Do equality regimes change inequality regimes? A study of the implementation and impact of the Race Equality Charter in UK universities

The Race Equality Charter (REC) extends existing work on institutional gender inequality in Higher Education in the UK to the domain of institutional racism. About half the UK’s universities are presently engaged so. This paper presents the findings of a national survey investigating the extent to which the REC is challenging institutional racism in UK universities. The data is sobering. It shows that managerial engagement with, and commitment to, structural reform is compromised by the need to prevent acknowledgment of such change from affecting public perceptions of their universities. It is also affected by elite intellectual disengagement from the meaning and consequence of institutional racism, and from an inability to recognise senior managerial roles in perpetuating institutional racism through such incapacity or ignorance. The data also shows that the most senior management levels are aided in protecting institutional reputation at the expense of authentic engagement with the REC process by other divisions of the university, with Human Resources being particularly problematic. The research thus identifies a Colour-Power Matrix comprised of elite White managerialism and its allies protected by a lack of accountability prioritizing institutional reputations above honest racial accounting, constraining the extent to which inequality regimes may be disturbed. It proposes further research on elite conscientization to overcome fear and prejudice in university senior management.