Eloise Sherrid

This video I have to admit, shock me to my core and has opened or re-opened some quite traumatic episodes I had as a student studying in France, UK or Netherlands, in university where I was sometimes the only black person in the classroom.
Some passages still resonate and unleash in me a weird feeling that I have sometimes tried to control, to remain sane in a situation where racism and microaggressions were weekly and where I was left alone to fend for myself.

I think this video voices perfectly the silence and loneliness some students feel when they dare raise their identity by just displaying something about race. This feeling of provocating, of disturbing, of being annoying because it disturbs the norm. The white fragility that they have to manage and the feeling that their voice does not matter.

The last minute of this video perfectly captured this double standard existing in society, of someone powerful and someone threatening depending on their skin colour, the idea that a student of colour that dares to challenge could be a threat to the order and a danger. This double standard and stereotype carried by media is still a living truth today and forces students of colour to self-censor as a matter of safety and survival in educative and professional contexts, affecting their confidence, their sense of worth and mental health. Bringing them up to accept to be less than to be tolerated.

It is difficult for me to watch this video without being emotional and trying to remain objective because it is too close to my own experience.

It becomes vertiginous when I start remembering the comments that some of my tutors have made during crits and would today perhaps blame it on “unconscious bias”.

And today as a tutor I still witness this bias, these microaggressions and double standards when it comes to some tutors’ comments, this bias which when evocated brings a lot of defensiveness.
And the same unease reaction when students want to work around questions of identity or race with a fear of heated discussions to which they do not feel equipped.

There are still powerplays in place, where the teacher is here to assess and not to learn, not to share or not to discuss, not to receive.
Perhaps this fragility displays the lack of diverse voices in the teaching staff, even if I am also questioning the need to relate on a personal basis with the experience of a student who makes us better tutors, and better support.

I think there is just a need to respect all voices and try to remain the most objective possible as educators while being fully conscious of the societal issue that unfolds both inside and outside the university walls. To give equality room for all voices to be heard even when it is uncomfortable and put ourselves in a learned sit, to accept that we do not know everything and to reach out to people that could support students’ exploration.

To make sure students feel safe to learn and not muted, to accept that sometimes we can be the oppressor, to make mistakes and to accept that we can change and what it takes to shift assumptions.
To be active in the seat of teacher/learner and embrace the unknown with empathy.