D.I.I.verse Podcast: Will it make the boat go faster?
Join Adam Vasco & Julian Gwinnett as they explore a range of topics under the umbrella of Diversity, Inclusion & Intersectionality through interviews with special guests. D.I.I.verse is a centre of excellence for Diversity, Inclusion & Intersectional approaches brought to you by The University of Wolverhampton. D.I.I.verse aims to lead a strategic vision for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the region and nationally. Through a team of academics, practitioners, and activists we aim to support colleagues in working towards a more equitable society. The podcast explores some of the themes, challenges and approaches in achieving these goals.
D.I.I.verse Podcast: Will it make the boat go faster?
Exploring Belonging: Identity, Inclusivity, with Jessie Allen, and Dr. Denis Hamilton
What does it truly mean to belong? Join us for an eye-opening episode where we explore the complex terrain of belonging across cultural, professional, and educational landscapes. Featuring insightful contributions from Kerensa Hodge, who shares poignant reflections on the Windrush generation's evolving sense of home, and expert analyses from Dr. Jessie Allen and Dr. Dennis Hamilton on the structural and psychological dimensions of feeling included, this conversation promises to challenge and inspire. We contrast the deep-seated need for authenticity and personal connection with the superficial act of merely fitting in, unearthing the emotional and societal intricacies that shape our identities.
Navigate the challenging waters of identity and belonging with us, especially within academia and larger societal frameworks. Discover why true belonging is rooted in honesty and self-recognition rather than the suffocating pressure to conform. Our discussion tackles historical and systemic betrayals that have severed trust, particularly for minority communities. We also address the struggles of students and early-career researchers grappling with identity crises and imposter syndrome, emphasising how these challenges are intertwined with broader societal issues like patriarchy and institutional racism. The conversation sheds light on how language and identity labels can unintentionally perpetuate exclusionary practices, complicating the path to genuine inclusion.
Reflecting on personal stories and collective experiences, we discuss the heavy toll that fitting in can take on one's sense of self. Hear how a surprising sense of belonging in South Africa starkly contrasted with lifelong feelings of alienation in other societies, and listen to the poignant accounts of those who feel misunderstood, even by their families. Our discussion extends to systemic barriers that marginalise groups and the importance of embracing one's identity, inspired by the African philosophy of Ubuntu. We emphasize the urgent need for institutions to set standards for equality and commit to reparative actions. Through honest communication and collaboration, we aim to pave the way for a more inclusive and equitable future.
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We are recording this podcast at the home of Wolverhampton University's Multimedia Journalism degree in the Alan Turing building on City Campus. The radio studio we are sitting in is kitted out to the same standards as places like BBC Radio 4 and 5 Live. It was installed alongside two studios as part of the new Wolverhampton Screen School. If you want to pop in for a guided tour, to discuss booking the studios or to chat about the journalism undergraduate degree, just email the course leader, gareth Owen.
Speaker 2:His address is gowen3 at wlvacuk hello and welcome to another episode of the diverse podcast, where today we're going to be talking about belonging. What is belonging? Why is it not the same as fitting? Podcast? Where today we're going to be talking about belonging. What is belonging? Why is it not the same as fitting in, and how can we foster a culture of belonging within our institution, our society and beyond? To discuss these and many other questions, I'm delighted to be joined in the studio by Dr Dennis Hamilton, who is a senior lecturer in sociology within the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities. Dennis is also a member of the university's Institute for Community Research and Development. I'm also joined by Jessie Allen, a doctoral research student in health and well-being, and, as always, by my amazing co-host, corenza Hodge. So over to you, corenza, to begin this wonderful conversation.
Speaker 3:And they're getting better and better, aren't they, Julian? I'm just enjoying myself as we go.
Speaker 3:We're having some fascinating conversations today and I'm really looking forward to the idea that we can explore this concept of belonging. That mean you have discussed on our many adventures and different events and different coffee events, and it's a term that has been used, belonging so waywardly. I would believe that we need to start to get to the nitty gritty of it and be able to understand the belonging and how we conceive belonging before we can really move on to start to do activities of belonging. So thank you, julian, I'm quite excited, for today I was at a conference and the concept of belonging was brought up and it was brought up in an environment that they were just talking about the idea of what does belonging mean, but the context that they were describing it wasn't something that I recognised as a person of colour, of a person who's female, from an intersectional kind of perspective, and I started to reflect on it and I started to look at the idea on the societal level, that concept of belonging as a child of the Windrush Well, second generation child of the Windrush, well, second generation, child of a windrush and thought to myself my mum and my grandparents felt so much that they felt belonging in the country, in the UK, but as the third generation.
Speaker 3:At third generation, I don't feel that I belong to this society and it started to make me question that idea of what belonging was and also, as most listeners will know, that I also work for the Zaxme Project here at the University of Wolverhampton and a lot of students were writing in their kind of views of their experiences, their lived experience of the university, that they also were struggling with the concept of belonging. So today I'm going to pass it over to my guests and we're just going to really discuss the idea of do we understand what belonging is?
Speaker 4:Well, karenza, that's a difficult one, isn't it? Because when we talk about this idea of belonging, it seems to be all about the agency of individuals, and what tends to be overlooked about the agency of individuals and what tends to be overlooked is the idea of structure. When you say belonging belonging to what People belong to? Social groups, they belong to ethnic groups, they belong to a community, they belong to the nation. So the idea of belonging isn't just straightforward, it's quite diverse in itself. And when we think about this idea of belonging, we have to say clearly, identify belonging to what exactly.
Speaker 3:I think that's a really interesting point because that's the experience that I'm thinking, because I look at the idea of belonging in my family group and in my culture and we would call that a cultural community group, so to speak and it's natural and it flows. But then when we look at the idea of maybe coming to work or to study, you don't have that expectation. But at the same time, if you use that term belonging, like you said, you'll just try to kind of fling that term into the work you're doing and then you'll start to look at the idea. But hold on a minute, that's not how I feel, and should I be feeling something else? So I think that's really kind of like a pertinent point. What about you, jessie? What do you think?
Speaker 5:well, for me, belonging has everything to do with sense of self and a sense of connection, and so I think that comes from really a deeper level. It comes from a psychological basis, I feel. So for me, really, when it differs from fitting in is that belonging has to have a level of authenticity to it. So it's really it's a type of connection that I think a lot of people struggle with in this country, especially the historical background the Windrush generation had and the levels of betrayal really that I feel a lot of black people feel in this country especially I know a lot of older generation Caribbean people really felt that this was the mother country and then, coming here, finding that the experiences were quite the opposite it. I think that that has a lot to do with a sense of disconnection and the sense of not belonging.
Speaker 3:I think that makes complete sense, because I would then put the question forward then do you believe that you can gain a sense of belonging and, in the same breath, do you feel that you can lose your sense of belonging? Um, as collect, with that kind of transformation I've spoken to you about, from my grandmother to my mom, to my generation, and looking even at my son, who seems like he has more of a strong sense of belonging to the uk than myself, so it's always like because he's been cultured, I would would say, to the idea of belonging. So, dennis, I was going to call you Dr Dennis, but I know you like to be called Dennis, but I went to your conference, or should I say conference, an event where we had the panel talk.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:And the knowledge and repair why the UK should pay for perpetuations for slavery, for perpetuations for slavery.
Speaker 3:And I got that sense of that discussion again, of that idea of belonging, because I thought could you compensate?
Speaker 3:And this is where I'm going with the idea if you lose a sense of belonging, is it because of an external um fact or external event that's happening. I wouldn't classify slavery as an event, but what really picked up me was discussing what we lost at that time, what our families lost, what we um have witnessed our parents having to go through at that loss, and why we feel that we should be compensated. But I don't know if the thing that was really missing for that meeting was the idea we lost our sense of belonging, maybe because we lost our language, we lost our you know, we could, dare I say, um identity, and why I find it quite important is because a lot of the time, with the global majority students and the that's me project and I've got a fragment especially coming from the afro-caribbean, african countries, always struggling to maintain what they've understood as belonging. So I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about that, ben, or how, if I'm kind of like encapsulating what I thought I witnessed at that time.
Speaker 4:Well, you see, when we talk about belonging, implicit in the idea is also ideas of exclusion as well. Uh, who belong and who doesn't? You know who's in the in group, who's in the out group and who. Who defines who is a member of the kind of dominant group in society? It's very interesting what you said about the idea of people in the Caribbean seeing Britain, for example, as the mother country. And basically, if you look at, say, for example, the case with Jamaica, for example, the coat of arms of Jamaica was actually designed by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time when the island was taken from the Spanish by Cromwell, so there's always been this sense as Jamaica belonging to Britain, maker belonging to Britain, even after this kind of constitutional connection was broken with independence in 1962. And in some ways as well.
Speaker 4:Going back to what Jesse is actually saying about the Windrush generation, as well as yourself, karenza, the kind of shock, cultural shock, karenza, the kind of shock, cultural shock that the so-called Windrush generation actually experienced when they came here was a sense of disconnect, a sense that they've always been told that you know, britain is the mother country and when they came here they felt as if they didn't belong. And one of the things that my research is looking at is Britain's role in the Dutch Caribbean between 1800 and 1815 and the kind of legacy of enslavement that represents itself in racial inequalities in the islands of Aruba, bonaire and Curacao now. And also that is also part of the idea of belonging as well, because as long as people are unequal in society, they're not going to feel as if they belong. So again, the idea of belonging can't really be examined outside of structural powers and relationships of power that exists I think that's literally the next point I was going to talk about.
Speaker 3:Me and julian went to an equality diversity conference at the weekend and we went to a particular seminar and she spoke about the idea of fitting in in contrast to belonging. The concept of belonging then has now become OK. We can't make you feel that you belong, but we can try to make you fit in and assimilate idea of diversity and we're really discussing the idea still at the at the core of you feel that a sense of trying to fit into academia, or do you feel that you belong or do you feel there's a difference?
Speaker 5:Absolutely. I feel that fitting in is sort of it's a shortcut to belonging and that never works really. So it really has to be coming from a place of honesty, having a level of integrity and knowing that I have a right to be here. So I walk into any room and I take that sense of belonging with me, because I've had a long process of reconciling with that disconnect, that disconnection between myself and being in a space where I feel that I'm not valued.
Speaker 5:So it has been a process and I think sometimes, when we speak about reparations on a societal level, we really need to recognize that there are other steps that need to be taken. Otherwise we are just making another shortcut towards belonging. So my research and the work that I'm doing is looking at how to rebuild bridges where trust has been lost, where there has been betrayal, and I believe that this has been the experience of a lot of people from black and other minority ethnic groups, whereby the people who have been entrusted with their care or with who should be looking out for them really have let them down. So that reconciliation and restoration of that level of trust within a relationship is very important and I think I'd love to discuss it further in our conversation today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's pretty awesome and, the same time, um, dennis, the idea of fitting in again.
Speaker 3:Um, you've got your doctorate and you're a doctor now and I've heard a lot of students struggle because I'm in charge of, like, building a community of practice and many of our students sit at the peripheral of the academia, not really being able to recognize themselves, as you know, future researchers of the world or future experts in their field.
Speaker 3:They're still struggling with identity and the idea of do I belong to the world of academia and do I belong here? I suppose some people have described it as imposter syndrome, but at the same time, I'm seeing it at such an extent now that it is quite concerning that, even after you finish your doctorate, a lot of people feel that they don't still have any future because they don't understand where they belong, so to speak. So I'm just wondering, based on your accomplishments, based on your success success which I know that was a long wind process of getting your doctorate but could you think of anything that could maybe inspire some people that are not yet got there and who are struggling with their identity? As you know, future doctor blogs or Dr Joe, so Well, I think identity is a transitional and dynamic process.
Speaker 4:It's always changing. We conflate the idea of belonging with the idea of identity. You can say you belong to your family, you belong to a group in a community, you belong to a kind of religious affiliation, but you can't ignore structural powers of relationship. It's something that can't be ignored. The university, for example, doesn't exist in a vacuum. It exists in wider society and there are inequalities in wider society and there are people in positions of power who decide who belong and who doesn't belong. So when you see people are struggling, you know, in terms of getting a PhD, finding their feet in academia, it's always good to kind of, you know, get some balance by connecting up their struggles with the wider struggles that exist in society. Women, for example, you know they're always fighting against patriarchy because it's kind of, you know, part of the tapestry of society.
Speaker 4:I'm always fighting against ideas of racism because institutional racism is also embedded in the fabric of society. So I don't just think of my struggle as if it exists in a vacuum. It's got to be connected to a wider process and I don't necessarily think about this idea of fitting in because you know. I don't believe that you know, just because you're in Rome, you've got to do what the Romans do. If the Romans are doing wrong things, I believe that you've just got to do what is right and you've just got to struggle where you are. And those struggles have to be looked at in a wider context. It's not just the idea of me as an individual, it's me as a collective as well, and how I am perceived in these relationships of power in society.
Speaker 3:I feel pretty similar to myself because, at the end of the day, as it goes right back to the initial conversation and my wrangling with using that concept so loosely and so fluidly, in a sense, where everyone's to come like, almost like the edi and the global majority terms and some terms that have been used, but people haven't taken time to really go back to the basics to try to understand how complex a term can be.
Speaker 4:Can I just interrupt you, karenza, because I noticed you refer to yourself as a woman of colour. Yeah, and that also implies something else as well. It implies that others who are not in your group don't belong to that colour and they are not of a particular colour, which is also problematic as well. So it's how we develop these identities as well, and then we can ascribe to these identities, and then we say who is included and who is excluded as well. I grew up in an era where the idea of colored was offensive, but now people seem to be embracing this idea of being colored, and what it also assumes as well is that white isn't a color. White is the default position, and that also appears to be problematic as well. So, yeah, appears to be problematic as well. So, yeah, these forms of identity they're also exclusionary processes as well that sometimes we embrace without actually realising it.
Speaker 3:I think you just hit the nail on the head. Do you know something? I've been to quite a few meetings recently and I must admit I've never, ever used that term and I found myself just using that term. Even when it came out I was like, oh my gosh, where did that come from? And I actually had conversations with people on the panel who spoke about the concept of women of colour, and I've been to quite a few events that keep saying women of colour, but I've never really identified. I've always said to myself I'm a black woman and you know, I'm proud of being who I am. So I'm so glad you picked up on that, because even as I was saying it, I wanted to grab it back. I was like what the heck, where did that come from?
Speaker 4:There's a politics of belonging there as well, isn't there Karenza Language of belonging?
Speaker 4:Indeed, there's also the political idea of black. And who belongs to this political idea of black? I grew up in an era where black in the classical sense, means people of African heritage, but now it becomes this kind of conflated, a modulus idea of everything and everyone who is not white. And you know what does it actually mean? And I tend, you know, you know this is still actually mean, and I tend, you know, and this is still this idea of identity and belonging as well, I tend to kind of embrace the idea of being African Caribbean, because the identity doesn't exist outside of Britain.
Speaker 4:If you go into the Caribbean and you say I'm African Caribbean, they say, well, what's that? We know what it is here but they don't know what it is there. It is a particular identity which is to some extent British, but it's a sense of you're British but you are ethnically, in terms of your ethnicity, different from you know the kind of mainstream white dominant group as white British. So you know, just being black in terms of a colour can now be quite problematic, because when you kind of conflate everyone in the idea of being black as well, what we do is we merge all our histories and our relationships with empire. So you've got people who are South Asian also ascribing to the idea of black, you've got people who are African, people, who are Caribbean, and what it does it overlooks our different histories and relationships with empire, which also is part of our individual identities as social groups, absolutely.
Speaker 5:Can I just add a little bit to that with my own experiences, raised in Zimbabwe and coming to the UK at 21, that was the first time really, I really realized that I was black and that I had to somehow, you know, always remember that and so, defining blackness now and defining who I am in my doctoral work now, I take on the Pan-African definition whereby everybody who is of African origin, whether Caribbean or whether you find yourself in the USA or you find yourself wherever the colonizers took you, you are black, african.
Speaker 5:And that's how I define the people who are like myself, all different shades of myself, and that allows me to be able to focus on doing the work. Otherwise, there are so many terms and then there's so much interference, I think, because the interference is what takes us the attention and focus away, and I think we are in a time where care and attention is so needed. My work explores health inequalities. It explores the harm caused by institutions, the harm caused to vulnerable people, and up to now we continue to have disparities in health outcomes. You know, black men are, you know, four times more likely to die of prostate cancer and equally, black women are five times more likely to die in childbirth. So these are outrageous numbers. Even if one woman was to die unnecessarily, that's one too many.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 5:So it's really deep and it's really important that the focus is back on racism and if institutions want to be anti-racist, then the conversations have to be real, they have to be honest, they have to be authentic and they have to really look at the way forward, not just to take shortcuts and make people fit in, but really and truly how can we make people feel like they belong?
Speaker 5:And I believe there's a whole process to it and hopefully I can talk a little bit more about my work, in which I feel that I've come up with some steps that can lead us to that space of resolution. You know, there's been harm caused, there's been trust broken. There's been caused, there's been trust broken, there's been betrayal and, just like in any relationship where betrayal has happened, it's very hard. For example, if a man has cheated on his wife and betrayed those vows, it's very hard to then just get back to normal or pretend as if everything's okay. And I think, in terms of the racism that has been faced by people of black African heritage, it's a really an important conversation.
Speaker 3:Most definitely, and I've picked up on that because, like you said, if a man betrays his wife, then we always forget about the children. And I believe that, as a child of the product of a I wouldn't say broken relationship, because it wasn't a broken relationship per se, but as a child of the British Empire, should we say how I think and how I act and how I do. A lot of things has been influenced and, picking back up on your point, dennis, the idea of the concept of even black and you know you, jesse, said you come from Zimbabwe- I was going to say Zambia, sorry, Zimbabwe.
Speaker 3:I was in South Africa a couple of weeks ago for a few weeks and I was shocked because it was the first time I went to South Africa. But I felt that I belonged and one of the reason why I felt that sense of belonging is because I wasn't wearing the hat called black. I wasn't even maybe I might have been wearing the hat called female, but most of the time I was just walking down the street and no one paid me any attention. And I went to a particular township and it was meant to be a township that was particularly had a reputation of being bad, but walking around, um, an older woman asked me to help her with her bag and she tapped me and spoke to me in her language and said can you help me put my bag? I knew what she meant, but I didn't want to act like I wasn't in part of the community, but I felt. So I felt at peace.
Speaker 3:You know, and it just shows you, you know, not giving up my age, but you know, going towards midterm, if not, I'm there already that I've been living in a society where I've always felt, never felt that in my life. And then, within that half an hour, in South Africa, despite all the things that were going on, in a township, they looked at me and even walking the roads, people were talking to me as if I was their sister and I thought, oh my gosh, you know it felt treasured. And, going back to what you're saying, dennis, is that idea of the concept of black in this country, the concept of what you're saying, dennis? Is that idea of the concept of black in this country, the concept of what you're saying? Jesse, when you stepped into this I always call it like a planet when you stepped into this particular planet, so to speak, you had to.
Speaker 3:You felt that kind of I should, would it be fair to say burden? But um, other, yeah, other fair to say burden, but um, yeah, yes. So that's where we are now. So, julian, as we're coming towards the end now, I just don't know if you have any thoughts on this, because you know me and you sat in that room when it was, and it was interesting, it was a white lady in her 40s who was speaking about the idea of belonging and not fitting in and her perspective, and then she gave us an opportunity to kind of like discuss where we thought, where we never felt fitted in and, using the room at the time, would you like to add anything to the conversation at this point?
Speaker 2:yeah, just to draw on, jesse was saying about how, uh, I think you said um, you see fitting in as basically a step towards belonging.
Speaker 2:I actually feel like it's a barrier to belonging in a sense, because I, as I understand fitting in from my own experience as a, as an autistic person who's felt my whole life that I'm living on an alien planet in which absolutely nobody understands me and I include my own family in this discussion and my family are lovely, by the way but I don't think they understand how I understand experience to see the world and I only ever get a sense of of that really with other people who have the, you know, the same experience that I have. But I think fitting in really is fit it to fit in, you have to fundamentally change who you are. You have to remove elements of your identity in order to sort of like fit what is a sort of like a normativeative understanding of how people should act and behave within a particular environment or society or however. You define a sense of place and that fundamentally changes who you are. You lose something of yourself in that process and the danger is you can never get it back.
Speaker 5:Absolutely. Can I just add to that Fitting in is something that I don't promote, and it is a devastating thing when someone feels that they have to fit in because you're being inauthentic and you are basically masking who you are. And I think it happens a lot where people more or less apologize for who they are. They apologize for their blackness or for whatever condition they have. So it's very important to be able to, to grow into that sense of belonging it requires. Sometimes, unfortunately, because of the world we live in, there's always that level of suppression and oppression, so it becomes more of a struggle for your right to be who you are and to be yourself who you are and to be yourself.
Speaker 5:And just one more thing about blackness. You mentioned about burden. I see it as a blessing and a privilege and an opportunity, as a black African woman, to be able to share with the world the concepts of Ubuntu. You know this is our African moral and ethics, whereby I am, because you are and we all are here to support and work together, and I think that we have a very important message to teach the world, and so I wouldn't give up this blackness not for the gold in all the worlds. So I think it's important.
Speaker 4:I'll just end by saying that I don't believe in the idea of assimilation. What we have to try to do is to remove barriers, as Julian just said, in society that oppresses us. Racism is a barrier that oppresses us Disability, patriarchy. These are barriers that creates inequality, and we've just got to struggle where we are. If we just leave the powers that be and just kind of assimilate in this kind of hegemonic way, then nothing will change and we should all try to be agents for positive change in society.
Speaker 3:I agree and I think that's a perfect way to end, but we usually end the podcast in a diverse hub. I think Adam Vasco, our other co-host, probably would kill me if I didn't say, kill me if I didn't say and if we didn't end. We always say what would make the boat go faster? What would you advise or what would you think should we say that could for the university at large to learn from this session? What would make the boat go faster? And a tip over to you, a tip of what. How would we? How would we explore? But how do we start to explore belonging in the context that we're talking about in the university? How should we go about it?
Speaker 4:Well, I think that equality is much more than a tick box exercise and what we should try to do is to get equality and to provide evidence that people are actually to kind of militate against inequalities where these protected characteristics are concerned. But in terms of a government policy view, there's no standardization about how people are actually supposed to provide evidence and act on that evidence of these inequalities. So, as far as where the university is, the university should try to lead the way and create these standards rather than waiting for government to do something, because it's never going to happen.
Speaker 3:Excellent, and you, jesse, going to happen Excellent.
Speaker 5:And you, jesse, absolutely. I 100% agree with what Dennis said. I think that university is in a great place to be able to acknowledge all the harm that has been caused, as well as to be able to move that acknowledgement into an apology, and then to move that apology into some form of atonement, and then we need some kind of contrition to happen, and then we can have some kind of reparatory framework and then have some restoration and then, at the end of it all, there can be resolution to the issues that people of you know African, black, african, caribbean, caribbean and other minority groups who are facing barriers and oppression, can finally be able to have some sense of freedom or experience levels of sovereignty where they can, you know, be able to be themselves and to live life to their fullest, you know, be able to be themselves and to live life to their fullest Awesome.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you so much for being here today. It's been awesome. I'm really hoping that you're going to have another acknowledgement repair seminar at least because I feel that it was what really inspired me to have this conversation and it's what introduced me to dance as well. So I'm really hoping that we can find another way that we can next time use our communication channels a lot better to promote things a lot wider, because I think this is a conversation that we could really go to town with.
Speaker 3:And, jesse, I'm so thanking you, as usual, but you're my bestie anyway at uni so we'll be seeing each other and we'll be seeing more of the stuff, some of the stuff that we're going to go deeper into this and maybe have a special session on your research and be able to share that to the world as well. But I'll hand it over to my patient and humble co-host, who I cannot do without at this moment. He's been so helpful. So, julian, I hand it back to you now as we close.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you everybody for what has been an actually fascinating, insightful. I feel like I gained so much from listening to you guys speak and I'm sure the audience will also feel much as what I what I'm feeling right now. Just to say that we will continue to be recording episodes in the future, so please look out for the next episode of the diverse hub on all the usual podcast channels or whatever way in which you actually engage with podcasts, whether that be apple, whether that be spotify, whether that be soundcloud or any other podcasting service. So thank you all for listening and hope to hear.
Speaker 4:Hopefully you can join us again soon thank you thank you very much thanks corinne, sir, thanks jesse, thank you all for listening and hope you come and join us again soon, thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks, corinne. Thanks Jessie, I'm out.