Racism plays a disappearing act: discourses of denial in one anti-discrimination campaign in higher education

ABSTRACT

This article responds to a university’s anti-discrimination campaign, ostensibly launched to combat racism. Taking up poststructural principles and anchored in anti-racism literature, we employ a discourse analysis to examine the truth productions about racism circulated by the campaign, and the subject positions to which they give rise. We analyse the consequences and possibilities for anti-racist action in the light of our argument that the campaign produced the university as an always already anti-racist space, becoming a means to an end to meaningful action. Through themes of belonging, denial, innocence, colour-blindness, and erasure, we demonstrate that the messaging of the campaign aligns with national narratives about Canadian society as free of racial inequity. We bring readers to consider how an anti-discrimination campaign effectively delegitimised the need for anti-racist action, imploring future initiatives to guard against re-inscribing the very forms of inequality they purport to disrupt.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-racism campaign
• belonging
• discourse analysis
• higher education
• whiteness

This article analyses the public discourses circulated by one university campaign ostensibly developed to raise awareness about and counter racism. At the time of the campaign’s launch, we, the authors, were collaborating on a research project examining the experiences of racialised students¹ in the helping professions – in the Faculties of Social Work, Education, and Nursing – at the university delivering the campaign. Our emerging research findings, based on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with students who self-identified as racialised, were painting a picture of the university space as lonely and isolating; participants recounted experiences of racism on campus and practicum settings in a multitude of forms (e.g., McNeil, Oba and Kalu 2020; Novotna et al. 2020; Reid et al. 2020). During research meetings, which were taking place against the backdrop of the campaign, the focus of this article and thus an interrelated research project began to take shape, as we considered the campaign’s messaging through anti-racist lenses. Because those in a position of authority at universities can profoundly shape how racism is presented and addressed (Iverson 2012), we felt compelled to analyse on a deeper level our concerns that a campaign that professed to be combatting racism was working to silence counter-narratives about racism on campus, reproducing white innocence, and ignoring power relations. Counter-narratives are stories that ‘challenge the perceived wisdom of those at society’s centre, and provide a context to understand and transform established belief systems’ (Kaomea 2012, 4). They are also an important tool in research on racism in education for debunking harmful myths in master narratives (Ladson-Billings and Tate 1995). Our sentiments of unease about the campaign were amplified by our awareness of how an increase in discourses of ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ in predominantly white institutions is currently taking place alongside rising neoliberalism.

In our research team meetings, we began to question the discourses that were regulating the statements made in the campaign and considered how the discourses contradicted foundational tenets of anti-racism and anti-racist education that we would hope to see in such an initiative. For the purpose of this article, we approached the examination of the campaign as a discourse analysis of the public messaging, circulated through print and online articles and other forms of texts generated by the university about the campaign, to answer the following research questions: How does the campaign both disrupt and reinscribe mainstream discourses about racism? How do the discourses both open up and foreclose the possibilities for anti-racist action and meaningful changes in the university? By understanding the messaging as discourses, bodies of knowledge that are taken as ‘truth’ (Youdell 2006), we do not claim to uncover a singular truth about the campaign through our analysis. Instead, we aim to examine whose interests and ideologies are served by the particular constructs of racism circulated in this campaign.

We begin this article by locating ourselves and by providing a description of the background of the university campaign and the context of this research. We then present literature on racism in higher education, and the tenets of the theoretical frameworks that guided our analysis. What follows is a description of the methodology of discourse analysis and the methods we undertook to collect and analyse the data. Finally, we put these concepts and areas of scholarship into conversation, applying the insights of discourse analysis, poststructuralism, and anti-racist studies to the You Belong Here campaign. We present a series of discursive threads across the campaign messaging to demonstrate how the campaign became a means to an end and served up as evidence that racism on campus is a non-issue. We examine the discourse of denial as the university was produced as a racism-free space, giving rise to innocent subject positions for white people through celebratory activities and language, and silencing counterstories about the realities of racism. We reveal the discourses of colour-blindness and equal opportunity promulgated through suggesting ‘kindness and respect’ as solutions for systemic oppression. Furthermore, we discuss how the concept of ‘belonging’ re-affirms the dominant discourse on who has the power to recognise, validate and include. In conclusion, we argue a campaign meant to combat discrimination effectively worked to de-legitimise the need for anti-racist action at all, and we call for future initiatives to draw from anti-racist literature to guard against reinscribing the very forms of inequity they purportedly aim to disrupt.

Locating ourselves

Our social locations are inseparable from this research and the analysis. While we share an interest in anti-racism, our lived experiences within this system of oppression we study as academics are mediated by our own intersecting identity markers and how we are perceived. As a white settler woman of Eastern European ancestry, I (Gebhard) have navigated a system of education structured to ensure my academic success and ‘belonged’ by virtue of my white skin. Throughout my early schooling and my trajectory into academia, the explicit and hidden curriculum of whiteness propelled me forward while ensuring my successes would be individualised. I, (Novotna), identify as a white woman, who moved to Canada for my postsecondary studies and later decided to pursue an academic career. While my whiteness grants me membership into the dominant group in Canada, my Eastern European origins and English being my additional language simultaneously position me as the ‘Other’. I (Carter) identify as a Métis woman, but my light skin and red hair grant me membership to the dominant white culture of the province. My ‘White-seeming privilege’ (Downey 2018) and Indigeneity coalesce in a personal identity of amalgamated ‘imposterhood’ (Mercier 2010), advantaging and disadvantaging me within academia and society at large. I, (Oba) identify as an Indigenous African Black woman. As a settler in Turtle land, I share a history of colonisation with Indigenous people. We experience the academy as a site of colonialism that perpetuates insidious anti-black racism that juxtaposes Black bodies with whiteness-defined as pure, pristine and moral, while Black people (pupils, students, faculty) are relics of Tarzan, dangerous and deviant (Kumsa, Mfoafo-M’Carthy, and Sadia 2014).

Context

‘We are, I believe, a very open and friendly city. I know we are.’

(Michael Fougere cited in Canadian Press 2019, emphasis added)

On the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, 21 March 2019, the University of Regina launched a campaign entitled ‘You Belong Here.’ The stated purpose of the campaign was to ‘ … reinforce the institution’s commitment to be a welcoming place, where behaviours such as bullying, abuse, harassment and discrimination are not tolerated or accepted’ (Shepherd 2019). While this statement did not specifically reference racism, a second rationale provided for the campaign was that ‘The recent attacks in New Zealand highlight that racism is a serious and widespread problem’ (Shepherd 2019), and the official campaign slogan was announced as You Belong Here. Racism Doesn’t. A similar version of this statement, and the peculiar use of racism as a reason for self-adulation, was cited by the city’s mayor in a media statements unrelated to the campaign about incidents involving white young men who threw coffee at black students while laughing and filming the act, cited in the opening to this section.

The campaign took off with a flurry of promotional events, including the distribution of t-shirts, stickers, and posters emblazoned with the logo; a multicultural food festival hosted by the student union; the circulation of videos via Facebook; and announcements about an upcoming speaker series. Contrary to the campaign’s slogan, racist belief systems have long belonged to the settler population of the province of Saskatchewan (Green 2011; Lavasseur 2014; Starblanket and Hunt 2020). As asserted by Foucault, ‘knowledge linked to power, not only assumes the authority of “the truth” but has the power to make itself true’ (Foucault 1979, 27). The mayor’s disbelief at racism in the city is an example of how the province’s historical and contemporary white settler colonial domination has become largely understood through a lens of meritocracy (Schick and St. Denis 2003). ‘Settler colonialism is a territorial project that is centred on the accumulation and control of dispossessed land’ (Nunn 2018, 8) and has been legitimised in the Canadian Prairies by racist ideologies that simultaneously construct white people as superior and BIPOC as inferior (Gebhard, McLean and St. Denis 2022; Starblanket and Hunt 2020).

Situated on Treaty 4 Territory and the homeland of the Métis Nation² in the province of Saskatchewan, the University of Regina serves over 15,000 students. Approximately 16% of the student body are international students, 13% self-declare as Indigenous and 32% self-identify as a visible minority (University of Regina 2020). The student demographics mirror the province of Saskatchewan (Statistics Canada 2017), one of three of Canada’s western prairie provinces. The colonial history of Saskatchewan and current attitudes of racism that racialise Indigenous people, as well as non-white Canadians and newcomers, have created an ideological landscape where white skin signifies entitlement to the resources of the province and the nation state, including the resource of education (Thobani 2007). Like their Indigenous counterparts, Black and people of colour experience racism in Canada daily (Este, Lorenzetti and Sato 2018; Oba 2018; Salloum and Polischuk 2020), including within post-secondary institutions, in spite of mission statements claiming to recognise and support diversity (e.g., University of Regina 2020a). Although racism in the province continues to be brought to the foreground of public consciousness through events highlighting the prevalence of racial inequities, hegemonic discourses are often deployed as rhetoric of platitudes that can serve to further heighten racial tensions. Racialised groups often carry the responsibility of naming, confronting and addressing the racism they are faced with in their daily lives, at the risk of social penalty (Kumsa, Mfoafo-M’Carthy, and Sadia 2014).

Frameworks of race and racism

We analyse the You Belong Here campaign through an anti-racist theoretical lens (Bonilla-Silva 2018; Ladhani and Sitter 2020; Lentin 2005; Mills 2007; Schick and St. Denis 2003; Schmidt 2005), to unpack the discourses circulated by the campaign that allow racism to remain un-scrutinised while (re)inscribing the post-racial discourses of equality in higher education. Anti-racism aims to ‘expose and confront the multitude of ways that racism may be embodied or embedded within relations, institutions, systems, and structures’ (Ladhani and Sitter 2020). Schmidt (2005) outlines seven shared assumptions of anti-racist scholarship: race is a social construct, racism exists at interconnected levels, society is divided into dominant and subordinate groups based on race, oppression leads to internalised racism and internalised dominance, white privilege is normative and pervasive, people are members of multiple social groups, and there is historical inequality in the accumulation of wealth and quality of education between socially constructed races in Canada and the United States. Critical race theory (CRT) tenets are widely used in anti-racist scholarship and movements in education. The conception and analysis of this research is informed by CRT’s aims of critiquing colour-blindness, exposing the differential racialisation for different groups at different time periods, and exposing how white people are motivated to eradicate racism when it serves their interests (Delgado and Stefancic 2012).

According to Ladson-Billings (1998), it is because of the superior value ascribed to whiteness, and its positioning as normative, that CRT is an important tool for, among other purposes, to accomplish ‘deconstruction of oppressive structures and discourses’ (9). Unlike overt racist practices, contemporary racism is often couched within racist discourses so ubiquitous they go unquestioned (Bonilla-Silva and Dietrich 2011). Indeed, CRT has informed critiques of the popular myth that North America has entered a ‘post-racial era,’ a myth reinforced through ideologies of meritocracy, colour-blindness, and multiculturalism, which are often presented as evidence that racism no longer exists (Bonilla-Silva 2012; Lentin 2005). Central frames of colour-blind racism, whereby people claim not see or notice race, are explained by Bonilla-Silva 2018) as abstract liberalism: the tendency of whites to employ liberal language when opposing practical approaches to combating structural racial inequality so as not to appear unreasonable or immoral in that opposition; naturalisation: the claim that racial phenomena are natural rather than the result of subjugation; minimisation of racism: the claim that racism is an ‘excuse’ used by racialised people to blame others for their personal shortcomings; and cultural racism: the justification of discrimination due to cultural differences or behaviours supposedly held by minority groups, and the ‘biologizing’ of stereotypical cultural practices. Deploying the latter frames allow white people to remain innocent and unaccountable for change. Conversely, anti-racism asks white people to ‘be vulnerable, examine power relations, confront privilege, and implicate themselves within the process’ (Ladhani and Sitter 2020, 59) thus forsaking the notion that ‘good intentions secure innocence as well as superiority’ (Schick and St. Denis 2003, 55).

Racism in higher education

The history of white dominance and racism against Indigenous people and non-white, non-Christians has left its ‘indelible stamp that is evident in Canadian institutions and society’ (Hiranandani 2011, 93), including higher education (Henry and Tator 2009). While the student population in universities is increasingly diverse³ as Indigenous people and racialised Canadians gain access to higher education and globalisation gives rise to increasing numbers of international students, Canadian postsecondary education preserves its Eurocentric origins and imperialistic worldviews (Dua and Banji 2012; Henry and Tator 2009; Oba 2018). In addition to reflecting cultural and paradigmatic domination of white males of Anglo-Saxon origins, Canadian universities are strongholds of liberal democracy, at the exclusion of Indigenous and racialised people (Ward 2012). Decreasing funding of postsecondary education, the rise of corporate culture in universities and the emphasis on individual rationality and responsibility to invest in one’s future (Henry et al. 2017; Henry and Tator 2009) are key neoliberal ideas reflected in Canadian university policies, values, and norms (Bozheva 2019; Davies and Bansel 2007).

Among the challenges to tackle racism in the academy is the focus on its overt forms and seemingly isolated incidents, as well as commonly used public relations messaging to present celebrations of diversity as evidence of forward-thinking in increasingly competitive neoliberal times (e.g., Henry et al. 2017; Olssen 2016). The diversity and inclusion rhetoric perpetuates insider/outsider dichotomy, suggesting non-white individuals need to be granted access by dominant group members (Iverson 2012). BIPOC do not report the sense of belonging frequently promoted as hallmarks of the university (Oba 2018; Solórzano, Ceja, and Yosso 2000). Educational exclusions are manifested in BIPOC’s disappointment with a lack of non-dominant content in the university curricula, objectification, isolation and alienation (Henry and Tator 2009). Racialised students are often a tokenised presence in universities perceived as likely to under-perform or in need of additional support due to ‘cultural differences’ (Henry and Tator 2009), and find the university space reflective of monocultural views and ideologies (Battiste 2013).

Discourse analysis: a methodology and a method

This research builds on traditions of critical and poststructural theories of race and racism to demonstrate how initiatives to further equity and diversity are producers of and are produced by colourblind discourses of racism (Bonilla-Silva 2018; Daniels and Varghese 2020). Our discourse analysis is guided by Foucauldian understandings of discourse and power, a theoretical framework providing a set of tools that shape our discourse analysis (Cheng 2018). Discourses are bodies of knowledge that regulate behaviour and reinscribe power relations within institutions; it is circular in that ‘discursive practices constitute discourse at the same time as being constituted by discourse’ (Youdell 2006, 35). Discourse is not the equivalent of language, but ‘a system which structures the way we perceive reality’ (Mills 2003, 55). Widely circulated documents are mechanisms of power that keep counter discourses – that is, other versions of truth – out of circulation (Mills 2003). To examine the discourses circulated about the You Belong Here campaign, we collected all widely circulated documents publicising the campaign.

Data collection started after the launch of the campaign in March 2019. Since the beginning of the campaign, the data was available in physical spaces at the university (images, t-shirts with the campaign logo, a wall #YQRBelong backdrop), and disseminated to students and faculty via different media communication channels: both internally (postings on the University Facebook page and home page, excerpts from campaign speakers, tweets from the Student Union Twitter account, and videos about the campaign), and externally (articles from local and provincial news outlets written as responses to the texts initially circulated by the university). Additionally, some of the research team members (Novotna) attended at least one of the publicly lectures of invited speakers. Gebhard, Novotna and Carter conducted Internet searches to find all publicly-available documents about the campaign, adding them to a shared cloud folder. The search terms used were: You Belong Here campaign, anti-racist campaign, anti-racism and University of Regina. We added 18 sources of data in total to a shared chart: these included university website stories on the campaign; video files promoting the speaker series; the content of the speakers series attended in person and in public media coverage of the campaign; and University, Student association Facebook and twitter feeds).

We read and re-read the documents collected, individually and collaboratively charting and noting what the texts produced as ‘truth.’ We met bi-weekly to discuss our individual interpretations and meaning-making, taking notes on our team conversations, which often led to new insights, and broadened and deepened our analyses. After establishing recurring discourses in the documents, Gebhard synthesised and wrote the analysis; Novotna, Carter and Oba provided regular feedback on the draft, which was stored in a cloud document accessible to all authors at all times. In our final stages, we returned to the original data, engaging in an iterative process that led to a deepened examination of the consequences of the identified discourses.

Discourse analysis is not about following a particular set of steps, but requires confidence in one’s analytic prowess (Cheng 2018). We were interested in dominant narratives about race and racism circulated through the documents; that is, what about these topics was maintained as true, natural and good, as well as the counter-narratives they served to exclude (Weedon 1987/1997). Viewing the documents as layered with discourses that maintain a particular version of truth about diversity, equity, and racism in higher education, we asked questions of the data to unpack these particular versions of truth as well as the versions that were excluded. Key questions that guided our discourse analysis were the following: What does this text take for granted about race and racism at the University? How are these assumptions reflective of anti-racist scholarship? What subjectivities (who people ‘get to be’) are made possible by the truth patterns, and how do these open up or forestall possibilities for transformation? Asking questions that reveal the data’s unstated assumptions and the larger consequences of these assumptions is the starting point of producing findings distinguishable from what one would find in a thematic analysis. In the latter, the researcher typically aims to describe and summarise a data set, which is often taken at face value. In discourse analysis, the aim is to go beyond a description of textual data, and to examine its underlying and (un)stated assumptions.

Importantly, while we understand the discourses as circulated by individuals, they do not originate from individuals; therefore, we endeavoured to ‘keep the focus on the … discourse, not the person who produces it’ (Wood and Kroger 2000, 78). Wetherell and Potter (1992) also underline the interest in discourse analysis is in language and not in language users. Similarly, we do not analyse the intention of the speakers or producers of the messages; not only do discourses have consequences beyond intentions, speculation about intentions merely obscures analysis of consequence and effect.

Following poststructuralist tradition, we reject the notion of one true interpretation of the data (Wood and Kroger 2000). The knowledge we produce in this research emerged because we ‘asked certain questions and used certain frameworks to produce the answers’ (Kumashiro 2015, 8), and we underline this to signal the postructural paradigm that views all data analysis as partial and incomplete (Jackson and Mazzei 2012). We did not set out to unveil a singular truth, but to examine whose interests and ideologies are served by the particular constructs of race, racism, and whiteness circulated by the campaign.

You belong here: racism doesn’t – a means to an end?

We open our analysis with a series of statements circulated at the start of the campaign:

The University of Regina admits it has a racism problem on campus and it’s doing something to fix it (Shepherd 2019).

It’s subtle, it’s insidious, it is everywhere on our campus (Shepherd 2019).

Racism is alive and well and we need to name it and we need to work together to make sure that it doesn’t flourish in our society (Shepherd 2019).

According to the above statements, racism is a pervasive problem on campus; it is ‘everywhere’ and the university is committed to addressing the problem. Producing as truth that racism exists and needs to be named, these statements belie dominant refrains of the non-existence of racism in the Canadian prairies. Despite these initial disruptive discourses of the campaign that suggest an anti-racist aim of exposing and confronting the myriad of ways racism is embedded in the institution, the subsequent messaging put forth by the campaign contradicts this initial accountability taken by the university. The slogan of the campaign, ‘You Belong Here. Racism Doesn’t.’ quickly became an end in itself. Ensuring racism ‘doesn’t flourish’ was transformed into a publicised stance that racism does not exist on campus and that the university has already achieved equality as starting points, thus supporting the discourse that any instances of racism are aberrant examples. The language of race and racism appeared almost exclusively in the slogan and was largely absent from other components of the campaign, or only mentioned, instead of explained with a scholarly definition.

The repetition of the slogan in the absence of a deeper education about racism worked to deny instead of recognise racism. The slogan began appearing across physical and online university spaces, including a high-traffic area of the university where it was set up as a photo backdrop against which people could stop and take photos for posting to social media. The slogan is consistent with a popular stance perceived as more progressive that still equates to denial, which is that racism does exist, but it is ‘out there and not here’; in this case, racism became something that does not belong to this particular university, which positioned itself as different through the launch of the campaign and the repetition of the slogan. This positioning as different from other universities was later echoed in statements made by senior university administration: ‘other universities are working hard to become what we are today’ (Martin 2017). Through the reliance on the slogan alone, the complexities of anti-racist education and the multidimensional ways in which it operates were minimised. This thin approach contradicts scholarship that posits addressing racism is complex and, for the individuals involved, lifelong (Kendi 2019).

Niceties are (not) enough

A turn to positivity and the erasure of the topic of racism in the campaign events that followed its launch – with the exception of the slogan – was a move consistent with Nelson’s (2015) research demonstrating programmes are often initiated to disrupt experiences of racism, and then focus on celebratory discourses, avoiding the language of racism and anti-racism. The following statement made at the outset of the campaign, ‘Treating each other with kindness and respect has a world changing impact,’ (Campbell 2019) appeals to the notion that niceties are solutions to widespread racial inequity and discrimination. When racism is transformed into a lack of ‘kindness and respect,’ the comforting discourse of colour-blindness is left intact. Sweeping statements about the importance of being kind to everyone ignore the fact that identity markers influence and shape the treatment of individuals on a personal level, in day-to-day interactions, and on the institutional level, through rules and policies. Individuals who perceive themselves and are perceived by others as being ‘nice’ can nevertheless harbour deep disdain and disrespect for people of colour (Nieto 2008). Reducing the countering of racism to being kind is actually harmful to students of colour, because this fails to counter a social structure wherein racialised students are treated unequally (Nieto 2008, 28). Bonilla-Silva 2018) explains contemporary racism sounds and appears very ‘nice’ on a surface level; importantly, the promulgation of kindness and respect re-inscribes the knowledge that to be racist, one must participate in outright acts of hatred (Leonardo 2013). When racism is understood as an individual affliction ‘located within a small, aberrant pocket of the population’ (Nelson 2015, 345), there is no credible basis for action.

Appeals to sameness

The next excerpts originate from the publicity surrounding the first event in the speakers’ series of You Belong Here, a key component of the campaign which featured public lectures.

In his upcoming presentation, Anthony Mclean will challenge audience members to think critically about unconscious biases and deliver a powerful message about creating an inclusive environment. He’ll argue that regardless of our race, religion, socio-economic background, or sexual orientation, we all want to feel a sense of belonging (Waldrop 2019).

Uncovering discriminatory unconscious biases can be an eye-opening and unsettling experience, but it is one that helps create a University community where everybody feels valued and knows they belong (Waldrop 2019).

We all have unconscious biases. They are learned stereotypes that are automatic, unintentional, deeply ingrained within our beliefs, universal, and have the ability to affect our behaviour (Waldrop 2019).

These excerpts suggest the speaker would unsettle the audience members through a focus on unpacking discriminatory, unconscious biases. However, the speech itself met expectations of the dominant group in terms of overall lightness of subject matter that did not name racism until the discussion period. Recognising people are really not that different from each other as a solution to inequity emerged as the lecture’s key message. The speaker encouraged a racially diverse audience of faculty, staff and students to seek out each other’s commonalities, to demonstrate ‘You have much more in common than you realise’ (McLean 2019). The speaker encouraged the audience to raise their hand if they could relate to a series of statements, including: ‘ … if you cry at car commercials,’ ‘ … if you love dogs,’ and ‘ … if you love popping the bubbles in bubble wrap.’ The audience was also encouraged, ‘when they see someone different from themselves,’ to be curious instead of judgemental, not to focus on their perceived religion or race, and to instead wonder about, for example, ‘what movie made them cry.’

Through this well-intended activity promoting sameness, whiteness operates as an invisible norm; the real difference that difference makes in the lives of individuals whose ways of being do not conform to white mainstream expectations can be diminished or ignored. According to Schick (2010), ‘a type of easy universalism suggests that people “are just people” in contrast to the reality that social hierarchies have widely different consequences that advantage some to the detriment of others’ (54). Further, the speaker’s examples reference a particular cultural framework that is not shared by everyone, which is a cultural framework reflective of mainstream, Eurocentric, consumerist culture, to ‘function in ways that privilege whiteness, so that whiteness persists as an identification that is worth knowing and as an identification worth performing’ (Schick 2002, 101). Emotions are not universal or naturally occurring, but shaped ‘by our biases and beliefs, our cultural frameworks’ (DiAngelo 2018, 132). Whiteness is held as the invisible norm when the values and characteristics of the dominant group are espoused as the unspoken, neutral standard against which all ‘others’ are evaluated, and must conform to in order to ‘belong.’ The appeal to a universalised humanity as a remedy for inequality not only ignores that humans are different from each other, but produces whiteness as humanity itself. The third speaker in the speaker series made statements that bumped up against the messages of sameness promoted by the first speaker. While speaker one urged their audience to recognise ‘we are all the same,’ the third speaker discussed the impacts of ‘having to pretend and present yourself in a way to make [white] people feel like you were like them’ (Sciarpelletti 2020).

Producing everyone as equally responsible for inequity was also reinscribed through an emphasis on unconscious biases in the first speaker’s lecture, a message consistent with unconscious bias training that encourages everyone to accept they are a ‘suppressed racist (or at least [exhibit] a strong racial preference)’ (Noon 2018). Framing the problem of racism as ‘unconscious biases’ equally belonging to everyone shifts the lens away from the devastating impacts of racism on BIPOC, and leaves white people unaccountable for examining internalised racist beliefs about the inferiority of BIPOC and white supremacy. Perpetuating the knowledge that everyone holds unconscious biases without a discussion of power relations also serves to safeguard the dominant belief held by white people about the existence of ‘reverse racism’ and oppression – the idea that allows whites to claim ‘People of colour are just as racist as whites’ or ‘It goes both ways’ – ubiquitous claims in the context of this study. According to Bourne (2019), concepts such as individual or unconscious ‘bias’ obscure structural analyses of racism as institutionalised, ignores historical injustices, reduces racist acts to individual ‘flaws’ and provides simplistic solutions to a complex social problem.

Diversity as ‘valuable’

Producing the university as an always already progressive space, appreciative of diversity, was presented in the University’s promotion of the second speaker in the campaign speaker series. The advertisements called for acknowledging the ‘power of a diverse and inclusive workplace, and the need to convey the message of diversity as beneficial for all of us’ (University of Regina 2020b). The poster text quoted the speaker stating, ‘Extensive research has confirmed how important it is to build teams whose members don’t all look or think the same way. Diversity and inclusion are valuable to any team, in any setting, and lead to more creativity and innovation. And yet, there’s still a lot of work to do. While most business leaders now understand why having a diverse and inclusive culture is critical to performance, they don’t necessarily know how to achieve that goal’ (University of Regina 2020b). Ascribing a social and economic value to the Other constitutes a type of commodification that has become integral to neoliberal postsecondary education (Evans 2020; Leong 2013). The presence of non-white individuals is justified and ironically measured by the majority (Leong 2013).

Furthermore, the last excerpt reiterates a discourse that depicts the ‘Other’ as requiring permission to participate in white institutions (Iverson 2012), and unwittingly acknowledges white dominance by granting the dominant group the power to include and exclude ‘the Other’. Another example of this occurs in a video advertisement (University of Regina 2019) posted on social media. The video opens with people appearing to represent faculty of colour, stating ‘You belong here.’ This is followed by eight separate statements of ‘I belong here’ spoken by racialised students in various languages. A white student subsequently takes the screen and the script changes from ‘I belong here’ to ‘You belong here, racism doesn’t.’ The white student is thus positioned as not only belonging automatically, but holding the authority to affirm the belonging of their peers of colour, sending a message about who belongs unequivocally and whose membership depends on the approval of the dominant group. This approval is often contingent upon racialized university members' willingness to uphold the institution as an equal playing field.

Silencing Counternarratives

The production of the campaign as evidence that equity has been achieved on campus was bolstered by highlighting interviews with faculty and students of colour who spoke positively about the campaign and their experiences at university in media coverage. The notion of exclusion is very important in discourse analysis and we must consider how some discourses are kept in existence in ways that keep other statements out of circulation (Mills 2003). Storytelling from the perspective of critical race scholars is ‘not valued so much for its truth content as its truth effects; its ability to affect our actions and our orientation to the Other’ (Leonardo 2013, 20). In keeping with this framework for examining publicised positive stories, we are not claiming the untruthfulness of individuals’ accounts but are instead interested in how stories have the ability to uphold discourses of denial and silence counternarratives that would be an ‘antidote to the majority’s line of thinking’ through ‘recountings of how race affects minority lives’ (Leonardo 2013, 20).

In one newspaper story released one year after the campaign started, one Black faculty member describes being handed a ‘You Belong Here’ t-shirt upon their return to the university after a leave of absence. The professor is quoted as explaining they had originally left because they ‘didn’t feel that I belonged here. Nobody told me I belonged here at that time and everything I saw on the job, the way people sometimes asked me where I came from “originally” and when I intended to return there, and many other indicators gave me the impression that I didn’t really belong here’ (University of Regina 2020a). The story goes on to tell of the faculty member’s return to work at the university: ‘In late 2019, my supervisor welcomed me and gave me a grey shirt with a bold message on the front: “You Belong Here: Racism Doesn’t.” That almost melted my heart. It was a powerful message that left a powerful impression … I am impressed with the change I am seeing. We know there is a lot of work to be done as the University transforms itself into a more welcoming community where everyone can have a full sense of belonging, but we must recognise the work that is being done, especially the genuine and honest openness to engage in public discussions of these issues’ (University of Regina 2020a).

We read the above interview responses as informed by a discursive backdrop that rewards iterations of gratitude and responds negatively to counternarratives disruptive to mainstream Canadians’ self-adulatory stance on multiculturalism (Hiranandani 2011; Maiter and Joseph 2017). Speaking within the limits of what mainstream discourses have authorised as ‘true’ lessens the risk of outrage and backlash or being positioned as irrational and dangerous (Schmidt 2005). Social penalties of disrupting white innocence are documented by DiAngelo and Sensoy, who trace how white students frame anti-racist education as a violent attack, describing themselves as being ‘victimised, slammed, blamed … [and ‘used as a punching bag]’ (2014, 125). BIPOC who allege racism are often positioned as ‘hypersensitive’ or presented with the ubiquitous claim they are ‘playing the race card’ (Bonilla-Silva 2018; Thobani 2007). Drawing from methodological analyses of interviews with racialised participants, scholars demonstrate racialised participants rarely employ structural analysis in discussions about racism and tend to conform to, and produce, colourblind and liberal discourses, pointing to the importance of foregrounding what is left unsaid rather than what is (Maiter and Joseph 2017; Pollack 2003). Multicultural discourses that emphasise good-will and benevolence towards racialised newcomers keep stories about inequity, especially racism, out of circulation. Oba (2018) underlines celebratory discourses, require internalised oppression, a process whereby ‘the Other’ must participate in their own oppression by remaining grateful and subservient or be deemed resistant or maladaptive. The exclusion of examples of how racism continues to operate on campus is made possible through language that suggests an equitable present and the dream of an equitable future while glossing over or ignoring the inequitable present (Turner 2019).

Always already

The below publicised statements about the campaign underline how the messaging of You Belong Here became regulated by the discourses of a post-racial society, depicting the university as a space that was always already a space where racism does not exist, or as a space that has already achieved equality for everyone, even before the campaign.

The campaign reinforces the message that the University is a welcoming institution that is open to all. It also raises awareness of the behaviours and attitudes – such as bullying, abuse, harassment, and discrimination – that are not acceptable on the University’s campuses (Campbell 2019).

‘In a world that continues to be plagued by racial intolerance, discrimination, and violence, it is important for our University to set a positive example.’ (Campbell 2019)

‘The University has a long history of being a welcoming Institution’ (Campbell 2019)

The University has been forward thinking and progressive since 1978, when it was already ahead of its times in its creation of a sexual orientation clause. The university today is at the forefront of diversity and inclusion movements today (Campbell 2019).

Where racism was originally proclaimed to be ‘everywhere’ at the outset of the campaign, it was suddenly nowhere soon after the campaign was launched. This is a narrative consistent with general white Canadian beliefs that racism in Canada is non-existent (Hiranandani 2011). Scholars contend that racism requires denial in order to flourish (e.g., Kendi 2019; Nelson 2015), and by reiterating this discourse, the campaign forestalled anti-racist actions that require acknowledging that racism operates on campus in order to be justified. The campaign was quickly transformed into a celebratory story about the accomplishments of the university. If there was ever a problem of racism on campus, reminders of the university’s past initiatives to promote inclusivity were highlighted as evidence that equality has been achieved, giving rise to celebration instead of transformative education and actions. Ladhani and Sitter (2020) might describe this posturing as ‘competency language’ and ‘diversity management’ which guards the institutional and national image of Canada as a fair nation that celebrates diversity, a message echoed in the following Twitter feed: ‘You belong here, racism doesn’t! Racism has no place at the University of Regina or at your Student Union. We pride ourselves in offering jobs, food, and cultural connections to our students from 48 countries around the globe and those from right here in Canada. #yqrbelong #sask’ (Wiskar 2019). Celebratory anti-racist messaging, embedded in institutional practices that make space for diversity, becomes an efficient way to perpetuate stereotypes about the Other and commodify its presence on campus (Evans, J 2020; Nelson 2015). The messaging surrounding the campaign depicts the university as an exemplar of progress and imbued with good-will towards minoritised groups – versions of nationalist narratives that portray Canada as a model multicultural society (Thobani 2007). The self-adulatory nature of the campaign is consistent with Canada’s multicultural discourses that produce the country as welcoming to all, and different from the United States, characterisations that make anti-racist education difficult.

Conclusion

How does a university-wide awareness campaign both disrupt and re-inscribe mainstream discourses about racism? How do the discourses open up and foreclose the possibilities for anti-racist action and meaningful changes for racialised members of the university? This discourse analysis reveals the discourses of the campaign and subjectivities to which they give rise are consistent with those that anti-racist scholars have long contended forestall meaningful anti-racist action and change. We do not question the sincerity of the campaign leaders for the university to be a space where all students, regardless of identity and backgrounds, are welcomed. However, we suggest hegemonic discourses circulated by the campaign largely centred around the denial of racism, erasing the possibility of an understanding that racism and other forms of oppression are ongoing, have grave impacts on racialised faculty and students, and forestall anti-racist actions. This study illuminates how well-intentioned campaigns can easily succumb to the forces of privilege and oppression they were ostensibly seeking to dismantle.

A simple Google search for the You Belong Here slogan reveals how ubiquitous the discourses of diversity and inclusion in postsecondary education have become across North American campuses (e.g. Mount Royal University, 2020; Southern Methodist University, 2020; UBC Okanagan, 2020; University of South Florida, 2020). The campaigns’ messaging – You Belong Here – became the linchpin of communication strategies touting the solutions to structural racism by the promising to racialised people that all are welcome and accepted. Rankine (2014) suggests that positive effects of anti-racism campaigns are only assumed, as many only vaguely identify audiences and goals, with education about diversity remaining the sole strategy and without any specific behavioural or institutional changes.

What changes then are required from the dominant group, from the knowledge produced by the campaign? Very few, we contend. Instead, the messaging of the campaign encourages dominant group members to continue displaying the qualities and ideals they have supposedly always upheld. In keeping with national narratives, these are goodwill and benevolence towards all. The campaign missed an opportunity to have any profound educational value; while it presented an opportunity to engage in discussions about racism, the discourses employed in the campaign failed to provide a nuanced and scholarly-based analysis of racism in academia. It therefore fell into the pitfall of a premature and false sense of accomplishment through employment of a narrowly defined terrain of racism as individual transgressions. While messaging at the outset of the campaign defined racism as a reality on campus, the reality quickly became redefined as one of equality already achieved. The implication of the discourse of denial is that there becomes no legitimate basis for opposition to racism or structural anti-racist action by the university and gives rise to familiar white subjectivities who see themselves outside the system of racism, exemplifying Bonilla-Silva’s 2018 ‘racism without racists.’

Taking place against a backdrop of rising neoliberalism, the superficial treatment of diversity as a means for achieving competitive status renders racialised students and faculty as objects and commodities. Research on the denial of racism in the context of neo-liberalism is important for future studies – a conversation already started by scholars abroad (see Dunn et al. 2011). Similarly, diversification of students and faculty alone does not signal fundamental change if not accompanied by the interrogation of the normative centre of whiteness and colonialism. In the absence of an acknowledgement of the colonial origins of higher education, universities’ inclusivity efforts risk reinforcing instead of shifting unequal power relations. Anti-racism requires long-term commitment to fundamental change, and an engagement with scholarship that has long criticised continued recycling of discourses of denial over radical action and education that would transform the academy. Campaigns professing to combat racism or any form of oppression must refrain from applying yet another shiny veneer to detract from more difficult and sustained commitments that hold potential for more equitable outcomes.

Acknowledgments

Kathy Hogarth, Barbara McNeil, Florence Luhanga, Latoya Reid, Uwakwe Kalu.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [430-2018-01135].

Notes

1. The term ‘racialised’ is employed in this paper to refer to individuals who identify as Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC), and we also use the term BIPOC. While not a homogenous group, BIPOC – albeit always in differential and shifting ways – have been racialised; that is, systems of white dominance have attempted to categorise and define who they are (Gonzalez-Sobrino and Goss 2019; Ladson-Billings 1998; St Denis 2010). While we recognise white people are also racialised in that white is a socially constructed category, our usage of the term implies to be racialised is to be othered, and we follow scholars who emphasise the unequal power relations involved in racialising processes (e.g., Ladson-Billings 1998; Razack 1998). The term person of colour is used to acknowledge the work of scholars that recognise experiences of racialised people in Canada without referring to Indigenous People, who are considered distinct societies under the Canadian Constitution (Canadian Race Relation Foundation, n.d.).

2. Saskatchewan, Canada is situated on lands that are composed of territories covered in 5 major historical numbered treaties: Treaty 4 (1874), Treaty 5 (1875–76), Treaty 6 (1876), Treaty 8 (1899–1900), and Treaty 10 (1906–07) and, to a lesser extent, Treaty 2 (1871) and Treaty 7 (1877), as well as the traditional Homeland of the Métis Nation (Government of Saskatchewan 2019).

3. When using the terms diversity and inclusion, we refer to the diversity initiatives in Canadian or US universities commonly deployed to ostensibly increase racial diversity on campus. We note these have largely served to increase the diversity amongst white people on campuses, rather than increase presence of non-white students and/or enhance their retention. Thus diversity and inclusion initiatives often mask or avoid addressing race and racism (Henry and Tator 2009; Iverson 2012; Moreno et al. 2006).