Students of colour have to decide what kind of student they want to be: will they choose to assimilate to move through with minor resistance, or will they pick up the baton and face kickback by doing radical work?
There is a possibility to recalibrate what university is.
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How has my location in this university blinded me or prevented me from seeing how knowledge is shaped or shared? European knowledge depends on the "individual genius". Decolonising is a lifelong project! There is so much potential in vocational subjects to deconstruct.
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For example, law students within the decolonise movements would be incredible going out into the world questioning how to dismantle the legal system. The universities could equip these students to be agents of change.
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The sciences also need decolonising! Deconolising asks us to think about education holistically: are we training engineers to build drones to kill people and then training humanity students to justify that killing? Science is underpinned by "truth and fact".
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When we understand our ideas are not absolute, we can properly challenge these links. Decolonise is disruptive. It SHOULD be disruptive. We have to rethink how we study these subjects. Funding should not allow our continued complicity.
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Groups like
@ZeroCarbonSoc have been bringing these issues to the frontline for so long, exposing the university for the many fingers it has in different violent and terrible pies. External funding means unis cannot be objective. Our own complicity can be terrifying.#CCWShow this thread -
We can refuse to turn a blind eye, we can refuse to allow this continued complicity. We can refuse to accept what is seen as the "norm".
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The fallacy of free speech is the PREVENT policy. What it asks of public servants to "look out for signs of radicalisation" - which often means what turns a "good" Muslim into a "bad violent one". This asks the monitoring of Muslim students. How free are THEY to speak?
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Muslim students are less likely to speak in certain spaces and subjects, because there is a punitive punishment. 30% of those being reported to prevent are under the age of 15. Free speech is not universally applied. Whose speech is free? It's a counterinsurgency tool.
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Power underlies whose speech is free. Far right rhetoric stems from ethno-nationalism of the government and state. This is not the same as surveilling Muslims because they've been historically viewed as threats.
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People who say their speech is being restricted are in other spaces allowed huge platforms of their views. This covers up allegiance of conservative forces marketising education. This obscures wider conversations of things like PREVENT, racism, campus violence of any kind.
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Now we're thinking beyond metrics of assimilation which terrifies gatekeepers of these institutions. How TERFs have taken hold of mainstream newspapers and have openly debate the right of trans people to exist are the same people who claim their free speech is being taken.
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1. "How do white-passing people negotiate the role of being a person of colour without taking up the space of those who are visibily and culturally discriminated again? What is our role as 'in-between'?"
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2. "Do you think lecturers should be taking an active effort to set ground rules, what are the procedures which should be in place? How do we get lecturers involved in this question?"
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3. "What type of initiatives or programs do you propose would allow us to further challenge the inferiority of the body politics, not only forms of being but forms of becoming? How does this change knowledge production and consumption?"
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1. You don't need a personal experience of oppression to work towards ending it. Less about thinking individually about our own position, we get caught up in not wanting to take up too much space that we don't take up any space at all. "Guilt leads to inaction."
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2. Lecturers ideally will name power structures recreated in rooms, and many are trying to do this work already. Encouraging lecturers who are doing these things to help them and share best practice across the university. (1/2)
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Remembering the power we have and that we are a body. When we feel overwhelmed, we fall back and think about how to reshape these narratives. It's within our reach as a collective. (2/2)
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3. Imagined futures in and out of the university; work is being done now. "One of the functions of racism is distraction." We spent so long putting out fires and having to prove and disprove, but now we're on the cusp of practice and embedding these ideas.
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4. "How has your faith (Islam) affected how you view the decolonial project?"
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5. "Is it our responsibility to explain and educate? To what extent is it okay to get up and walk out of conversations? Do we have to engage in mindless debates with ignorant people?"
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6. "How do we take care of ourselves and not over-exhaust ourselves when we do speak up?"
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4. More being exposed to structural violence of the institution, realising understanding of her own faith filtered through a white, secular lens. "Modernity" upholds secularity. Having faith is not seen as intellectual integrity. Faith is disruptive. (1/2)
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Asking for prayer rooms or faith spaces is controversial, indicates its disruptiveness. Having to prove herself as a "moderate" Muslim, which reinforces notions of counterterrorism (good vs. bad ones). Some Islamic theology has been colonised, and must be liberated. (2/2)
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5. The onus should never be on individuals. This is a good training ground for the reality outside, but people who haven't done the basic work of understanding their history don't have the right to demand our labour in educating them. Require people to do the work!
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6. Community is self-care. Spaces to think about collective experiences, feelings as a type of knowing. This can be therapeutic. Conversations like these can be therapeutic. Self-care has been neoliberalised, we need to be well to do the work by looking after each other.
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7. "There is a fear which manifests in being afraid of having something held against us (as WoC). What were some realisations which helped you overcome the fear in these spaces and enabled you to be loud and proud?"
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8. "On a day-to-day basis, many of us face perceptions and prejudices. How can we bring up these conversations of disrupting and dismantling systems which are the fundamental lenses they see and understand us through?"
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9. "Do you refer to yourselves as people of colour; if so, why or if not, why not?"
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7 & 8. Accepting these labels will follow us forever, there is no real choice regarding of what we say or how we say. The choice is don't speak or be angry. Not speaking is not an option. Demand solidarity as international students, our liberation is tied together. (1/2)
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