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Hello LSHTM Alumni!
The FAIR Network is currently producing an anti-racism toolkit for students. Commissioned by LSHTM Leadership, this toolkit aims to equip future cohorts of students with the minimum knowledge, understanding and terminology needed to critically and confidently engage in important conversations around racism and colonial legacies at our institution and beyond.
We are hoping to include some quotes and testimonies from LSHTM alumni to highlight what the LSHTM experience has been for students from different geographies, demographics, ethnicities and backgrounds, to aid the understanding of some important anti-racism concepts and definitions in the context of LSHTM education.
If you would like to provide a testimony, example or quote for us to use on any of the following topics, please send it over to FAIR@LSHTM.ac.uk by 5th November 2021.
These testimonies can be anonymised, just let us know what you prefer. Please do add your self-defined background/ethnicity, your programme of study and your year of study, for example ‘name/anonymous (you choose!), White British, MSc nutrition for Global Health 2017/18’.
The topics we are still looking for testimonies on are;
• Whiteness (e.g. your encounter with whiteness/white fragility in yourself or in fellow students)
• Positionality (e.g. how comfortable were you speaking up in class depending on your positionality within the class cohort?)
• Testimonial and interpretive injustice (e.g. did you feel that you or others were given a credibility excess or deficit in your/their opinions, views and experiences dependent on your ethnicity, background and/or country, from your lecturers or your fellow class mates?)
• Discourse (e.g. did you identify common language used in your educational materials, by teaching staff or by fellow students which you identify as problematic and resulting in a construction of ‘fact’ or ‘reality’ that you deem untrue, unjust, inappropriate or problematic?)
• Intersectionality (e.g. did you feel that some issues were focussed on more than others in areas of your learning, did you feel that complex issues of privilege and oppression were simplified or ignored?)
• Misogynoir (e.g. as a Black woman, did you feel stereotyped with tropes such as the ‘angry Black woman’ by fellow students or lecturers when you tried to express yourself?)
• Tokenism (e.g. did you feel like fellow students or lecturers saw you as representative of your entire ‘race’, or did you feel you were singled out or chosen for things to make others look or feel like they were being ‘inclusive’?)
• Microaggressions (e.g. did you experience subtle or indirect comments or actions that made you feel racialised, stereotyped or targeted?)
• Racial gaslighting (e.g were you ever disbelieved or told/made to feel like you were being ‘overly sensitive’ when you raised an instance or racism?)
Thank you for your contributions!
The FAIR Network