Education Series Part 1 of 3 - Collegiality in Universities is the New Racism
In 2018, when I started as an assistant professor at my institution, I immediately began to outperform my White colleagues, winning award after award, including an Early Ontario Researcher Award, one of the most competitive awards in the province. This achievement was followed by induction into the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. My own university acknowledged in its press release that these achievements recognized me as one of the leading Black scholars in Canada.
I also published an article in the New York Times, served on the university's renaming committee, and appeared in numerous news, media, and film productions. And yet, following all of these accomplishments, my mid-term annual report in 2021 – written by all White colleagues – summed up my achievements from 2018-2021 as “satisfactory.”
My actual job performance was not being assessed; in their “collegial” assessment, I was average. This is the reason I took it upon myself to find a different home for my talents. I could never have imagined, however, that by choosing myself, standing up for my achievements would be interpreted as not being “collegial”, but by the actions of numerous people, I now realize that that’s exactly what has happened.
In academia, the coded language of “collegiality” is part of the larger project of the new racism because it does not seek to create space for Black people, queer people, disabled people, and social-justice-minded White people to speak freely and openly, and to perform to their highest abilities without fear of reprisal. Instead, this concept rewards “loyal” Black people, White women, mediocrity, and all those who fall under the umbrella of “going along to get along.”
What is the “New Racism”?
In 1981 Martin Barker, in his book The New Racism: Conservatives and the Ideology of the Tribe coined the term the “new racism.” He described this form of racism as highly sophisticated and disguised through semantic manipulations.
While Baker’s theories were in relation to in the racist public discourse about immigration in the UK during the reign of Prime Minister (PM) Margaret Thatcher, the first woman elected to a leadership position in the Western world, it also related to the rhetoric and policies of then-US President Ronald Regan, and then-Canadian PM Brian Mulroney, as explored in Donald J. Savoie’s 1994 book, which bears their name.
Monday, February 18, 2008 edition of the Globe and Mail. This was their opinion of Afrocentric Algebra, in relation to the opening of an African-Centered school in Toronto.
Of course these leaders did not all agree, as evidenced by Mulroney’s stance against South African apartheid, which has been remembered a lot since his passing; but what they did share was a view toward remapping the western world’s bureaucracies through increased privatization, the neoliberalization of public institutions, and the valorization of meritocratic approaches to equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Newspaper headlines the day after Barack Obama’s historic presidential win on November 5, 2008 becoming the first Black president, supposed “proof” of America’s post-racial society.
In Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (2004), Patricia Hill Collins called the “new racism” a new strain that is pervasive but harder to recognize than the old kind. It is a kind of racism that is subtle and for her, most locatable within popular culture. Hill Collins specifically points out how class-specific representations of Black masculinity and Black femininity speak to the importance that ideologies of class and culture have in justifying the persistence of racial inequality.
The “new racism” uses coded language and race-neutral rhetoric such as “post-racial” to mask its presence.
This supposed colour-blind collegiality makes the new racism different from individual racism (as perpetrated by individuals, overtly or covertly) or systemic racism (inherent in societal institutions, especially those established in the 19th or 20th century). At the same time, collegiality as the new racism is also closely related to democratic racism, which describes the contradictory way in which racist ideologies are simultaneously articulated with egalitarian and democratic principles in social discourses.
Eleanor Roosevelt reads the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1949; FDR Presidential Library & Museum 64-165 FDR Presidential Library & Museum, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
For example, university guidelines, anti-racist policies, human rights procedures seek to protect ethno-racial and gender minorities but also give the same protections to White supremacists, sexists, homophobic and transphobic individuals in the name of “freedom of speech.”
What is “collegiality”?
Over the years, University Affairs, a source of information about and for Canada’s university community, has provided valuable insights into this concept. In 2012, Timothy J. Haney, then-assistant professor of sociology at Mount Royal University (he is now full professor), provided a critique of collegiality on the grounds that he believed that universities should cease discussing collegiality as a sought-after trait:
The evaluation of our colleagues should be based entirely on job performance. Collegiality has little to do with job performance.
There is confusion over how to define collegiality. Though collegiality can involve concrete actions, such as agreeing to guest-lecture in a colleague’s class while she’s away at a conference, nonetheless it is often understood as one’s interactional style, word choice, or how well someone schmoozes at a wine-and-cheese reception. All of these characteristics are quite disconnected from one’s actual job performance.
Another obvious problem with collegiality is its potential to silence dissent and generate uniformity.
Collegiality may have the unintended (or perhaps intended) consequence of erasing the very diversity that Canadian universities say they wish to foster.
During one of my first faculty meetings, I experienced what Haney describes “as a middle-class notion of collegiality, as an aggregation of hallway comments, positions on issues in meetings, and other interpersonal interactions.”
A White male colleague raised his hand to share an observation. He did not like “the direction” the school was headed in, and he added, “first we hired Cheryl, who’s next?” In response to this comment, my colleagues said nothing. I immediately asked him what he meant by that, and the topic quickly changed to his concern over “expertise” in the field because he was worried the school was losing its “focus.” If I had raised my concern over his comments to my chair, also a White male, it is very unlikely they would have demanded he apologize, let alone explain what he meant.
There is no system or support for me to do anything other than “grin and bear it,” which is the way collegiality is experienced in real time.
More recently, I was on a committee where I said to the group that I have never felt a sense of belonging or “collegial” at this university or at any university. Instead of having an engaged discussion about why, the committee, which was majority White, said nothing. They were all silent. This silence has become a synonym for what it means to be collegial.
In her 2021 article, “The Dangers Of An Overly Collegial Culture,” in Forbes, Sindhu Kutty, a Partner & Co-Founder at Kuroshio Consulting, advising clients across North America on strategy, transformations and leadership, asserts that “An overly collegial culture can create a vacuum of information.” Kutty explains further,
In an effort to be liked, leaders might wait until a problem becomes insurmountable before communicating. This type of culture also tends to value niceness over holding people accountable, which is detrimental to meeting organizational strategic goals. It can also lead to decision-making inertia where consensus is constantly pursued, which then leads to zero change and a clingy attitude toward the status quo. A lack of provocation and the inability to bring diverse perspectives to the surface can also slow innovation to a crawl.
I disagree with many of the decisions my university makes; I see the performative allyship of “Black initiatives,” equity committees led by White men or women, and curriculum that reinforces Eurocentric epistemologies and ontologies, yet I am not afforded any opportunities to share these critiques in productive ways that would engender richer outcomes.
I am not seen as a thought leader or as someone who has anything significant to contribute to the betterment of the university community despite playing a fundamental part in the establishment of the university’s Black Studies minor, the first of its kind. Instead, the very things Kutty talks about which “includes communicating honestly (about both risks and benefits),” are not encouraged, requested or rewarded.
We Have to Become the Change
Wikimedia Commons, Fair Use, Real World New York Cast, 1992.
In 1992, one of the first reality television shows, MTV’s Real World, debuted. The opening credits declared,
This is the true story of seven strangers; picked to live in a loft and have their lives taped; to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real
The culture of “nice” and “being collegial” is the new racism. It functions to keep the peace, to “keep calm and carry on” not to engage in challenging, dynamic conversations and debate that would ultimately produce more authentic outcomes.
We need to co-create environments where a diversity of thought and action can thrive. To radically reimagine what is needed to improve education in the 21st century, Black scholars like me have to be valued, we can no longer be feared. The very existence of the university is depending on it.
It’s time to remove “collegial” from our vocabulary and replace it with a mantra of healthy conflict so that our educational institutions can move toward actual commitments to change, not maintain passive aggressive consensus that masquerades as collegiality.
Part 2 of this series will unpack “Collegial Governance.” Part 3 will provide a thoughtful commentary on why equity, diversity, and inclusion is under attack.
