Close
Creating race equity for black and minority ethnic staff in FPHS
5 March 2019
On 14 February the Faculty hosted a Town Hall event co-chaired by Professor Graham Hart and the Provost to openly discuss the challenges faced in relation to BME representation and career development within Population Health Sciences at UCL.
An audience of 50 staff members from across the Faculty, including Institute Directors, engaged in an open discussion with the panel – signalling their commitment to supporting positive action and a change agenda.
Themes to emerge from the meeting ranged from addressing racial micro aggressions, UCL leadership courses (improving availability, clarity on criteria and providing feedback on applications), to regular reporting on BME data. Additional discussion points are summarised below.
Discussion points
- Racial microaggressions
"Subtle racism is not obvious. Responding to it often depends on power and social relationships between individuals, so simply 'calling it out' is not possible." - Creating white allies
"How do we involve, include and empower colleagues with privilege to support those without?" - Training and development opportunities
"What support is available for junior BME (G7 and G8) colleagues?" - Line management and proactive encouragement
"Managers and leaders need to take responsibility for eliminating unconscious bias and negative perceptions." - Transparency
"Several examples were given of training courses not having clear selection criteria, and colleagues being given no feedback on why they had not been accepted onto specific courses – there is a lack of transparency around key processes." - Language and culture
"Race and ethnicity is complicated and the concept of BME is problematic – people in different ethnic groups have very different experiences, and intersectionality is also an important consideration – an Asian women will have a very different experience to a Black man."
YouTube Widget Placeholderhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_se4w2Yg2jk&t=377s
Next steps
The Faculty will meet with the relevant UCL central departments and its Institutes to develop and drive actions forward. Possible actions will be brought to the Faculty Leaders’ Forum to ensure broad engagement to deliver change and staff will be kept up to date with developments going forward via the Faculty’s newsletter.
If you have any questions in the meantime or would like to get involved, please email fphs.pa@ucl.ac.uk.
Links
