👇🏾I am so proud of my friend Prof Jason Arday!
Diagnosed with autism &global development delay at 3, he was unable to speak until he was 11 &could not read or write until he was 18. At 37, he is about to become the youngest Black prof ever at Cambridge
That
@UKLabour
report has finished me tbh. Today I'm thinking about fellow Black women who are treated like shit by colleagues & experience both the subtle and overt omnipresence of misogynoir & anti black racism. Don't @ be with whattabboutery, no empathy policing today TY.
Academics please circulate!
We are trying to prepare the nxt gen of black students to navigate PhD funding which we know is getting even more competitive & exclusionary. The system NEEDS to change, this is what we can do in the meantime
#blackinacademia
✨Passed my PhD viva with no corrections (😱)
So many to thank which I'll do when I've calmed down but 4 now HUGE thank you to Prof
@BridgetByrne3
&Prof Ann Phoenix for engaging with my work so thoroughly.
MASSIVE thank you to my epic supervisors
@EmmakJackson
&
@AcademicDiary
The lack of Black/mixed PhDs in UK unis (see HESA data) really isnt getting enough attention.
There is (rightly so) a lot of talk abt decolonising our curriculums and institutions, but this convo shouldn't be seperate from these stark inequalities at postgrad research level.
"It is a privilege for us to make a contribution to the global movement and long tradition of disability activists seeking to find innovative ways to make the world a more equitable place. Nothing about us, without us."
✋🏾🚨✨Black researchers/writers/creatives!
Earlier this year I joined the editorial advisory board of the independent,left-wing publisher
@LW_Books
. Really excited to share that I'll be supporting
@JumanahJy
in the commissioning for the Radical Black Women's book series!
🧵...
✨On 1st October 2021 I started a 3 year Junior Research Fellowship in Black British Studies
@PembrokeOxford
(
@UniofOxford
). It's been a crazy few months and years. I'm so grateful for all the support I've been given:
The racism in UK sociology & social sciences is UNBELIEVABLE and I'm sorry (I'm not sorry) but so many class scholars who do not touch race hold some responsiblity. ALSO so many race scholars who don't practice what they preach do too!
This is what happens when sociology and universities don't keep checking themselves. Women like Lisa start thinking its okay to use something traumatic that happened to me (to her 14k) followers to point score about her invented plight through the dicipline. Unbelievable.
My first academic journal article co-authored with friend, colleague and lead PI on
@BrExpatsEU
@Michaelacbenson
woooop!
Brexit, British People of Colour in the EU27 and everyday racism in Britain and Europe (Benson and Lewis, 2019)
@ERSjournal
I've been a PhD student at Goldsmiths since 2016 and it's been really sad to watch staff & students being consistently ignored and sidelined for neoliberal bs pursuits. Sending solidarity to
@GoldsmithsUCU
#SaveGoldsmiths
Lots of things can be true at once:
- Black people & our multiracial working classes in particular are allowed to feel frustrated about what becomes newsworthy & of value.Telling people their response is wrong is deeply troubling and reminiscent of past failures on the left.
Thank you to everyone who has messaged me/commented on the post which eventually helped me to get her tweets removed about my experience w LSE Sociology. I really appreciate the love&support.
I am not thanking the ppl who DM'd me to pick my brain abt racism tho (again!)
🗣️All Academics🗣️
We have curated a 2 evening education festival at
@ExploreWellcome
to help support our future FOC events that assist Black students in navigating PhD funding.
Come, celebrate & help us do what the sector continuously refuses to do!
There are so few black PhDs, lecturers, researchers & profs in the UK.
These events are designed to help black students navigate funding & institutions so they can pursue a career in HE.
Please share and encourage black undergrads & MA students!
**New event series**
Black in Academia: Staying the course
An event series to help black students navigate postgraduate study, PhD research and careers in academia
#blackinacademia
Monday 19th November at the British Library. Limited spaces available
??
What is happening on the left?
My issue with these takes (a part from the obvious erasure of sociology) is many of our leaders on the left have big platforms / are doing the books&podcasts yet are talking on things & clearly haven't done the reading and it's irresponsible!
Cried reading this just now from
@Okwonga
On Keir's dismissal of BLM -
"He doesn’t understand because he doesn’t want to understand it. In the words of an acquaintance on Facebook, he thinks that black people are exaggerating."
It's okay to be in solidarity & support the strike (& the importance and strength in the withdrawal of labour) whilst also expressing discomfort abt being in solidarity with ppl who actively uphold inequitable structures within the academy.
Some of the emails and msgs that many of my friends and colleagues are receiving about this current moment is really making us wonder whether people have ever truly been LISTENING to the decades of scholarship & activism people have been doing on what racial justice looks like?
I wonder if in my lifetime Labour will stop telling people that the reason they're poor or that life is hard is because they are white? And I wonder if they will ever realise that the Tories do nationalism better?
I'm submitting my PhD soon so I need to log out off this to fully focus🤣😭
Make sure you're following
@survivesocpod
&subscribed. So many amazing guests & special series' coming up! Politics of race & class with experts, scholars & activists each week!
See you in autumn😬
🚨Jason's appointment is important for Black scholars and students in particular as we continue to fight for more equitable distribution of resources by institutions and the sector more broadly.
So many academics who write about race & class take citation so seriously. Like, I'm talking sleepless nights that we aren't crediting people who have written on the subjects we are looking to contribute to. I'm genuinely curious about how this works in journalism?
Note This episode was recorded in August before the death of Elizabeth Il
E172 Surviving Society :5th Anniversary Special !🎂
To celebrate 5 years of the podcast, C,T & G reflect on the journey thus far…
🚨I'm taking a break from socials til Sept to WRITE & REST ⌨️🧘🏾♀️
B4 I go, I'd like to express how much twitter has helped me during this time! My TL is so often full of motivation🖤
I'm email-able&ofc you can still hear my annoying Kentish/Brummie accent on
@survivesocpod
😘✊🏾
The way the just started honing in on women as soon as there was no light was actually terrifying. The police literally started being violent unprovoked
#ReclaimTheseStreets
#ReclaimTheNight
- Though the images being shared of white women experiencing police brutality are circulating - last night was not a 'white women vigil'.
🚨Most of the speakers were Black women and women of colour. And of course there were white women too!🚨
If you think/and are continuing to say that these violent racists/white supremacists *solely* represent a particular social class then you've misunderstood the f**a*r righ*t. You need to understand their deep deep history to understand who these people are.
Seeing a stark correlation between the exclusion of Black women (partic working class backgrounds) in funded postgrads, PhDs, jobs AND the constant ignoring, sitting on & frankly stealing the innovative and creative ways we respond to these realities in UK academia.
🌟I'm so proud of what we've achieved both within and beyond institutions & a sector that continuously said we weren't good enough, or that our way of thinking/ learning was not scholarly (shock, they want us now you now!!).🌟
It's here....EPISODE 100🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉
🔊E100 Sivamohan Valluvan: The Clamour of Nationalism🔊
Vallu joined us to discuss keys from his latest book, The Clamour of Nationalism: Race and nation in twenty-first-century Britain.
#surviving100
If you work in academia we would really appreciate you reading & RT'in our (
@LeadingRoutes
) reflections on institutional interpretations of the Broken Pipeline Report.
Scholarships to address the lack of funded Black PhDs in UKHE are important, but they're not enough.
1/ Following the release of the Broken Pipeline report last yr, more unis have been using positive action via scholarships.
We thought it was a good time to highlight some of the report recommendations institutions may have missed...
I'm truly harrowed by some of my findings in my PhD (&how recent incidents are). Some of the teachers out there (who I know are still teaching) are racist/dangerous/violent people. Coding bits and I have to keep walking away from my screen!
Black people in UKHE continue to be systemically marginalised in employment (salaries&contracts) & scholarship (citation, publishing &theft).
Jason's praxis represents how an individual has truly used their position to tangibly expose & work towards eradicating the inequities
Calling all Karen's & obviously anyone needing to think more critically about their feminist praxis! (all of us).
I was privileged enough to read 'Me Not You: the trouble with mainstream feminism' in late 2019 & interview
@alisonphipps
on
@survivesocpod
.
A must read!
I've had to come online because there are Black mixed & lightskin ppl (academics looking at u in partic rn) making this JK violence about themselves & their individualised plight whilst seeming to avoid how integral colourism is in maintaining local and global structures.
Academics who feel helpless about the lack of Black PhDs being awarded funding across UK HE (see HESA & your departments tbh)...come to our 2 evening education festival at
@ExploreWellcome
or 'pay it forward' to send a student within our network.
This is entirely dishonest, untrue, false!
@BBCNews
this headline is a LIE. Police aggressively and violently confronted women at the vigil unprovoked.
A confidential application process in which I was treated horrendously that for obvious reasons I havent disclosed publically yet (academics move like gangsters if you didn't already know) and this academic think this is acceptable????
UK Sociology can be SO elitist, I have such a love/hate relationship. Feel lucky to know people (there are lots of course!) who don't work like this, but still.
Such an inspiring/emancipatory subject yet routinely held back by 'tradition' & lack of innovation & evolution.
Reserve your energy academic friends These places are full of slippery people who will so often jump at the chance to extract from you&use you to enhance their own capital(s).I try to put kindness&understanding at the forefront of my praxis, but limits&boundaries are integral
🚨Black researchers/scholars/creatives (existing and emerging)- we want to hear from you!🚨
✋🏾Your proposals focus must be on Black women activists in Britain, but can be based on collectives &/or individuals. Support can be offered to help develop proposals (and 💸 see below)
On 30 December, Professor Jason Arday, who this year was named as one of the youngest people ever appointed to a Professorship at Cambridge University, will look at the stigma and shame associated with low literacy in adults.
#R4Today
👋🏾I'm looking for links/info/archival sources for as many UK Black supplementary & widening participation education organisations (school ages, FE, HE university) as poss from past 75yrs for some
@LeadingRoutes
events. Past and present. Small, medium & large. Plz send links 🤓
✨ Rest in power to husband, father, friend, brother and all round legend Matt Miller!
Big love & thank you to
@Miss_Toppin
for helping me address something so personal on the show.
And lots of love to my exec prod
@GoAddo
for encouraging/helping get this episode together.
😎NEW!
E153
@Miss_Toppin
The politics of cancer
Chantelle & Julia discuss their relationship with cancer. The conversation focuses on treatment, diagnosis, the impact of the lockdown & being part of working-age families.
This episode was produced in memory of Matt Miller💫
📢Do you know any Black and mixed Black African & Caribbean yr13s applying for university 4 autumn 2022?
Please encourage them to apply for our (free!) mentoring/transitions programme - Future Scholars!
🚨Deadline approaching!
👨🏿🎓🧑🏿🎓👩🏾🎓 Future Scholars 21/22!
Do you know any UK year 13s from Black and mixed Black African & Caribbean backgrounds applying for uni autumn 2022?
#Blackinacademia
Labours three issues remain:
1. nationalism,
2. legitimate concerns-isms
3. a lack of localised engagement with the messy (&long term) work of political education (E.g you are not poor because you are white, it's capitalism)
Labour have 2 problems: lack of political ambition for how they will transform communities like Hartlepool, and therefore an inability to organise around that.
Unless Labour can give voters something to vote for with pride, I can’t help think they’ll keep voting Tory with shame.
The thing that's so interesting about Grace doubling down on her take by saying critiques of it are anti-intellectual is that there are literal ⭐sociologists of class⭐ telling her this ain't it.
✨The series seeks to spotlight the contributions of radical Black women to social justice movements in Britain. It aims to redress, if even in a small way, the lack of resources on Black women’s history in particular
✨Excited to share Professor Jason Arday & I's latest article:
'We’ll see things they’ll never see: Sociological reflections on race, neurodiversity and higher education' with
@TheSocReview
Big thank you to reviewers, editors, family & friends
TLDR🧵
🗣️Shout out to my neurodiverse siblings during this time (this includes high levels of anxiety ppl).
I see you and feel your pain right now but we will make it through this period 🙏🏾
You might be able to tell that positive & excitable Chantelle that you might have heard on
@survivesocpod
is on strike because I'm really tired of having my kindness taken for weakness, people not being honest & people capitalising off mine & others creativity
I don't want to romanticise rejection, but Tissot and I have faced it continuously throughout our time in education.
But the reason why we've been able to get to this point is not because of 'hardwork', we got lucky & met people who believed in us.
Is the Cum*mi*ngs breaking lockdown (of course he did) another dead cat? Hearing outrage on the radio and all I can think about is how manipulative this guy is. What are we being distracted from? The necropoltics of course but what else is happening?
🧵Thank you so much for all the kind words and encouragement on this post.
I wanted to just say a few thank yous/ share some reflections on the actual PhD process and my thoughts on the importance of resisting a projection of the lone scholar during times of academic success:
✨Passed my PhD viva with no corrections (😱)
So many to thank which I'll do when I've calmed down but 4 now HUGE thank you to Prof
@BridgetByrne3
&Prof Ann Phoenix for engaging with my work so thoroughly.
MASSIVE thank you to my epic supervisors
@EmmakJackson
&
@AcademicDiary
- We are all starting from different places; emotionally, materially and racially so the grandstanding is simply reductive.
- Let people being angry and frustrated
All the panels, all the writing & speaking & all of the brave recalling of PAIN that so many have shared with you all& you now think it is appropriate to aggressively initiate more of the SAME convos when we have TOLD YOU time and time again HOW your institutions can change.
- there's many doing the inclusive political education beyond twitter and social media.
- this is a long game with small wins but we have to work towards them when we can.
#ReclaimTheNight
#ReclaimTheseStreets
I think in over 4 yrs of recording we might have just done our best/most important episode with
@JENGbA
. These incredible (mainly) women, mothers, friends and sisters campaign on behalf of, and with those wrongfully convicted of Joint Enterprise. Coming soon on
@survivesocpod
🚨urgent episode of
@survivesocpod
Race as a technology of power, histories of anti-racism (yes we discuss political blackness), the problem with white fragility &white self help lit, a nuance discussion on afropessism, BLM, anti-semitism & islamaphobia.
Big up
@alanalentin
😎NEW EPISODE😎
E089
@alanalentin
: Why Race Still Matters
This week Alana Lentin joined us to discuss key themes within her new book, Why Race Still Matters.
We are classing this as an essential listen (& read!) within our catalogue for race & racism scholars!!!!
Two favourite quotes from last night at
@LSEInequalities
@lsebrexitvote
"Brexit was not initiated or enabled by 'left behind Britons' "
"Brexit didn't come from the white working class, it came from the white middle class"
@GKBhambra
@dannydorling
Definitely one of our most important episodes on
@survivesocpod
to date.
@RoxyLegane
&
@KidsOfColourHQ
are doing such important work when it comes to democratising the violence of the state experienced by young people of colour.
🛑NEW!
E155 Roxy Legane: Prison sentences for text messages
Roxy joined us to outline the details of a guilty by association case in MCR crown court concerning 10 boys&conspiracy charges.Under conspiracy charges, the prosecution does not have to prove violence
@KidsOfColourHQ
Its coming up to a year since we stopped recording
@survivesocpod
in the studio and though we've had issues with sound quality/ general learning
#remotepodcasting
on the go, I'm so proud of what we've been able to produce during these 12 months!
✍️📣Call for chapter abstracts!
🔴Sycorax Style: Creative Paths to Freedom and Global Transformation🔴
“Art must come out of catastrophe.”
-Kamau Brathwaite
We're putting together an edited collection on creative methodologies and knowledge production!
👇
- Solidarities are ours for the taking in these moments. Some of us have more space to engage with this process than others. You will not convince people by repeatedly telling them they are wrong.
So happy to see
@AcademicDiary
& Bev Skeggs on this! Both have played such a crucial role in my own journey as a public sociologist. Backed me when no one else did, told me I was good enough when countless people had told me to give up. Reparative & loving scholars✨
#britsoc23
Disappointed at another Black mixed-race woman accepting a role that clearly should have been for a dark-skinned BW.
The persistence of this structural & interpersonal colourism(s) DOES require an acknowledgement of personal responsibility.
Antiblack racism, whiteness *AND* colourism made JK possible.
Please do more reading, look around at the visible Black people in your institution and consider therapy.
It is enough.
Please can we stop normalising voluntary unpaid labour/actual jobs for postgrads! By doing this you are literally contributing to structural disadvantage in HE. Short thread -
I just want to say that I am extremely lucky to have a 3 year position post PhD, but also to reiterate that there is nothing individualised about my achievements. Everyone is working hard & I'm not an exception!
Loads of help, aquiring capitals & some luck have been crucial!
@redrumlisa
@LindaJaneLewis
Lisa delete this now. This is not your story to tell. I haven't even spoken publically about the instutional racism &classisn I experienced at LSE sociology, so for you to talk about this to your 14k followers is a disgrace. I will speak when I'm ready, this is not yours.
Tonight at
@leadingroutes
we are continuing to help mre students navigate the PhD & academic career process.
We all know it isn't just about filling in the form and hoping for the best!
This work doesn't end with us and institutions must be held to account.
#blackinacademia
I wish they would stop talking about the 'prospect' of the NHS being overwhelmed when it has in fact been overwhelmed for a good number of years.
Keep calm & save the economy 🤪
But there's also about 30 people (minimum!) who have been integral to my scholarly development. Guidance, mentorship, sponsorship and people literally breaking outdated (racist & ableist) traditions about academic excellence have enabled me to get a job.
This is not a defence of her, but more abt the fact that there needs to be a collective recognition of the role 'good people' play in creating environments that nurture racism. The gaps in scholarship, knowledge, structures & what is upheld as valueable enable all of this.
Literally one week ago today I was teaching bell hooks x Stuart Hall to sixth formers and any one who has used her work knows the magic it creates amongst students. What's love got to do with it? literally, everything. RIP to the greatest x
It'll be some time before I have the words,space&time to articulate just how transformative bell hooks has been for my (Black) sense of self, my own scholarship & how I approach all of my relationships. The 🔑 was to try to find ways to love even in an abundance of lovelessness
This is quite an emotional one for me personally as I started my postgrad career in
@bbkpsychosocial
and was kept on track despite severe financial & MH difficulties by the department & Yasmeen Narayan
@Aaaqilah
. Lets go HE! Put the money in!
These studentships were inspired by the important
@LeadingRoutes
report The Broken Pipeline: Barriers to Black PhD Students Accessing Research Council Funding, by
@pwi11iams
, Sukhi Bath, Jason Arday & our graduate
@ChantelleJLewis
🎧👂🏾Last night we hosted our first ever listening party. Co-facilitated by the brilliant
@HJusticeLdn
. We brought together artists, educators & organisers.
✨In these (listening) workshops we want to learn about the possibilities & limitations of audible knowledge production.