction of inequalities….”. Since art involves a production of a cultural artefact, experience, or intellectual thought which is consumed, (for whom?) it is implicated in the notion of capital and thus power, given that capital is value and the “currency” that buys one a higher position in society. However, not all artefacts have value/ accumulate capital. That distinction between what holds more capital and what doesn’t is a result of certain social groups that confer status to them.

Once those groups have access to this artefact, they have access to knowledge, skill, and capital, and they might be called gatekeepers.

Crucially, to have access to and to understand such artefacts, or intellectual thought that holds value is a privilege. To have access will mean that you are connected in some ways to the institutions that guard them. For example, in the case of a painting, you will also have access to or be connected to a museum. In the context of Art & Design pedagogy, “certain kinds of art can only be decoded and appreciated by those who have been taught to decode them”.

There is a wealth and breadth of knowledge & discourses in Art History that is missing from some of our courses. I am a second-generation Ghanaian, who also identifies as British. I am a woman who also identifies with the working class. I moved to the UK at the age of 13. My first visit to a gallery in the UK was at the age of 18, it was at the Serpentine Gallery. At the exhibition, I saw chairs and tables Reiner Ruthenbeck dispersed in the corner of the exhibition space. I was stunned, and compelled to critique and comprehend the work, in a medium I was familiar with – painting. I wrote :

“On viewing a recent exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, featuring Reiner Ruthenbeck’s ‘’Overturned Furniture’ I was provoked by installations that have the simplest visual presentations but carry deep meaning and value to ‘’Art Critics’’. The aesthetic value and visual presentation of paintings has always been the dominant principle for me when it comes to appreciating artists and paintings in general. However, it will be wrong to suppose that some paintings and installations without a physical but emotional theme diminish its realism.  ‘’Art ‘’ is becoming more and more immaterialistic. The sense of having a divine painting full of detail, and so close to a photograph might be coming less valued and praised.“

Still unaware of the discourse of sculpture, I later presented the painting as an installation and wrote:

“A RESPONSE TO REINER RUTHENBECK’S‘’OVERTURNED FURNITURE’’

Why does one look at a painting a go straight to talking about the skill and technique of the painter?

Why does one look at an installation with the same subject as the painting and try to find meaning?

Painting does more than objectively record a subject. It also does more than revealing a cornucopia of colour.

This is a current and ongoing project I am working on.“

I do not recall any lessons on Art History and contemporary art in my early years, even on my foundation diploma. I attended both secondary school and college in an area classified as one of the most deprived boroughs according to the IMD. (Anon., n.d.). Years later, as my practice was exposed to new audiences, besides my tutors, I noticed that curators, colleagues, and artists spoke highly of my work, and in a language I was unfamiliar with, making several connections to periods in art history I was unfamiliar with, expecting me to know these references, all the while not pointing me to the basis of this discourse. I felt this lack, and incompetence to fully comprehend the work that I was making. Work that in itself, spoke to different cannons and discourses. This unsettling feeling is what keeps me keen to read and accumulate knowledge in my field. On this journey, I was able to fill in some of the gaps by attending the MFA programme at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, led by the blaxTARLINES community. At this institution, I noticed that from the outset, you are introduced to “subject knowledge”/ the field of study which encompasses philosophy, and art history (local and Eurocentric). In this department, it is not assumed that you know or have the skills to decode forms of art, at the undergraduate level. So, I found myself, attending some undergraduate lectures as well as my postgraduate classes, which were richer in theory.

If to diversify our student body and address gaps in participation between Q5 and Q1, we decide to market our courses in areas registered as Q1, where there may be high numbers of working-class students, who may not be exposed to the kind of art history required to decode art, then it is our responsibility to make sure that students are slowly brought up to speed. We must make meaningful connections with secondary schools as identified in our Access and Participation Plan to ensure parity and outline expectations at the HE level. Our Fine Art courses cannot remain solely studio based without a strong contextual studies program. We cannot pretend that this knowledge isn’t useful, for we know that knowledge is power.

a silver lining.

What we can also draw from this theory of cultural capital, is its arbitrariness. Thus, we can create new cultural capital. We can establish a community to confer value and share in this capital – not to do away with the old “capital”; but by arming ourselves with the old capital, we can critique, expand, complicate, and create new capital that is accessible.

Shades of Noir Website.

A resource to share with colleagues

A bank of material to encourage students to read, reflect and respond to

A safe space (crit) to signpost students to

A community

An archive

A gift

Extended Activity: The room of silence.

Produced in March 2016, and directed by Eloise Sherrid, in collaboration with co-producers Olivia Stephens, Utē Petit, Chantal Feitosa, and the student group Black Artist and Designers, The Room of Silence is a documentary that interviews students about their experience at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in terms of race and identity.

The title of the documentary refers to the silent abyss a student is suddenly whirled in when they present a body of work that explores race, identity, sexuality, faith, etc – either resulting in silence )because there is discomfort, a fear of offending/ saying the wrong thing,  because students and teachers just don’t know what to say…negative/belittling remarks, a disregard for the subject in terms of complexity, a disregard for personal storytelling, etc.

The documentary calls out the institution and particularly critiques the crit space. The crit space has without a doubt become a highly contested and important space, in Art Education. For a long time, the space of Art crits can be highly turbulent causing anxiety for many, with the power dynamic/relations between teachers and students being obvious and some voices being louder than others, for various reasons, with students from marginalised backgrounds benefitting the least from this vital activity if it is not a safe space.

Safe Space Crits, by Shades of Noir, as the name suggests, are a confidential space, that supports students with their projects as well as personal wellbeing.

It is especially useful but not limited to students whose work has tropes of identity and social justice. “Safe space crits are designed to assist you with work that reflects self, positionality, sexuality, disability, gender, faith/religion, and politics”

https://shadesofnoir.org.uk/safe-space-crits/

I recall a tutorial in my undergraduate degree, where I presented ideas on making portraits of refugees from Mali who lived in Ghana (the image of the young girl would be centered and there would be repeated text in the background, I expressed to my tutor; a white cis-gender man.) I recall how I was talked out of painting this portrait and encouraged to maintain only the text because it was much stronger. When you are a student, who looks up to a tutor, and ascertain that they are experienced in your field, you are likely to follow their guidance, especially when you are to maintain a relationship that impacts your grade. When you later realise that your tutor, did not have in mind the historical connections, complexities of image making, and discourses you provoke by making a portrait of a black nomad in Ghana, you realise that you were close to missing out on the call, not only to document but to transform and to add to the many forms that exist in the art canon. Had I been compelled to challenge my tutor’s suggestion, he would have been transformed too. Had I identified this colonial culture/fabrication of obedience and compliance, he would have been transformed too. As a student, had I been aware of this habitus that sees me succumb to my tutor’s suggestions, I would have done otherwise. (Bourdieu, 1972) Educators are students; students are educators, and both do not know it all. If I make it a practice to erase this myth that I am an all-knowing educator, then perhaps students will critique my feedback in the crit space. That is a good place to start from.

In the documentary, students share the microaggressions they are welcomed with during their first year at RISD. What is also intriguing about this record, is the fact that through, addressed, students at RISD still experience this. In the comments section of the video is a lineage of this experience with Alumni expressing their experiences as far back as 1994.

Clamor must be introduced in the room of silence by educators and students. When I notice the silence from students as well, I must address it and guide them to think about why they choose to be silent.

The resource itself is a useful practice for students documenting their experiences, as a form of validation/record of their lived experience.

Bibliography

Anon., n.d. London Councils. [Online]
Available at: https://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/members-area/member-briefings/local-government-finance/indices-deprivation-2019
[Accessed 21 July 2022].

Bourdieu, P., 1972. Outline of a theory of practice. s.l.:s.n.

England, K. V. L., 1994. Getting Personal: Reflexivity, Positionality and Feminist Research. The Professional Geographer, 46(1), pp. 80-91.

HE, A., n.d. Advance HE. [Online]
Available at: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/guidance/equality-diversity-and-inclusion/student-recruitment-retention-and-attainment/widening-participation-and-equality
[Accessed 20 July 2022].

Richards, A. & Finnigan, T., 2016. Retention and attainment in the disciplines: Art and Design, s.l.: Higher Education Academy.

Tapper, A. J., 2013. A Pedagogy of Social Justice Education: Social Identity Theory, Intersectionality, and Empowerment. A Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 30(4), p. 413.