Dr Victoria Showumni (IRIS profile) co-founded and is the longest-serving chair of LTC, and has a long career as a feminist sociologist. She is known by many in UCL and beyond as a staunch advocate of a liberated curriculum – for instance, she recently organised and chaired a UCL-wide Town Hall meeting on race and has been a key influence on the institution and mentor to others for many years. This is an edited transcript of an informal interview with Jason Davies (UCL Arena) from the 31st July 2020.
JPD: Tell us quickly, who you are, what your role is and a few headlines from your career and what you do.
VS: Okay, so hi Jason, really nice to do this for you on this sunny day and I can’t believe it’s Friday already. Who am I? I’m Dr. Victoria Showumni, I’m based at the Institute of Education, in the department of EPS, which is Education, Policy and Society. I have been at the Institute since 2008. I’m an academic there, my area’s around feminism and one of my research areas is around gender and leadership. That’s one aspect of my research, and the other aspect is looking at the experiences of black girls and black, young women in education and their well-being. And I’m very much involved internationally, with work and also nationally within the UK as well. Is that a good start?
JPD: That’s great. Yeah. I know, you’ve done an awful lot of projects over the years and had a lot of involvement in trying to persuade UCL to change its institutional racism and habits and so on. I mean, for instance, you recently chaired a Town Hall on racism, after the murder of George Floyd,. What would you say is UCL’s most pressing need? What must it address next?
VS: Let me go back to the Town Hall. I designed and and had a good hand in who was going to be on the discussion panel, and the design of that was deliberate, deliberate to ensure that we had a maximum integration but also I wanted the the themes to emerge from what has been said about what’s going on in the culture of UCL.
I think some of the things within UCL at the present moment, which they need to tackle as quickly as possible, is racism and racism at all different levels. So, racism in relation to whose stats actually count. Because as we all know, people who are not counted do not count.
…as we all know, people who are not counted do not count.
And I say that when I’m thinking about terminology, like ‘BAME’. Because if you are not counted, you do not count. Within that terminology itself, it is a problem, and it is a problem because you can’t identify the numbers of black people, ‘black’ meaning African, African Caribbean people, within that statement.
So when I sit back and look through the window, I think ‘what would be good for UCL to do now?’ I think really, they need to tackle what’s going on in the workforce. I think they’ve done some really good tackling of the environment, whether it’s to do with the building names, and various other things. But I think it’s about time now that they actually tackled the workforce, and really started to talk to people about the curriculum. One – about the curriculum; two – about recruitment of people, recruitment of people that are not white. I think it’s important. And when we say ‘not white’, let’s be really honest. Let’s be honest and say people which are from African Caribbean backgrounds, or African backgrounds specifically, because they’re the ones where there are very, very few numbers across the whole of UCL. I think that’s something they do need to look at. They also need to look at how the people they do have, how do they look after the people they already do have in the organisation? So for example, you may have a person who is absolutely seen as exemplary in the delivery of their work, yet there’s no recognition of that. So yes, for example, UCL Provost puts out these teaching awards, a whole range of different things, but it’s about who votes for whom. Now if a high percentage of those people which are voting are white, you’re going to get the same people being voted on. And I think that’s what we have to look at. If, for example, you looked at the evaluations of what was happening with those academics, you would find a different group of people. So if you kind of made a shortlist based on the student evaluations, which means you have to do a bit of work, the shortlist would be different to self-nomination, or somebody nominating you from the head of department, or somebody else prominently within the organisation, or the student rep, which is white – all those types of things.
JPD: What would you say to the lecturers and teaching fellows who are particularly working with students at UCL? What should they learn about and what should they be watching out for? What should they look for in their behaviour and curriculum, to make micro-changes that improve things?
VS: I think if you’re a new teaching fellow or new lecturer who’s just been appointed to UCL, I think something you do need to look out for is what’s going on in your classroom. What do the students bring to your class? That’s a really important point. And secondly, how do the students, how do you want the students to interact with each other? And the third point is what do you bring? What do you bring to the conversation, which is going to take place in the actual classroom?
if you structure what you’re doing as a conversation, you start to kind of feel a bit more relaxed, because it is a conversation
And I think if you structure what you’re doing as a conversation, you start to kind of feel a bit more relaxed, because it is a conversation. And within that conversation, you’re gonna have debate, you’re gonna have debate from all different sides of the classroom. And it’s how to manage those and not belittle people, because you don’t agree with them. It’s not about you. It’s about the interconnection and inter…discussion, what’s going on within the classroom. So I think that’s something which we have to be, as academics, especially if you’re newbie, but you have to learn not to take it personally. Because you’re there to facilitate, to give knowledge, but also to facilitate discussions around what you’re actually delivering, if that makes sense.
JPD: Yeah, thank you. So I know you’ve been doing some of that yourself. Yeah, you’ve done various courses and projects and so on, do you want to talk us through one of them? Any one that comes to mind and some of the outcomes, and what students said.
VS: I mean, it’s there’s one I’ve just published, well I’ve published it, but the books not out yet. It’s a chapter in the book. And it’s on purposeful teaching. I was asked to do something called ‘purposeful teaching’. Now purposeful teaching is really how I see it, is how you use the – what’s in the classroom to help you design and develop your session. So there was one particular session, which I’m module leader for, for two modules. One is race and sociology or sociology of race, whichever way you do it, and the other one is MMR, which is minorities, migrants and refugees. Now in the MMR session a few years back, there was quite a lot of activity going on with Brexit and, and conservatism and a whole range of different things. And I had a big large group of about 50 students, mostly international, but some home students, from all different parts of the world. And I remember going into that class feeling a little bit disgruntled because – the society which we were living in was becoming a bit, you know, difficult, very right wing … was coming out, it was emerging out of the woodwork. And I’m just going to tell you what happened just very briefly, just a couple of minutes. So, in that classroom, I looked around the room, and I wanted to do an introduction. I like, I’m known for my introductions. I’m also known for kind of dancing around walking from place and talking to students and parents and and them talking to them and that kind of stuff.
So I remember going up to this young woman I said to her ‘Oh, hi. So um, so who are you?’ (Let’s call her Natalie) ‘Natalie. Hi, Natalie. How you doing?’ And remember the actual module is called MMR – minorities, migrants and refugees. So I said ‘so, do you see yourself as a migrant?’
‘No’, she said, ‘I’m not a migrant. I come from Greece.’
So I said, ‘ok, that’s good to know’ and I go over to this other person who happened to be from Spain. ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Me. I’m José’ (let’s call him José). ‘Oh, hi, Jose, how you doing? Where are you from?’ He said ‘from Spain’. I said, ‘do you see yourself as a migrant?’ ‘No, no, no’, he said, I said, ‘Do you see me as a migrant?’
‘Yes’, he said, I see you as a migrant.’
I said, ‘Really? How can that be? I’ve been here all my life. I’ve been in the United Kingdom all my life. Yet you have arrived for this course, and you’ve been here six weeks. You’re not a migrant, but I am a migrant. Why is that?’
We were able to really get into understanding the three different words of migrant, minority and refugee, and really, really own them.
And people say ‘oh, it’s because you’re black’ and this and everything else. That‘s where the discussion started. It was fantastic. We were able to really get into understanding the three different words of migrant, minority and refugee, and really, really own them. And I wanted them to also think about which one of those three words did they fit to? Because everybody fits into one of them whether it’s a minority or migrant or refugee, you fit into it somewhere in your life. And that was the start of the session. And like I said, it was a three hour session. It was fantastic. Is that helpful, for that one?
JPD: Yeah. It’s a very revealing anecdote! I mean, you’ve mentioned the basically … rising tide of intolerance, bigotry, racism, a whole bunch of things. It’s hard to get them all into one word. But people of our age, not traditional student age any more, we’ve noticed an increase in temperature, shall we say, on several fronts, you know? And I mean, this is a question you weren’t expecting, but what role do you think universities should, and could have, in a society that’s walking down paths that are familiar to historians who are dismayed at the sight of it? What’s the university got to do with this in the broader context… What’s that role? I mean, this is a question for me as much as for you.
VS: I think people should, I think I think the university should take a stance, this is an opportunity to take a stance, you can’t sit back. Who do they think is going to come to the university? It’s not going to be filled up with a hundred percent of people from the far right, that’s not going to happen. I mean, you may have, of course, you’re going to have a percentage, but it’s not going to be 100%. So they’ve got to take a stand and say ‘these are our policies’, and just how they said they’re not tolerating ‘terrorism’ whatever that looks like, coming from that standpoint, but you’ve also got white terrorism. So they need to take a stand. And it’s very difficult for them to look in the mirror, because they can’t Other themselves.
Let me talk about something which took place today, in the newspaper. You know, it says one of the MPs said that ‘BAME people need to take responsibility for COVID’ – I don’t know whether you saw it – so hang on a moment. Who’s on the beaches? I don’t see any black people on the beaches. who’s having parties out on the streets, are there many black people on the streets? Oh, no, no, no. So who are you talking about? So – it’s very difficult to look in the mirror. When you look in the mirror and you see 82% whiteness is in this country, United Kingdom. And so we are looking to blame somebody; when you’re looking to blame somebody and there’s only the 82% which is yourselves… It’s a bit of a problem.
So going back to what you said, I think the top, senior, leadership need to own what is happening, and they need to speak out about it. I quite like what Michael did (Michael Arthur) when he made an apology, that he didn’t get it quite right regarding the statement he made recently, with Black Lives Matter. I think that was I think that was very wise of him to do that. And I think more should be speaking up about that.
JPD: Yeah, thank you. Is there anything you would say to students, particularly young black students, who may be arriving at universities metaphorically, or literally, who knows, in the autumn about you know, what’s good and what’s not so good about universities as a particular kind of environment within an institutionally racist society?
it’s a time…for white students to really see transformational aspects of themselves
VS: Well, first of all, let me take white students, white students are the majority. And I think white students need to be very, very aware that a university is a place where knowledge is created, enhanced and also kind of … developed and your mind when you go into the university, your mind should not be – it might go in narrow, but you should come out really open, like you blossomed into a flower, not completely closed down. Now, of course, a small minority of students will be closed even further than what they will when they came in, majority of the experience is to open up. So I think white students in this current situation – even though we’re not seeing what’s happening with Black Lives Matter because the stranglehold on the news is not allowing you to see the positive things that are happening across the country. It’s as though it’s not existing. I think it’s a time at the moment for white students to really see transformational aspects of themselves, to be able to ask questions and continue to ask questions.
When it comes to black students coming into universities, universities like ours, they need to not feel that they have to be the font of all knowledge to do with anything to do with race, or anything to do with, you know, equality. They don’t have to be that person. They don’t have to be the person educating the people. That’s not their role. Their role is to be part of the conversation but not be the dominance of the conversation, because they will be worn out. They’re coming to do an undergrad or master’s or PhD, whatever they’re doing, research programme, whatever it is, they’re not there to feel that it’s their role to ‘educate the masses’. They’re there to be part of the conversation. And I think that’s really, really different. I say that because it’s about well being it’s about their mental health. about the fact of looking after our black students, but also, at the same time ensuring that the white students understand that no one’s wanting them to feel guilty. No one’s wanting them to cry. No one wants them to feel that they need to do something so drastic; no, what they want, what everybody wants, is for them to have a conversation and reflect on what they’re bringing into it and reflect on themselves. And I think that’s important.
JPD: Very powerful. Thank you. I think that helps white people, to hear that the appropriate thing to do in this situation, because I think a lot of us are very ‘rabbits caught in the headlights’ about this, and we’re clutching our pearls, and that’s probably more emotional drama for you, who, you know, who didn’t come into the room as a black woman, you came into the room as a feminist, or an academic or a mother or a shopper
VS: Exactly.
JPD: So that’s, that’s really helpful. There’s one more thing I particularly want to pick your brains on. Because of your long experience, over your career, have you seen a good solid change actually happen? And if so, what made it happen? What were the important ingredients? Because I know from conversations with you previously that some of the stuff we’re doing, an awful lot of the stuff that’s being said, and Black Lives Matter, was being said in the 80s, under Ken Livingston’s GLC and other such groups. So, what has worked and how did it work? What made the difference?
VS: Well, first of all, I wasn’t living in London when Ken Livingstone nor people like that were around. I was in Somerset. I was in Somerset and if I wasn’t in Somerset, I was in Broadstairs, Ramsgate, that kind of area. So I didn’t really connect with what was going on in in the heart of the cities at all. So for me, I think what’s changed? Well, that’s an interesting question. I’ve got three daughters, if I may be personal for a second. And I would say that ‘generational’ because the youngest is 15, the oldest is in her 30s. So I have my daughters very young, extremely young, unfortunately. So for me, what has changed? When I look at those three, when I write about those three, I remember when my oldest was five. She came home and said that someone called her a p*** (her father’s mixed race). And I thought, ‘well, let me just help to educate her too. So she knows what that means, what the terminology means.’ Because it’s not, you know, the word is really, really, you know, not the word you’d use. Okay? Yeah. Now, if I rewind back to my young girl now at school, she comes across the same terms. But what’s interesting is living in London you get called you get called a n*****. Um, but I was, I was called a n***** when I lived in Somerset.
So what’s changed? I think what’s changed at the present moment, which is not very positive really, is at one stage, people felt that there was some kind of order that you really need to adhere to, in everyday society. I think what’s happened is the genie has been let out of the bottle. And so everything goes and if somebody wants to call you the N word, or somebody wants to say, ‘Well, I don’t like this about you’, they can do it because who’s gonna challenge them?
So the framework which we had, to be able to deal with – David Cameron, when he turned around and said ‘multiculturalism is dead’ just basically put the nail in the head, and just let the genie out of the bottle. Now they’ve been trying to put the genie back in. But all the years which had gone to really, really do good work, they are trying to do it from the beginning again. And it’s very, very, very sad, when you think about schools and all what was going on in schools. And whether it was to do with bilingualism, whether it was to do with attainment of children…all this stuff was just torn away with one swoop because they had the test against you know, the Labour government even though the Labour government at the time had done some very, very good work in society, but also in education. So now 10 years on we, you know, we’re in a very difficult place when it comes to equality issues.
I think what’s changed is people aren’t looking over their shoulder and thinking about, ‘Oh my goodness, I can’t I shouldn’t say I shouldn’t say that.’ Until the recent COVID and Black Lives Matter situation, people were just really finding ‘if I want to call you x, y, and z, I can call you that.’ So I think what has changed in the last few months, whereas people would be very busy, and yes, things are still you know, there were lots of things which had happened. I think standing still and reflecting has really started to make them perhaps think that it’s not, it’s not the other person which has caused the issue, it’s themselves and what are they like, in their family on on the street or whatever. I think it’s actually making white people become quite vulnerable. And that’s worldwide, not just looking at the UK. So I think vulnerability is shifting, actually shifting towards the white community? Which is uncomfortable.
JPD: Yes. Yes. There’s a lot of discomfort around and we’re seeing it – there’s a lot in there. I’m just dwelling on all the things you said. Is there anything else you want to put in here, any other stories you want to tell or advice you want to give or not give or celebrate, etc, etc.
VS:
Yeah, I mean, one of my favourite things I do in different parts of the world is the work I do on ‘Who am I?’ and I love that; I love being able to go into a room in Germany, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, you know, Ireland, America, wherever and just get the room going and say ‘I want to do something in my research, but I want to first of all, get a feel of the room.’ So I throw out this kind of start, and say ‘So who am I?’ and I do that because of my own background because I want people to understand who I am. And when they first see me, yes, I’m visibly black. So I think that many people would make a statement and in their mind and think, well, I know, they know what I’m going to be like. Well, actually, they have no idea who I am. They don’t know at all. But they think, ‘Oh, yes, I know that because I have a friend who’s black.’ Or ‘I’ve seen a black person on TV’, or ‘I’ve read about them in the newspaper.’
…the conversation doesn’t focus on ‘the Other’, it focuses on themselves.
So when I say to them, ‘when this person walked into the room, what did you think?’ ‘Oh, I saw this person, a nice hairstyle. And I liked your shoes’, or ‘I saw this’ and ‘I saw that’ I said, ‘Yeah, what about, what else did you see about me?’ They don’t know what to say. So then we when we start to have the conversation, somebody bravely says, ‘oh, you’re black.’ Oh, my God! We’ve said the unspoken. So I like doing the ‘Who am I?’ because people do it on themselves. And it starts them to think about who are they and where do they belong? So the conversation doesn’t focus on ‘the Other’, it focuses on themselves. So it brings them into the conversation about ‘Other’ because if they’re white, if it’s a whole group of people in Ireland and they’re white, what does that mean? What does that mean in the context of everything else?
And it’s powerful, because it could be about ‘well, I’m white, and I’m Catholic, and I’m living in Ireland, and I lived in rural Ireland’. That has a lot of connotation compared with somebody in the city in Ireland, you know, like Dublin or something like that. So, you know, it’s about them looking at themselves. So I like doing that. And I think it’s, I think it’s so powerful. That it’s a way to be able to have a discussion about equality in many different strands without people feeling that ‘this is not about me’, because it goes to the heart of who they are. And I think there’s a positive aspect in that and recently, as I was saying to you before, I’ve done an assignment with students, and that assignment is asking them to read a critical reflection through the lens of race as an autobiographical account, so they’ve been asked to kind of, you know, speak to their grandmother or speak to the neighbour or speak to their friends about race and, you know, kind of build up a conversation around it, and then kind of bring that together about what they feel. And they use some vignettes of themselves as well so it could be when they’re at school, they talk to their mother and so ‘do you remember when I was five, and this took place, and, you know, it was a racial incident. What did you think about that?’ Or it was, you know, ‘I saw this at school when I came home and told you about how these two children had acted or whatever it is, it’s so powerful.’ So does that help you?
JPD: Yeah! Another big question then. I love hearing your thoughts on these things because usually I’ve found my own way about five inches into the room and you’re, you know, the other side on the opposite wall.
VS: (laughs)
JPD: So this kind of identity and reflection will perhaps be more comfortable in some disciplines and others or perhaps not, I don’t know. Certainly there’s somewhere it’s as it were more valued explicitly by teachers, but what implications does it have for knowledge and it could be in any field, not just the more reflective ones? What do you think? So if we’re doing identity work with students like this, or creating lots of spaces where anybody – doesn’t matter if they’re a student or staff – is actually operating in that way, you’ve described, of acknowledging that they’re positioned, you know, that they they’re not just in some default ‘objective stance’ that they were put on by their school, but actually, they have a very distinctive position which has its limitations and its strengths. What implications does that have for knowledge? Especially universities, there’s knowledge creation or discovery places, or engines we could call them. I just wonder, I’m wondering aloud about, you know, how that affects not just the teaching, but the actual, the apparently separate body of knowledge that goes with the discipline.
VS:
Yeah, that’s, that’s a really interesting question. So, for example, let me take sociology and feminism. Now, some people, which I won’t name…one could argue that some people in sociology, see it as an elitist subject. And there’s sociology and there’s sociology. And sociology, as you know, is meant to be, kind of, understanding society.
‘classics’ made by whom? By whiteness.
Um, but there’s some key people which are always named in sociology, which of course are Bourdieu, Foucault…people talk about them a lot. Um, but I refused to, because they’re all white. They’re all white men or women. So when I talk about Franz Fanon or W.E.B. Dubois or Frederick Douglass or Angela Davis, people like that, they’re sociologists but they’re not the same sociologists, which are what the people say, that they’re ‘classics’. Well ‘classics’ made by whom? By whiteness. And it makes and it does contribute to who we are. Because your identity is framed by (not your personally) but is framed by what you read and what you buy into. So if you think ‘well actually, you know what? The person who’s the best sociologist is a white male or white female,’ that’s sad.
If you think about feminism, well white feminists try to claim that they’re the ones who developed the notion of feminism. They didn’t. Many of them have been forced to, to speak up and say, ‘well, actually, if I’m really honest, I learned all the feminist practices from black women, and how they galvanise and pull things together, over the years through slavery.’
JPD: So when people talk, for instance, about decolonizing a curriculum, you know, in a sense, it’s very simple: become aware of how the influence arose. You know, why do we always cite Foucault and if we cite Foucault then we have to cite Foucault and that’s why we cite Foucault because we do it and, you know, he gets bigger and bigger all the time, right?
VS: Absolutely. Just speak of sociologists, you’ve got Max Weber, Pierre Bourdieu and Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Jürgen Habermas. We’ve got all of these people. They’re all men, all men, and you’ve just got one black person, which is W. E. B. Dubois, that’s it – the rest are all white men. All white men.
JPD: So get out and read more widely.
if you’re gonna actually develop the curriculum, so it becomes decolonized, use other people.
VS: All men. And I find that really really concerning. And when you decide that you don’t want to do that, you then get told you’re not a sociologist.
JPD: Right. So there’s policing of the canon.
VS: Exactly. And it’s not just in sociology. It’s also in philosophy. It’s also in anthropology, all of those. All of those are all part of the whole, the whole discussion.
VS: Ida B. Wells. Look at her. She’s one of the top sociologists. She was born in 1862 and died March 1931, an American investigative journalist, educator and an early leader in civil rights movement. People like that. Let’s learn more about those people. If we’re going to stop, you know, if you’re gonna actually develop the curriculum, so it becomes decolonized, use other people.