BACKGROUND

This study aims to assess the extent to which Black scholars have exerted their agency capacities in fighting intersectional forms of discrimination in academia. The gist of the argument is premised on the assertion that most Black scholars are afraid of speaking out against discrimination despite having the necessary agency capacities. The research questions for this study are: (1) How do Black scholars exercise agency to navigate institutional racial discrimination in academia? (2) How do institutional barriers such as tokenism and fear of career loss limit Black scholars’ ability to push back? (3) How do strategies for navigating discriminatory spaces vary among Black scholars across different career stages? (4) What structural reforms do Black scholars see as essential to support their agency and academic success? The study employs a qualitative data collection approach through interviews with ten Black scholars from the social sciences. Aside from the interviews, other data to support the study’s inferences are gathered through document analysis of current literature on discrimination. For comparative purposes, this study uses two country cases: Britain, and Germany. 

CONCEPTUAL ISSUES

In the struggle, fortitude is a critical attribute because nothing of essence in any political life was ever achieved by people who fear confronting their oppressors. Given that Black scholars have historically been marginalized, it is imperative that they, by default, should also be activists. The motivation for being activists should be grounded either in the human rights discourse or in the liberation philosophy; both of which seek the liberty, autonomy, and authenticity of disenfranchised people. Activists help society by speaking out against exploitative power relations, alienation, and destitution that keep marginalized people on the periphery. Black scholars and intellectuals – due to their academic acumen and greater comprehension of issues – have a special contribution to make in the mapping of the margins. The idea of education is not merely about classroom teaching, but more crucially, about responding to institutional deficits by proactively leading in knowledge production that informs contemporary life. In this way, plural worldviews are given voice and visibility, thereby assisting in raising awareness of the hazards of homogeneous viewpoints. Edward Said argues that silence is never the voice of the oppressed: giving a voice to the voiceless is a duty, especially for scholars, for they are more influential, empowered, and privileged in society than ordinary people. An academic has a larger responsibility than merely being a member of an interest group; that is an intellectual is someone who is banished or a relegated person who dares the odds and speaks truth to power. Confronting oppressive authorities may be a lonely undertaking, but someone must take the mantle and step up.
Worldwide, scholars are among influential voices because they are often taken more
seriously when they comment on critical matters compared to less educated people.
Turning a blind eye to injustice only perpetuates it, and standing by while someone is being wronged is just as bad as being the one who committed that injustice. Thus, those who elect to remain neutral in the face of abuse will have, by default, chosen to stand with the aggressor, hence themselves guilty of complicity. 

Martin Luther King Jr. asserted that:
''injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one, affects all, directly or indirectly. Freedom is never given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.''

As Frantz Fanon argued, the colonized person – the native – can only find his freedom in and through violence because the idea of peaceful negotiations is not the language that can successfully shake off the colonizers and oppressors’ brutality. The native knows that without absolute resistance, he will forever be placed under an imperial ecosystem of systemic subjugation. Therefore, for Fanon, freedom and independence must come by any means necessary. However, the paradox of privilege (whether by Black or White scholars) is that it tends to shield them from fully experiencing or acknowledging inequality, yet their knowledge should ordinarily give them more capacity and influence to recognize this disparity. This makes them ‘blind and ignorant’ of the peculiar reality of those who are more marginalized within society. The murder of George Floyd in 2020 is a stark reminder of years of indifference and collective failure to stand up boldly against discrimination. In this context, privilege, allied with ignorance, has become an equally pernicious enemy to justice (Baldwin 1983).
Another factor that has contributed to African complacency in the fight against racial injustices has to do with the psychological capture of the mind through colonialism and foreign religions. For instance, Christianity was – to all intents and purposes – a project that nurtured colonialism due it its silence on colonial atrocities. In Christianity, the faithful were/are taught to obey authorities and church rules without applying any critical reasoning to those rules. Blind obedience was/is intended to keep reproducing subservient Africans where dogmas were/are propelled and promoted as the ‘divine’ way of life. Blind obedience is the unquestioning compliance with authority where people follow orders without critical thinking or moral evaluation.
History shows that blind obedience to religious authority justified atrocious cruelty in
the name of faith. In fact, religious extremism arises from blind obedience. In Christianity, the propaganda and myth of a White Jesus (i.e., the subtle glorification of a white savior mindset) is so ingrained in Western Christian scripts that to date, an average African Christian cannot conceive of a Jesus who is not White. As Jun et al. (2018) have asserted, the history of Christian culpability in systematic racism and maligning African cultural and spiritual practices is well documented; Christianity is a theology steeped in entrenched whiteness, and the concept of a White Jesus is a powerful tool upon which White supremacy reigns. The inference by (Cole, 2012) that ‘the White savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening’ cannot be further from the truth.

KEY STUDY FINDINGS

One of the most instructive findings of this study is that open discussions about racism often evoke emotions, anger, and denials on the part of most White people, as those conversations interrupt the superficial and conjectured depiction of Western societies as being diverse and welcoming.  In most European academic systems, Black scholars are still perceived as impostor academics who are often believed to have gotten their positions simply to fill university race quotas. As such, Black scholars need to exert a combination of individual autonomy agency capacities, and adaptive agency capacities because restraints and enabling mechanisms
result from both human agency and the sphere within which people exercise their agency.  Another instructive finding of this study is that Black scholars do not trust European academic institutions due to the perception that those institutions are not genuinely concerned with the welfare of Black people. Consequently, most Black scholars are afraid to speak out for fear of losing their privileges, such as a school scholarship (in case of PhD candidates) or losing tenure (in case of lecturers/professors). Others also fear that speaking out might jeopardize opportunities for other upcoming scholars. The pervasiveness of racism in Western academia (in reference to the sample cases of Britain and Germany) is a hint that discrimination has also permeated other spheres of public life.  But remaining silent in the face of injustices is to actively participate in sustaining the status quo, which also means that a closed mouth is indeed a closed destiny. To redress this challenge, a new consciousness framed around a Black consciousness disposition needs to be re-energized to produce scholars who are neither pacifiers nor consensus-builders, but individuals who have critical and reflexive minds.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The struggle for social justice has never been and will never be a walk in the park. While most Black academics think they are going to lose material benefits if they talk candidly against discrimination, they should instead think about the virtues they lose by being silent. One must wonder why an academic, a writer, a person who claims to be an educator, would be ignoring their critical role of raising consciousness in society. Therefore, remaining silent or electing to be neutral in the face of injustices is equivalent to giving a blank cheque to oppressors to continue
inflicting harm upon the marginalized people. Black scholars should rise to the occasion and take a leaf from the likes of Mandela, Nkrumah, Nyerere, and Kaunda – if they are going to attain equality in academia, as they must. Indeed, the days of racism are numbered. In the end, however, as Martin Luther King insinuated, it is not the brutality of the colonialists, the slave traders, and racists that we will remember most, but the silence and inaction of the people we thought were our (influential) friends while we suffered at the hands of oppressors.