Abstract
This chapter analyzes the student of color attainment gap in England from the perspective of equality, diversity, and inclusion’s (EDI) failure to catalyze institutional anti-racist change. It sees EDI as key to the libidinal economies of racism that keep those racialized as white affectively sutured to white supremacy and maintains the illusion that universities are “post-race” meritocracies where student of color failure to achieve is based on individual/group pathology. EDI’s “unconscious bias training” and tackling the “white curriculum” through reading lists keep whiteliness and colonial epistemicide as dynamics of institutional racism. At the affective level, shaming encounters hamper student success, whereas white guilt and grief make tackling the attainment gap impossible because these affects refuse the need for recognition of the operation of the coloniality of power, being, knowledge and affect within EDI influenced environments. The chapter concludes by thinking about decolonization and attainment.
Keywords
- Institutional racism
- Unconscious bias
- Decolonize
- Affect
- Libidinal economy
- White supremacy
- Equality
- Decolonization
- Attainment gap
- Post-race
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Tate, S.A. (2019). The Student of Colour Attainment Gap in Higher Education and the Institutional Culture of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion. In: Papa, R. (eds) Handbook on Promoting Social Justice in Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74078-2_21-1
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