On Monday, 14 October 2019, Decolonising SOAS hosted a panel event entitled ‘What is racism, and how do we over come it?’. Below is the video of the event, as well as the event description and list of speakers. Over the past few years, racism – and how we should understand it – has increasingly been debated in the public domain. Some conversation has been focussed on what actually constitutes racism,
Bringing together a number of thinkers who are active in anti-racism work – including but not limited to anti-Blackness, Islamophobia and antisemitism – this panel will explore how we define racism and how we can challenge it.
11 February 2019 By Eleanor Newbigin “SOAS is unique in the regional focus of its History teaching. It is the only History department in Britain and north America that does not teach courses on western history Rather, our BA and MA History programmes focus exclusively on the histories of regions and people in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. In their 2013 study of the western-centric focus of UK and
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002rkq Social psychologist Dr Keon West explores racial bias, and the concepts of both conscious and unconscious bias, drawing on the latest pyschological and sociological research. He examines common misconceptions surrounding racism and examines how bias is formed, asking how far we are responsible for our unconscious associations. The term “unconscious bias” has gained a great deal of popularity as an explanation for continued discrimination in Britain – and Unconscious
From being seen of marginal concern, over the past 10 years, the existence of a significant attainment gap between white and ‘Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) undergraduate students is now high on the agenda for most UK universities, but especially those institutions that have an ethnically diverse student body. As well as providing an overview of the nature and scale of ‘the problem’, this presentation will critically explore some of the ways in which BME attainment been theorised ranging from, student deficit, a product of unconscious bias, institutional/structural racism, and colonial curriculum. The presentation will end by offering a range of strategies for addressing the problem.
