Working from the Margins: Race, Space and Employment Equity in Academic Positions

This presentation will investigate the following questions: How is racism constructed amongst faculty within the University context? How can discrimination be transgressed to allow a greater recruitment, retention and promotion of a diverse faculty? In thinking about citizenship, what is at stake if visible minorities choose or refuse to enact agency within educational institutions? Through the lens of a race and space methodology, this presentation will critique the recruitment, retention and promotion of visible minorities. For visible minorities to move through these critical steps in academe, they have to understand the social and power relations that are prevalent in the different spaces of the university and be aware of the potential causes of racism, specifically disorientation, amplification, infantilisation, super-surveillance and naming. Employment equity practices may facilitate the hiring of visible minority faculty, however, these individuals require mentoring, a supportive climate, appropriate engagement in faculty committees and sensitivity to the burden of representation to thrive. Universal bodies have entrenched themselves into various departments and occupations over time. Thus, the perceptions of universal bodies need to be challenged and changed to allow space for difference, as in diversity and not inferiority. Visible minorities will then have fewer barriers in entering and staying in academe. Equity and diversity, in words and action, aim to remove systemic discrimination and dominant exclusionary practices, while at the same time opening up new spaces for different world views amongst students, staff and faculty. A race and space analysis, as a gateway to the understanding of race, space and employment equity in academic positions, inspires and compels me to exercise my immediate agency to address systemic barriers in my work environment.