Institutional Racism in Higher Education (review)

Published before the July 2005 tragic bombings in London, one of the chapter authors of this edited book (Tyrer) wrote, "[T]he family, so terrified of ghosts, turn out to be ghosts themselves. Despite encountering endless warnings of the spectre of Islamic fundamentalism on campus, by far the most striking instances of extremism and intolerance found in my study were victims, not perpetrators" (p. 46). Would Tyrer alter this statement today? In any case, this four-part, 14-chapter book offers a complex glimpse into institutional racism of institutions of higher education in Great Britain. The purpose of this book is to "scrutinize and research the historical and contemporary processes by which racism has operated and continues to operate" (p. vii). For readers in the United States, some terms, government agencies, and racist incidents may be unfamiliar, but these should not deter readers from gaining insight and perspective into the ways that institutional racism influences education, employees, and students at British public institutions. A welcome bonus to this brief text is how institutions and government agencies are addressing "the legacy of colonialist thinking" (p. x).

More specifically, chapter topics define racism and institutional racism, discuss the Black/White paradigm, explore the intersection of gender and race, expose legal tests that determine disability to be an "insurmountable barrier for disabled people" (p. 88), and characterize racism in broader terms than here in the U.S. For example, Islamophobia, Eureocentrism, and the plight of uneducated Gypsy/Travellers are discussed. Also exposed is how racism too often is framed through the perspective of the World War II paradigm of Nazi "exceptionalism" (p. 140), meaning that unless an event is deemed as aberrant as the holocaust, the segregated U.S. South, or South African apartheid, it is not considered racism. The book, too, is clear about how the intentions of individual White people (well intentioned or otherwise) are a large part of the problem in sustaining racist systems in institutions. A participant in one author's research (Pilkington) stated, "I feel many in academia are smiling assassins" (p. 24).

Listed below are the parts of the book and their respective chapters.

Part 1: Challenging Racism in Higher Education

• • Ivory Towers? The Academy and Racism (Les Back)

• • Black and White Paradigms in Higher Education (William A. Gulam)

• • Institutional Racism in the Academy? Comparing the Police and University in Midshire (Andrew Pilkington)

• • Understanding Institutional Racism (Jaques Rangasamy)

Part 2: Higher Education Experiences

• • The Others: Extremism and Intolerance on Campus and the Spectre of Islamic Fundamentalism (David Tyrer)

• • Fish in or Out of Water: A Theoretical Framework for Race and the Space of Academia (Nirmal Purwar)

• • Unveiling South Asian Female Identities Post September 11: Asian Female Students' Sense of Identity and Experiences in Higher Education (Shirin Housee)

• • "It is Possible to have an Education and be a Traveller": Education, Higher Education, and Gypsy/Travellers in Britain (Colin Clark)

• • Disability and Racial Discrimination in Employment in Higher Education (Ozcan Konus)

Part 3: Agendas for Change

• • Tackling Institutional Racism in Higher Education: An Antiracist Toolkit (Ian Law, Deborah Phillips, and Laura Turney)

• • Transforming the Curriculum? The Problem with Multiculturalism (Sanjay Sharma)

• • The Equality Challenge Unit and the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000: A Developmental Approach to Implementation in Higher Education (Joyce Hill and Emmanuel Kuesemamuriwo)

Part 4: Theorizing Persistent Racisms

• • Discourse on Institutional Racism, the Genealogy of a Concept (Barnor Hesse)

• • Slippery People: The Immigrant Imaginary and the Grammar of Colours (Salman Sayyid)

Readers who are looking for a comparison between institutional racism in the U.S. and that in Great Britain will be disappointed as there is little reference to racism in the U.S. One of the few mentions of the U.S., however, criticizes the over-theorization of racism in the U.S. with insufficient attention paid to strategies to eliminate it. The intrigue of this book is that it offers a singularly British perspective of institutional racism plus examples of both beneficial and ineffective...