Abstract
Despite a decade of diversity policy plans, a wave of student rallies has ignited debates across western European university campuses. We observe these debates from a situated call for anti-racism in Belgian higher education institutions, and critically reflect on the gap between diversity policy discourse and calls for anti-racism. The students’ initiatives make a plea for racial literacy in the curriculum, to foster a critical awareness on how racial hierarchies have been educated through curricula and institutional processes. Students rethink race as a matter to be (un)learned. This pedagogical question, on racial literacy in the curriculum, is a response to diversity policies often silent about race and institutionalised racisms. Students request a fundamental appeal of knowledgeability in relation to race; diversity policy mostly envisions working on (racial) representation, as doing anti-racist work. This article argues how racial literacy might offer productive ways to bridge the disparities between students’ calls for anti-racism and the institutional (depoliticised) vocabulary of diversity. We implement Stuart Hall’s critical race theory and Jacques Rancière’s subjectification as key concepts to study and theorise these calls for anti-racism as a racial literacy project. This project can be built around engagement as educational concept. We coin possibilities to deploy education as a forum of engagement and dialogue where global asymmetries such as race, gender and citizenship can be critically addressed.
Highlights
Semiotics of RaceThe debate seems to arise in distinct vocabularies and signifying practices
Despite a decade of diversity policy plans, a wave of student rallies has ignited debates across western European university campuses
Racial literacy could deploy race differently, not as an unspoken but an implied signifier that can racialise students, but as a compass to understand institutional dynamics that undermine the connection between education and democracy
Summary
The debate seems to arise in distinct vocabularies and signifying practices. The diversity policy plans that we analysed referred to race as a cultural signifier through words such as disadvantaged , underrepresented , migration background and l’origine et la culture11 These policy documents do not refer to race as physical differences, but encode race mainly with cultural terms. Addressing race merely in terms of cultural difference (migration, socio-economic status, etc.) tends to encode any signifier of physical difference (hijab, skin tone, hair, etc.) as a marker of cultural incompatibility [8]. From this perspective, avoiding speaking about physical signifiers of race jeopardises the acknowledgement of race as a political category with material consequences (affects, emotions, discrimination, exclusion, etc.) in the everyday life of students
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