In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

6 Only the Fittest of the Fittest Will Survive Black Women and Education Barbara McKellar Department of Education, South Bank University, London People often ask me how I have managed to progress from the primary classroom to a post in the teacher education department at a London polytechnic. This question is pertinent when there is evidence of black underrepresentation in higher education. I would not find unreliable the informal survey of teacher education institutions carried out by the Anti-Racist Teacher Education Network (Table 1). This showed that I would be one of twenty-seven black teacher educators in England, Scotland, and Wales (0.6 per cent). Further information would be needed to establish how many of these black teacher educators are women. The small percentage the survey revealed is indicative of the way in which both race and gender operate to prohibit the recruitment and career advancement of black women in the teaching profession. Since the teacher education sector has to recruit from the pool of qualified and experienced teachers, what is needed is an analysis of the career progress of black teachers, in order to explain the percentage of 0.6 in post. What follows is an account of this progress with special reference to the ways in which race, class, and gender relations have shaped the development of my career. 111 Table 1. Number of Full-Time Staff in Teacher Education, with Number of Black Staff Shown in Parentheses Public Sector (including voluntary colleges) University England and Wales 2,150 (18) 1350 (8) Scotland 1,709 (1) 17 (0) Source: George J. Stigler, Domestic Servants in the United States: 1900–1940, Occasional Paper no. 24 (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1946), p. 7. 112 / Barbara McKellar First, I shall discuss the structural position of black women in society with a view to interpreting how this position influences the development of identity and images. Second, I shall discuss the processes of schooling that have assisted in shaping my potential to benefit from higher education. Finally, I shall look at the issues that black women face in sustaining a career in the teaching profession. Black Women in Society Historical Background The position of black women in society is structured by political and economic developments , both nationally and internationally. The past holds as much explanation for the experiences of black women today as the present social and political climate. The development of racial and gender superiority coincides with the rise of capitalism as a major means of production in Europe. Such developments have also defined the roles played by all women in society and dictated the nature of the relations that could exist both between gender groups and across racial groups. It would be unrealistic to discuss the processes by which roles are structured without reference to the historical factors, not least because the same terms of reference operate to structure the progress of black women in education in Britain today. The experiences that are enjoyed in education are a reflection of the relations that exist in society at large. I would go as far as to say that when I walk down any street those I meet would not necessarily know that I am a teacher educator but would know that I am black and female. Therefore, the cultures to which one belongs are only important insofar as society attaches significance to them. Throughout the last two hundred years or more there has been a predominantly accepted image of black women, whereby they are portrayed as serving and/or servicing others. The subservient role played by black women was related primarily to the development of indentured societies in the Caribbean and in Central and North America. The role of black women in such societies is not dissimilar to one played by workingclass women in Britain during a parallel historical period. But in the black diaspora, the women were invariably performing this role in all spheres of life without any of the social differentiation that would have been normal in the African societies from which they came. Such societies had the potential to allow a diversity of social and economic activity, but slavery introduced the limitations of domesticity wholesale to successive generations of black women. Quite apart from the restrictive range of social and “economic” activity, the period of slavery marked the point at which gender segregation occurred amongst black people in slave societies. Thus the gender role reconstruction, as well as cutting men and women off from...

Share