In this instalment of the masterclass, Professor Dennis Francis is in conversation with Professor Shirley Anne Tate discussing decoloniality, intersectionality as a framework and anti-racist interventions in higher education. Prof Tate shares an extract from an upcoming edited volume on decolonization and anti-racism in settler colonial states of which South Africa is a part of. She positions the discussion within the context of absolute exhaustion from the violence that we saw during Black Lives Matter, and other incidences, within and outside of the University. These are events, she states, that brought us face to face with the horror of black and indigenous death on a virtual loop, unbridled white supremacy and conceptualizations of freedom by black and indigenous people.
This brought about the question of what she(we) could do, as somebody who wants to develop, what she calls ‘the decolonial intersectional anti-racist interventions’, that are long overdue in universities. Furthermore, she also discussed how this decolonial intersectional ani-racism requires acknowledgment of white domination, implication, and complicity, by white people, but also by black people, people of colour and indigenous people. In addition, Prof Tate also ponders upon the question of whether ‘white feminist allyship’ can be trusted in delivering decolonial intersectional ani-racist change and what would this looks like institutionally?