On Whiteness, Disillusionment and Academia
Earlier this year I applied for a PhD fellowship in a Norwegian university for a project exploring racism in teacher education. My friends and colleagues who know anything about me can vouch for how passionate and excited I was about the project. Luckily, I was one of the three candidates shortlisted for the final round and called in for an interview.
Interestingly, the interview panel composed of three white women and only one black woman. Despite the fact that the interview went quite well, in my opinion atleast, I was not the final candidate selected for the position.
In the interest of transparency that is common in Norwegian educational spaces, specifically during the application stage, they shared with me the name of the person who was selected for the position. One simple google search revealed that the person selected for the PhD project exploring racism in teacher education and academia in Norway was infact a white woman based in Netherlands. Read that sentence again. And again, if you will and marvel, like I did, at the irony of it all. Was I surprised? Not at all. Was I angry? Of course.
Instead of listening to the voices of people with lived experiences of racism, they chose to select a European White Woman to study racism. This is by no means a rant about whether or not I was the best fit for the position. I probably was not - not having a background in teacher education in the European context for one - but am I really to believe that they could not find a single non-white person for this role? Was it truly impossible for them to make their search targeted to find someone who can truly address racism and it's counter part, whiteness in academic institutions?
My own previous research on racism in social work in the European context has made it quite clear that racialised people are not open to talking about race with white people for fear of having their experiences invalidated - especially in a country like Norway where notions of Nordic Exceptionalism and colour blind narratives of "imagined sameness" aim to both erase Norway's history of imperialism and silence racialised individuals. Whose experiences and voices is the proposed research suppose to uplift then if the project is heralded by yet another white person?
All of this is to say that I continue to be disillusioned by academia. Disillusioned because I often find that discourses in academic spaces in the Global North are just that, discourses, not meant to lead to any substantive change. Yet I still wish to pursue my research interests knowing that my voice as a racialised Other needs to be heard, is meant to be heard, despite white supremacy.
