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In 2019, AdvanceHE reported that there were just 25 UK Black female full professors in British universities. Black women are less likely to occupy a role at this level than their male and White counterparts. Despite this, Black women remain relatively absent in institutional initiatives to advance gender equality, and there is little commitment amongst UK universities to explicitly address structural inequalities of race as they affect the experiences of academic staff. Black female academics remain under-represented and invisible in UK higher education. This article draws on the first known qualitative study into the career experiences and strategies of twenty of these Black female professors. Specifically, it engages Critical Race Theory and Bourdieu as principal theoretical frameworks to explore how their academic journeys, shaped as they are by an existence at the intersection of race and gender, result in racial battle fatigue, feelings of isolation, and disillusion with the academy. The article demonstrates how, despite these challenges, these women have been agentic in their efforts to navigate higher education. They have developed and continue to deploy sophisticated strategies of analysis, hyper-surveillance, self-care, and resilience in order to carve out a successful career in the academy and remain within it.

This paper explores the personal reflections of educators and contributors to policy on the shifting status of race equality in education policy in England between 1993 and 2013. The interview participants included some of the most notable figures active in race equality work in England. Part of the paper's significance is its focus on the perspectives of actors with longstanding involvement in the field of race equality, who have witnessed changes in policy over time. As "stakeholders" with direct involvement in education policy-making and enactment, the participants tended to focus on three historic policy moments. These were: measures aimed at closing ethnic achievement gaps that began in the early 1990s; the diversity and citizenship agenda that featured in New Labour's term; and the Macpherson Report (1999) and the subsequent Race Relations (Amendment) Act (2000). Participants' narratives converged in a largely pessimistic view of 1993-2013 as a period in which race equality policy had gained momentum, touched the policy mainstream--but then failed. By the end of the New Labour administration (1997-2010) and the start of the subsequent Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government (2010-2015), explicit focus on race equality in education policy had, in the views of the participants, been severely diminished.

Drawing on a secondary analysis of official statistics, this paper examines the changing scale of the inequality of achievement between White students and their Black British peers who identify their family heritage as Black Caribbean. We examine a 25-year period from the introduction of the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), in 1988, to the 20th anniversary of the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 2013. It is the first time that the Black/White gap has been analysed over such a long period. The paper reviews the changing place of the Black/White gap in education debates and notes that, despite periods when race equality has appeared to be high on the political agenda, it has never held a consistent place at the heart of policy. Our findings shed light on how the Black/White gap is directly affected, often in negative ways, by changes in education policy. Specifically, whenever the key benchmark for achievement has been redefined, it has had the effect of restoring historic levels of race inequity; in essence, policy interventions to "raise the bar" by toughening the benchmark have actively widened gaps and served to maintain Black disadvantage. Throughout the entire 25-year period, White students were always at least one and a half times more likely to attain the dominant benchmark than their Black peers. Our findings highlight the need for a sustained and explicit focus on race inequity in education policy. To date, the negative impacts of policy changes have been much more certain and predictable than occasional attempts to reduce race inequality.

This paper addresses some particular aspects of the complex intersections between race and social class. It is based upon data collected as part of a two-year Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded project exploring the "Educational Strategies of the Black Middle Classes" (BMC). ("The Educational Strategies of the Black Middle Classes", ESRC RES-062-23-1880). The project as a whole focuses on the educational perspectives, strategies and experiences of Black Caribbean-heritage middle class families in England. Little research attention has been given to the growing BMC, despite the massive interest in the educational decision-making of White middle class families. The assumption perpetuated in media coverage of issues like educational achievement is that Black children are working class. Here we consider the role of ethnic and social class mix--within school choice and within children's friendship groups as these are inflected by the concerns about racism and educational achievement articulated by BMC parents. The paper indicates different degrees of importance given to social mix in relation to school choice and in the making and monitoring of friendships among the families in the sample and some of the issues of strategy, risk and identity that are embedded in their thinking about and planning for social mix. Some gender differences are also signalled and their intersection with race and class is discussed. (Contains 13 notes.)

This paper draws on qualitative data exploring the experiences of first-generation middle-class Black Caribbean-heritage parents, their own parents, and their children. We focus on the different ways in which race and class intersect in shaping attitudes towards education and subsequent educational practices. We argue that the nature of racism has changed, but it still remains, mainly in more subtle, insidious forms. We conclude that race cannot be simply "added on" to class. Race changes how class works, how it is experienced, and the subjectivities available to individuals. The paper illustrates how the two intersect, in complex ways, in different historical "moments".

This paper draws upon a two-year Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded study into the educational strategies of the black middle classes to examine the role of race and racism in the research process. Specifically, it explores how my political positioning and experiences of racism, as a black female scholar, shaped not only my engagement with the research but also how I was perceived and positioned by others. This is analysed in terms of three areas: the recruitment and identification of research participants, the interview process and the dissemination of the project findings. While consideration of the researcher's race and racial politics tended to run parallel to or quietly intersect with the project development, fieldwork and analysis, it is argued that these factors, in actuality, play a significant and highly informative role in shaping a broader, nuanced conceptualisation of race and racism that is too often silenced and neglected in race research and the academy as a whole. Informed by Fanon and Critical Race Theory, it is posited that these seemingly peripheral race moments need to be foregrounded, named and analysed not just by scholars of colour but also by white colleagues electing to do race research. Such call to action remains fundamental within a wider socio-political context that increasingly is devoid of meaningful engagement with race and racism.

This paper reports on qualitative data that focus on the educational strategies of middle-class parents of Black Caribbean heritage. Drawing on Bourdieu's key concepts of habitus, capital and field, our focus is an investigation of the differences that are apparent between respondent parents in their levels of involvement with regard to schools. We conclude that, within a broadly similar paradigm of active involvement with and monitoring of schools, nuanced differences in parental strategising reflect whether academic achievement is given absolute priority within the home. This, in turn, reflects differential family habitus, and differential possession and activation of capitals. (Contains 8 notes.)

Racial microaggressions are brief, everyday interactions that send denigrating messages to people of color because they belong to a racially minoritised group. Compared to more overt forms of racism, racial microaggressions are subtle and insidious, often leaving the victim confused, distressed and frustrated and the perpetrator oblivious of the offense they have caused. Drawing on the counter-narrative aspect of critical race theory that stresses the importance of understanding the role of race in the world through the experiences of people of color, I demonstrate the subtle but powerful ways in which racial microaggressions can manifest within a fictional academic setting and the consequences for those involved. It is argued that while engagement with overt forms of racism, notably through the recording of racist incidents, remains crucial towards the fight for race equality, this has tended within both education and wider British society to obfuscate understanding of these more nuanced, everyday forms of racism with which those of color must contend. (Contains 1 table and 26 notes.)

This paper reports on data drawn from a study exploring the educational strategies of 62 Black Caribbean heritage middle-class parents. In this paper, we consider the respective roles of race and class in the shaping of parents' educational strategies, deploying an analysis that focuses on their intersection and seeks to hold both race and class in productive tension. Drawing on empirical data, we illustrate how parents' classed and raced identities shape their interactions with school staff. (Contains 2 notes.)

The article discusses the findings of an ESRC funded project (RES-062-23-1880) which used in-depth interviews to explore the educational experiences and strategies of 62 Black Caribbean parents; the biggest qualitative study of education and the Black middle class yet conducted in the UK. The article focuses on the parents' interactions with their children's teachers and, in particular, their experience that teachers tend to have systematically lower academic expectations for Black children (alongside a regime of heightened disciplinary scrutiny and criticism) regardless of the students' social class background. The parents' accounts highlight the significance of a cumulative process where a series of low level misdemeanors sometimes build into a pattern of seemingly incessant and unfair criticism that can have an enormously damaging impact on their children. Although our data suggest that these processes can involve children of both sexes and of any age, the parents report a particular concern for Black young men, whom they perceive to be especially at risk. Our findings demonstrate the continued significance of race inequality and illuminate the intersectional relationship between race and social class inequalities in education. This is particularly important at a time when English education policy assumes that social class is the overwhelming driver of achievement and where race inequity has virtually disappeared from the policy agenda. Our findings reveal that despite their material and cultural capital, many middle-class Black Caribbean parents find their high expectations and support for education thwarted by racist stereotyping and exclusion. (Contains 1 table and 6 notes.)

It has been argued that racialised Others occupy a liminal space of alterity; a position at the edges of society from which their identities and experiences are constructed. Rather than being regarded as a place of disadvantage and degradation, it has been posited that those excluded from the centre can experience a "perspective advantage" as their experiences and analyses become informed by a panoramic dialectic offering a wider lens than the white majority located in the privileged spaces of the centre are able to deploy. In this article, I invite the reader to glimpse the world from this liminal positioning as I reflect critically on how the intersections between social class, race and gender variously advantage or disadvantage, depending on the context, the ways in which Black middle classes are able to engage with the education system. While I make reference to findings from a recent school-focused ESRC project "The Educational Strategies of the Black Middle Classes" the article takes a wider perspective of the education system, also incorporating an autobiographical analysis of the academy as a site of tension, negotiation and challenge for the few Black middle classes therein. I make use of the Critical Race Theory tool of chronicling (counter-narrative) to help demonstrate the complex, multifaceted and often contradictory ways in which ambitions for race equality often represent lofty organisational ideals within which genuine understanding of racism is lacking. (Contains 12 notes.)

Explored through a focus on the behaviour and related experiences of a 9 year old Muslim Somalian boy called Zak, Woods offered a fascinating in-depth case study account of the rewards and sanctions systems in place at a culturally and religiously diverse London primary school. Over a period of 18 months, Woods employed a range of methodological techniques to reflect on and demonstrate the ways in which Zak was a "boy who often broke school rules" and for whom traditional behaviourist methods of reward and sanction seem to have been fundamentally unhelpful. Unfortunately, while the paper is largely thought-provoking, there is little exploration of how Zak's behaviour might be understood through the wider lens of race/ethnicity, gender, and social class, especially in relation to national statistics on education and the now substantial body of qualitative research on pupils' experiences of school. In this article, the author considers how examination of such issues may have contributed to Woods' overall analysis and concludes by making a plea for a much stronger role of reflexivity in qualitative research where issues of difference are pertinent. (Contains 1 note.)

The continued low academic attainment of Black pupils is now a well-established, familiar feature of the annual statistics of educational attainment. Black pupils tend to consistently perform below their white counterparts and below the national average. Key debates, examining how to address the difference in attainment gap, have tended to focus almost exclusively on the achievements of Black male pupils with little explicit attention paid to the needs and experiences of their female counterparts. Based on ethnographic research that explores how staff and pupils at an inner city secondary school construct academic success, this paper reveals how and why Black female pupils have become silenced in these debates. Employing a Bourdieuian framework, it is argued that while prevalent discourses on femininity serve to increase Black girls' legitimacy in the context of dominant school discourses on academic success, those on ethnicity serve simultaneously to downgrade their legitimacy, both minimizing their opportunities for high status academic success and rendering them invisible in the debates on Black attainment.

The continued lower academic attainment of Black (especially Black Caribbean) pupils is now well established. Yet, to date there has been no single coherent national Government strategy that has successfully closed the gap in educational attainment between either Black and White pupils or between Black pupils and the national average. Academic and policy debates centring on the causes and potential ways of addressing this gap remain marred by controversy and disagreement. This paper is based on qualitative research, which explores how staff and pupils at an inner city secondary school in the south of England construct academic success. Focusing on one aspect of the findings, it reveals that staff subscribe to two forms of success: an inclusive, low D to G grade success and an exclusive, high A* to C grade success, each of which are seen as attainable only by certain types of pupils. The appearance and behaviour of Black pupils, particularly those engaged in what is termed "Black street culture", are seen as directly at odds with the aims of the school and therefore minimize their likelihood of attaining success in exclusive terms. (Contains 1 table and 4 notes.)

Black women at universities are seldom heard. Institutions need to listen and take action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the personal reflections of educators and contributors to policy on the shifting status of race equality in education policy in England between 1993 and 2013. The interview participants included some of the most notable figures active in race equality work in England. Part of the paper’s significance is its focus on the perspectives of actors with longstanding involvement in the field of race equality, who have witnessed changes in policy over time. As “stakeholders” with direct involvement in education policy-making and enactment, the participants tended to focus on three historic policy moments. These were: measures aimed at closing ethnic achievement gaps that began in the early 1990s; the diversity and citizenship agenda that featured in New Labour’s term; and the Macpherson Report (1999) and the subsequent Race Relations (Amendment) Act (2000). Participants’ narratives converged in a largely pessimistic view of 1993-2013 as a period in which race equality policy had gained momentum, touched the policy mainstream - but then failed. By the end of the New Labour administration (1997-2010) and the start of the subsequent Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government (2010-2015), explicit focus on race equality in education policy had, in the views of the participants, been severely diminished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]