Category: Blog

“Diversity is different” (Sadiq, 2023), at both micro and macro levels. Yet, reductive approaches, particularly those seen in diversity training, undermine the richness and complexity of individual experiences. When diversity training classifies and lumps people into broad categories, it paradoxically becomes less diverse, failing to meet its own objectives. Sadiq’s critique touches on familiar tensions. One of the most salient is the way diversity work often undermines itself by homogenising experience and identity. He recalls being asked to speak on behalf of “Muslim views,” pointing out the impossibility of representing a global faith community through a single voice.

The point is broader. Institutional equity frameworks often flatten difference into categories such as “BAME,” “LGBTQ+,” “Muslim,” or “neurodiverse.” While these may help quantify representation, they risk perpetuating intersectional blind spots (Crenshaw, 1991). The danger lies in a bureaucratised inclusion that erases the very diversity it seeks to celebrate. This recalls Kwame Anthony Appiah’s (2014) provocation that “religion does not exist,” at least not in any essentialised sense, since one’s relationship to religion is shaped by intersecting internal and external forces across micro, meso, and macro contexts. In this light, diversity training should aim to teach vulnerability and cultivate psychological safety, enabling people to have difficult, nuanced conversations without fear of saying the “wrong” thing. It should also build cognitive empathy, recognising that broad identity categories obscure the richness of each person’s lived experience.

As a Stage Leader and Lecturer, I have seen how such flattening plays out. ISA provisions, for example, offer essential support such as extended deadlines or adjusted assessments. However, they often rely on generalised templates. These are rarely based on students’ actual experiences, but instead on standardised assumptions about neurodiverse needs. As Sadiq (2023) notes when describing his son’s ADHD diagnosis, what helps is not the label but a responsive, localised pedagogy that adjusts the mode and pace of learning. In practice (and in my case), delivering bespoke education to a large fraction of the 100 final-year students presents a logistical challenge. So, although we aim for inclusivity, the structures we rely on, including the ISA process, often reinforce standardised models of access.

Bradbury’s (2020) work on Critical Race Theory and education policy offers a sobering lens here. She outlines how policy discourse, even when intended as supportive, can reproduce deficit thinking. The language of “urban disadvantage” or “bilingual challenge,” for example, positions students as problems to be managed rather than complex learners to be understood. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of “regimes of truth,” Bradbury shows how identities and “deficits” become normalised through the data demands of institutional systems. I wrestle with this tension. In order to support students equitably, we need data to track disparities and justify resource allocation. But in doing so, we risk reinforcing the very marginalisations we seek to dismantle.

This issue is not theoretical. It shapes how we scaffold learning and how students imagine their futures. Garrett’s (2024) work on racialised minority PhDs shows how “imaginations are affected by whiteness in institutions,” influencing not just students’ experience of academia, but their sense of belonging within it. Participants in Garrett’s study describe lacking role models, experiencing hypervisibility, and being tokenised as symbols of diversity. These findings echo Sadiq’s (2023) reflection. If students cannot see themselves represented in leadership, curriculum, or institutional culture, how can they imagine themselves thriving?

Finally, the critique offered by Orr (2022) in The Telegraph frames the diversity work of Advance HE as ideological overreach. His concern – that inclusive and CRT agendas compromise free speech – presents these efforts as a threat to neutrality. Yet this framing is revealing of his positionality and biases as an academic member of Cambridge. He, perhaps in recalcitrant defence of his professional environment,  assumes that institutional norms are neutral until disrupted by equity initiatives. In fact, as Critical Race Theory and anti-racist scholars argue, those norms are already racialised and classed. As Kendi (2019) asserts, the goal of anti-racism is not to declare “I’m not racist,” but to ask whether our actions, policies, and pedagogies support or challenge racial inequality. “Not being racist” is a passive stance. Anti-racism, by contrast, demands active, ongoing engagement, including the discomfort of unlearning.

The risk, ultimately, is box-ticking. Sadiq warns that without critical reflection on how and why we intervene, we create bureaucracy rather than transformation. Anti-racism in education must go beyond slogans, data dashboards, and tokenistic representation. It requires a deeper reckoning with how our own practices, policies, and imaginaries are shaped by racialised assumptions, and how we might begin to unlearn them.

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Bibliography

Appiah, K. A. (2014) Is religion good or bad? (This is a trick question). Youtube [Online]. 16 JuneAvailable at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06ptlxw (Accessed: 11 July 2025).

Bradbury, A. (2020) ‘A critical race theory framework for education policy analysis: The case of bilingual learners and assessment policy in England’, Race Ethnicity and Education, 23(2), pp. 241–260. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2019.1679753

Crenshaw, K. (1991) ‘Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color’, Stanford Law Review, 43(6), pp. 1241–1299.

Garrett, R. (2024) ‘Racism shapes careers: Career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education’, Globalisation, Societies and Education, pp. 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2024.2336589

Kendi, I.X. (2019) How to Be an Antiracist. London: The Bodley Head.

Orr, J. (2022) Revealed: The charity turning UK universities woke. YouTube, 5 August. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRM6vOPTjuU (Accessed: 11 July 2025).

Sadiq, A. (2023) Diversity, Equity & Inclusion: Learning how to get it right. TEDx, YouTube, 2 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR4wz1b54hw (Accessed: 11 July 2025).

Reflecting on Rekis’ (2023) paper, the dominant religion of a society often sets the standard for acceptable behaviour—implicitly shaping what is normal, credible, and institutionally valid. This is problematic in educational institutions when there is a degree of ambivalence to religious or cultural needs. Even with inclusive aims, the default setting of systems often assume that students must adapt to the system (which is influenced by biased structures) not the other way around. Accommodating every religious or cultural observance equitably is difficult within an institution systemically embedded within Christian-majority norms. Academic calendars, for example, rarely account for non-Christian religious holidays.

This plays out in my own teaching context. The Lunar New Year can coincide around summative assessment period in the final year. Once assessment dates are set, we sometimes see an uptick in students—mainly from East Asian backgrounds—notifying us of illness, family emergencies, or urgent travel. While this is anecdotal and unverified, I suspect many of these students are going home to celebrate Lunar New Year with their families. Regardless, we accommodate for the students, but the system itself is not designed to flex. Final-year units are 60-credits or 15-weeks. Staff, like myself, are under added stress to arrange alternative assessments, and students often carry the stress of feeling unable to be transparent about their reasons, presumably. This creates a friction point—culturally and administratively––and likely affects one’s sense of belonging.

In the broader context, these challenges raise questions about how secular institutions navigate faith. In the U.S., the separation of church and state tends to mean “keep the state out of my religion”—with a bias and caveat for Christian religions. In France, under laïcité, it’s more about “keep religion out of my state.” Both models struggle with pluralism in practice. Universities must support freedom of religion while maintaining secular governance, but this is not a simple balancing act as the religious, the cultural and the social are deeply interconnected beyond academia. Both interpretations can be harnessed for either equitable or oppressive purposes. As Buchanan (1992) describes, this is a “wicked problem”—one with no clear solution and multiple, conflicting demands.

Kwame Anthony Appiah’s (2014) talk argues that “religion” is not a singular, definable thing. The very idea of religion as a category was constructed through Euro-centric efforts to compare other cultures to Christianity. The result is a list of “world religions” that may not reflect how people actually live or practise. Beliefs and customs vary by geography, community and individual experience. Religion is not fixed—it is lived, negotiated, and intersectional. Appiah’s conclusion that “there is no such thing as religion” speaks to this point: using the label of “religion” uncritically flattens the complex ways people relate to faith, ethics, and community as part of their identity.

Adding to this, Jawad (2022) challenges the assumption that religious expression such as wearing the hijab is inherently oppressive and instead reveals how Muslim women actively assert agency within constraining institutional frameworks. Religious identity is not just belief, but also embodied practice, and something easily marginalised by secular systems that claim to be neutral.

My own perspective is shaped by a Catholic upbringing. I attended Catholic schools through my early education, and then Jesuit high school and university. I consider myself fortunate to have been educated in a liberal religious environment that encouraged study of religion and cultures and open inquiry. I no longer identify as Catholic, but I still go to mass with family around holidays as tradition and culture––Catholic culture is part of my identity but I don’t identify as Catholic. Furthermore, that education taught me to read religious texts as human documents—rooted in history, struggle and hope; records of people trying to make sense of human experience, suffering and morality.

References

Appiah, K.A. (2014) Is religion good or bad? (This is a trick question). [YouTube]. TED. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2et2KO8gcY (Accessed: 23 May 2025).

Buchanan, R. (1992) ‘Wicked problems in design thinking’, Design Issues, 8(2), pp. 5–21.

Jawad, H. (2022) Islam, Women and Sport: The Case of Visible Muslim Women. [Online]. Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2022/09/islam-women-and-sport-the-case-of-visible-muslim-women/ 

Rekis, J. (2023) ‘Religious identity and epistemic injustice: an intersectional account’, Hypatia, 38, pp. 779–800.

Trinity University (2016) Challenging Race, Religion, and Stereotypes in Classroom Available at: https://youtu.be/0CAOKTo_DOk

Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality shows how peoples intersecting social and political identities like race, gender, sexual orientation and disability can perpetuate systems of oppression, privilege and marginalisation. Hopefully, without overgeneralising too much, these intersections can create modes of discrimination against the some of the most marginalised groups, and establish “blindspots” (for lack of a better term) and as people who inhabit multiple intersecting identities are not seen or foregrounded in an isolated review and discourse of individual identities. For example, black women being excluded from anti-racism discourse focusing on Black men and feminist discourse focusing on white women (Crenshaw, 1991). The stories and experiences of Ade Adepitan, Chay Brown, and Christine Sun Kim offers a view into how intersecting forms of oppression can reinforce exclusion when only one part of a person’s identity is seen, and how visibility of these marginalised experiences can help push back against sticky systemic discrimination.

Ade Adepitan (2020) is at the intersection of Black identity and physical disability. As a wheelchair user and a person of Nigerian heritage, he experiences exclusion both in the context of race and of disability. Drawing on the social model of disability – which holds that individuals are disabled not by their impairments but by societal barriers to access and inclusion (Oliver, 1990) – Ade argues that exclusion is not an inevitable outcome of impairment, but the product of systemic design. For him, the Paralympics show how disabled people can thrive when structural barriers are removed and access is equitably and inclusively designed. Yet he points out that similar progress is lacking of race, where systemic racism continues to limit opportunity and fairness for Black people.

Chay Brown (2023) identifies as a white, gay, trans man with invisible disabilities and mental health challenges. He benefits from being cis-passing and white in many LGBTQ+ spaces, yet experiences exclusion due to neurodivergence and disability. He describes struggling with unspoken social codes and the sensory overload of LGBTQ+ events, which often assume or default to able-bodied, neurotypical participants. Here, his marginalisation does not come from visibility, but from being overlooked. He is not always seen as disabled, and thus his access needs are often ignored. The intersection of trans identity with disability can lead to blindspots in both discourses and broader recognition of identity––trans experiences may overlook disabled (trans) bodies, while disability experiences (e.g., wheelchair users) may not fully include queer and trans lives.

Christine Sun Kim (2024), a Deaf artist, has intersecting identities of disability, womanhood, parenthood, and racial identity as an East Asian American. Her work is rooted in the need to be seen and understood in a world that routinely silences her. She has been denied access to education and art spaces due to the absence of interpreters and inclusive teaching. Her use of large-scale visual work is a deliberate strategy to “caption the city”—a form of public resistance that reclaims space and visibility for the deaf community. Christine notes that being misunderstood can have material consequences when communication failure affects access to services, education, and safety. Her experience demonstrates how systemic silencing, shaped by language and ableist assumptions, intersects with gender and race to further restrict agency and expression. She also implies how her experience raising a child in Berlin is enabling by state structures providing free daycare. In contrast, the exorbitant costs of raising a child in the US and lack of support, might be considered as disabling, especially when certain identities or experiences combine to exacerbate the ability to support or even start of family, which can impact wellbeing.

Across these accounts, recurring patterns emerge worth discussing: (1) how inclusion built around singular identities—disability without race, queerness without access—the result is partial recognition and systemic neglect. In addition, (2) visibility and platforming of these marginalised identities is a mechanism to push back against bias and systemic discrimination. The social model of disability reminds us that barriers are often built into the world around us, not the individual (Oliver, 1990). But unless these intersectional barriers are understood as layered and overlapping, inclusion of siloed identities can become another form of erasure.

In my own teaching at UAL, I work with students whose identities and responsibilities shape how they access and engage in learning. Several students over the years, who happen to be Black British women and sometimes primary carers for disabled family, commute long distances while managing their studies. They are not necessarily recognised “disabled” (some are neurodiverse) yet their life is constrained by similar barriers—limited access to space, time and rest.

My own positionality—as a white/mixed middle-class American male, now living in the UK—means I’ve had to learn to see class-based discrimination and dynamics that play a non-insignificant part in social dynamics on the course. Also, UK social and political dynamics, particularly around my own experiences of immigration, have shaped my ability to access to work and stability in ways that intersect, with broader systems of exclusion. Due to my relative privilege of where, when and how I grew up and my white identity, I hesitantly talk about my immigration struggles and frustrations, but I do find the restrictions of my status disabling (systemically) to my well-being, growth and livelihood. But this is for another conversation.

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References

Adepitan, A. and Webborn, N. (2020). Nick Webborn interviews Ade Adepitan. ParalympicsGB Legends [Online]. Youtube. 27 August. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnRjdol_j0c  

Brown, C. (2023) Interview with ParaPride. Intersectionality in Focus: Empowering Voices during UK Disability History Month [Online]. Youtube. 13 December. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yID8_s5tjc 

Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299.

Oliver, M. (1990). The Politics of Disablement. London: Macmillan Education UK.

Sun, C. (2024). Christine Sun Kim in ‘Friends & Strangers’ – Season 11 | Art21. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/2NpRaEDlLsI